dietz%USC-CSE@USC-ECL.ARPA (07/08/84)
[PFD: I believe this was written before the second Discovery launch attempt.] "Estrangement on the Launch Pad" -- DOD loses affection for the space shuttle and takes up with an old flame When Congress first approved the space shuttle, it did so on the government's advice that existing rockets were an absurdly extravagent means of transporting military and civlian satellites into orbit. Buy a manned reusable ferry, said officials at the Defense Department (DOD) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the costly, expendable rockets will be forsworn. Satisfied, the Congress plunked down billions of dollars so that the shuttle could meet any foreseeable need. Now, however, one of the principle partners in the venture is preparing to jump spaceship, only 3 years after the shuttle's first flight. Having decided that the spacecraft is simply incapable of living up to its billing as a flexible, reliable, and cheap transportation system, the Department of Defense has proposed -- amazingly enough -- to launch some satellites originally intended for the shuttle on a series of new expendable rockets. Although th exact specifications have not yet been determined, the lifting power and payload capacity of each rocket will be comparable to that of the shuttle, but the cost of each launch has been forecast as somewhat less. Not suprisingly, the proposal has generated considerable anger and anxiety at NASA. The anger stems from a conviction that after emerging from a long and difficult development period, the shuttle presently deserves more, not less, Defense Department support. "The space shuttle is the most reliable space transportation system ever built," NASA administrator James M. Beggs has told allies on Capitol Hill. "I believe the current fleet can meet all presently projected foreign and commericial, DOD and NASA requirements for years to come." For months, space shuttle enthusiasts, including Representative Don Fuqua (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, have been lobbying vigorously to kill the Pentagon proposal. Anxiety at NASA stems largely from recognition that the proposal is likely to win approval anyway. As powerful as NASA's allies are, the Pentagon's are even more powerful. The agency fear is that a small withdrawal of payloads from the shuttle to expendable rockets could easily expand to a substantial migration. The difficulty is that every time a payload is removed from the shuttle manifest, the actual cost of ferrying the remaining payloads increases. Already facing serious competition from the European Space Agency's Ariane program, NASA may thus face the disagreeable choice of increasing its rates and pricing itself out of the commercial market, or making up the loss with funds from other space programs. "Am I worried about this possibility?" says Chester Lee, the director of space shuttle customer services. "You bet I am." Although Pentagon officials claim that they will remove no more than 10 satellites from the shuttle manifest, hardly anyone in Washington believes them. One reason is that more than 10 rockets will be produced. Another is that the primary candidates for rocket launching are communications and early warning satellites that come in constellations of 3, 6 and 7. Other payloads are also under consideration, and the Air Force is apparently having a tough time deciding among them. A third reason is that the Pentagon wants to start using rockets in 1988, when the price of sending payloads on the shuttle could jump sharply, from roughly $30 million to as much as $100 million per flight, as existing NASA subsidies are phased out. Taking this into consideration, a congressman recently asked Edward C. Aldridge, Jr., the under secretary of the Air Force, whether the Pentagon would have the option of removing all payloads from the shuttle in 1988. Aldridge replied, "That option would exist, yes sir. Whether or not we would exercise it would depend opon the cost to us to modify additional payloads to go on the [expendable rocket]." To NASA, the proposal to build new rockets seems particularly cruel because the agency has exerted enormous effort to win the Pentagon's business over the past decade. During its early development, the shuttle's shape was altered so that it could traverse the distance demanded by military requirements; the payload bay was expanded to hold unwieldy intelligence satellites; and the state of the art engines were designed specifically to lift weighty military payloads. Roughly a billion dollars is presently being expended on shuttle weight reductions and engine improvements so that these goals will be met. In exchange for these commitments, NASA won a pledge in the late 1070's that the Pentagon would itself contribute more than $15 billion to the shuttle program and allow it to become the exclusive transportation system for military payloads. This pledge was reiterated by Pentagon officials at several congressional hearings and codified in the National Space Policy, a document signed by President Reagan in 1982. "Expendable launch vehicle operations shall be continued by the United States Government @i<until> the capabilities fo the [shuttle] are sufficient to meet [Pentagon] needs and obligations," the policy states (emphasis added). Although NASA fervently believes this bargain can be met by 1988, the Pentagon strongly disagrees, on two principle grounds. One claim is simply that the program's terrible track record casts grave doubt on NASA's assurances. "We're looking at essentially a change in the conditions under which we signed up to that original agreement," says Aldridge, an aeronautical engineer. NASA has thus far failed to launch most of its missions on time; it has vastly exceeded cost projections; and it has failed to provide a flexible choice of 5 shuttle orbiters (NASA and the Pentagon agree that only two will be capable of transporting the heaviest military payloads to geosynchronous orbit). "All of these are new factors that really only came to light in the last year or two," Aldridge says. "If things worked perfectly, which they do not ... could we do with the shuttle? Absolutely ... The question is, do we want to depend on things working perfectly for the future? ... Right now, we do not have a reliable, responsive launch capability for the future." Specifically, the Air Force says it expected that each shuttle could be reflown within 7 days, that military payloads could be quickly and easily loaded on board, and that total launch costs would be one-third those of an expendable rocket. Instead, the minimum shuttle turnaround time will probably be 40 days, "payload integration is more time consuming and technically difficult than previously thought," missions have to be scheduled far in advance, and launch costs are equal to or greater than comparable rockets. A space policy document approved by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in February concludes that, as a result, total reliance on the shuttle "represents an unacceptable national security risk," and unmanned, expendable rockets -- which "offer a high degree of requirements satisfaction, low technical risk, and reasonable schedule availability" -- are needed to satisfy DOD needs. "I'm sorry, I can't accept that," responds Chester Lee at NASA. "They watched as the program was cut to four vehicles, and they were onboard throughout that period. They don't need a 7-day turnaround time -- 7 days for what you ask them. Frankly, they couldn't get their own payloads ready for launch that quickly. We're making damn good progress getting the turnaround down to 28 days. How can they predict it will be 40 days? We work in the business and we know what we're doing. As to cost, it's true, we told them in an official letter that it could go as high as $100 million. But we might bill only for launch materials and services, which would be roughly half that amount." Back at the Pentagon, however, another, more worrisome complaint arises. The shuttle is simply unsafe, various officials suggest. Minor mishaps are predictable, catastrophic accidents are likely, and the entire fleet could be grounded at any time. "What if it lands sideways? What if the auxiliary power units catch fire as it comes in?" speculates Colonel William Barlow, an aide to under secretary Aldridge. "What if it crashed on launch? What if it was sabotaged?" adds Dennis Granato, an aide to the Pentagon's top scientist. This fear is butressed, the Air Force says, by a 1982 RAND Corporation study, which flatly predicts that between one and three of the billion dollar shuttle orbiters will be lost to accident during the lifetime of the program. [Footnote: A spokesman for the RAND Corporation cautions that this was only a preliminary analysis based on highly conjectural statistics.] Additonal evidence along these lines is supplied by the congressional testimony of Willis Hawkins, who recently chaired NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Board. "One of these days," Hawkins told the House Science and Technology Committee in April, "we're going to lay up a shuttle for a substantial amount of time." He complained in particular that the shuttle's "rotating machinery, the hydrogen and oxygen pumps are very, very marginal;" that "the shuttle landing gear comes up to its design load almost every landing ... I think there's just not enough margin there;" that "a lot of the parts and pieces on the shuttle could stand some reassessment;" that the shuttle's auxiliary power units, needed for steering in ascent and reentry, are susceptible to fuel leaks and early breakdowns; and that NASA still tests and certifies shuttle components haphazardly. NASA responds by discounting the enduring significance of these problems and by insisting that DOD needs can be accomodated even if a shuttle vehicle is lost. "We feel we can support them anyway, with a minimum of inconvenience," Lee says. "They have launch priority. Besides, if they're so concerned about it, why don't they support the construction of a fifth shuttle orbiter?" Because, Pentagon officials curtly say, that would simply be more of the same. Under DOD's initial plan, the new expendable rockets were to be purchased under a highly unusual arrangement whereby the Air Force could put off any payment until the construction was complete, at which point all contractor costs would be reimbersed. In so doing, the program could have bypassed congressional appropriations committees until 1988. In May, however, the plan was withdrawn at the direction of the Office of Management and Budget, whic stepped in at NASA's request. "The idea hadn't gone through channels," a senior Administration official explains. "The funding plan was clearly unorthodox and potentially a management disaster." But a new, more straightforward financing plan is now being formulated, and White House sources predict that this time the idea will win the necessary sanctions. Already two aerospace firms, Martin Marietta and General Dynamics, have submitted bids for the work. Even NASA sees that the die is cast. Recently, the agency has publicly suggested that if the Pentagon insists on building a new rocket, it do so with shuttle derived hardware. This would help cut shuttle development and launch costs and provide a bridge to the agency's much desired "heavy-lift vehicle" -- an unmanned cargo ship for space station materials and equipment, as well as manned planetary exploration, and the construction of a base on the moon. The Pentagon, however, is resisting NASA's compromise, partly out of skepticism that the shuttle-derived vehicle will be ready by 1988, and partly out of a simple desire to control the program by itself. Several months ago, the House and Senate appropriations committees requested an assessment of the competing proposals by the National Academy of Sciences. The study, to be chaired by Robert Fossum, a former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency who is now dean of the school of engineering and applied science at Southern Methodist University, will be completed by 1 September. Whichever rocket is built, the shuttle is in for some rough competition. Although intended primarily for the heaviest military payloads, the new rocket may also be capable of cheaply hoisting both lightweight and heavy commericial payloads. Separately, the Air Force is studying a plan to refurbish 56 old Titan II missiles for use with lightweight military payloads. And $2.8 million in the Air Force budget is allocated to preliminary design of a manned spaceplane, similar to the shuttle but capable of lifting off from a conventional airfield on short notice and circling the globe in 90 minutes. NASA officials are justifiably concerned that the potential withdrawal of the shuttle's single biggest customer will convey a strong, worrisome message to its commercial clients. Yet they can hardly deny that the shuttle has thus far failed to live up to its promise. "Somebody made a big mistake long ago," says the senior Reagan Administration official. The ironies were noted by Representative Kenneth MacKay, a first-term Democratic congressman from Gainesville, Florida, during Aldridge's recent congressional testimony. "We have put the rest of the space research program back a decade trying to get the shuttle in gear, and find that the military basically sees good reasons why the shuttle [is] not a crucial thing ... Maybe this is the first time we have [had] ... a realistic assessment of the shuttle system. Maybe we've designed a dinosaur. What will it be used for if you and the other commercial users decide that we're going to expendables? What will it be used for except for the occasional recovery of something ... for the Smithsonian?" Twenty billion dollars later, these are all good questions. -- R. Jeffrey Smith ------ [PFD: RAND predicts 1-3 shuttles will prang!?! If there's no strong economic justification for the shuttle that could make Congress ground the fleet permanently. I expect vicious congressional investigations in a few years.]
mcgeer%ucbkim%Berkeley@sri-unix.UUCP (07/10/84)
From: Rick McGeer (on an aaa-60-s) <mcgeer%ucbkim@Berkeley> What was the basis of Rand's figures? How did they get reliable numbers for probability of component failure?