Avi Blizovsky
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NASA's new boss gave a rousing speech Thursday in which he called for speeding up development of a new spacecraft so the U.S. doesn't lose access to space when the space shuttles retire, but warned that something else will have to be sacrificed.
Michael Griffin told a Senate subcommittee in Washington that to cover the cost of the shuttle's replacement booster, he may delay some space station research and unmanned missions. "We cannot do everything that is on the planning table and we need to organize priorities and do the important things first." added
Griffin wants to fly the new spacecraft as soon as possible after the planned retirement date of the shuttles - the year 2010 - to avoid the four-year gap in which the US will have no way to send human astronauts into orbit.
The current plan, which he inherited when he took charge of NASA about a month ago, calls for the construction of a new vehicle that will carry passengers to orbit in 2014 and will have the ability to fly to the moon and Mars with the changes required in the following years.
Griffin says that a launch gap between four years is unacceptable and he hopes there will be a plan to close the gap by mid-July. The new CEV (crew exploration vehicle) is an important part of President Bush's plan to return astronauts to the moon in 2020.
The CEV must be safe, simple and quickly available,” Griffin told reporters after this performance.
"The six years between the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975 and Columbia's first flight in 1981 were damaging to both the US space program and the nation," Griffin said. "I don't want to repeat it again."
"The United States must always have access to space," said Senator Barbara Mikulinsky, a Democrat from Maryland. Griffin told the Senate Commerce, Judiciary and Science subcommittee that he did not know how much it would cost to accelerate development of the CEV, which is still in the early planning stages. However, he said that choosing a single carrier in 2006 instead of two carriers competing for the flight in 2008 as planned by his predecessor, may save a billion dollars or more in the short term.
Additional money may be saved by suspending research at the International Space Station, such as an experiment designed to prepare for a long stay on the moon or establishing a station on Mars - thereby canceling several shuttle flights that were supposed to bring this equipment. According to him, 18 shuttle flights are currently planned to complete the construction of the space station. This is in addition to ten supply flights for a total of 28 flights.
Currently, NASA is struggling to meet the safety requirements following the Columbia disaster. Administrators hope to launch Discovery on its first mission in mid-July. Repair work is proceeding slowly, and the schedule is very tight.
Griffin assured the senators that he would use a scalpel, not a butcher's knife, to cut the research budget for the space station and other discovery missions and would consider delaying projects not yet in the works.
"The essential research must continue," he said, "but if it is delayed for a few years to allow us to complete the construction of an efficient transportation system between systems, I believe that the delay will be worth it." And that's where I'll look for money.
Griffin promised that NASA would complete the half-built space station. But if the station still isn't complete when the shuttles retire, the space agency may turn to unmanned rockets to bring up the remaining components.
As for the Hubble Space Telescope, Griffin ordered work to begin on the final shuttle servicing mission. A budget of 291 million dollars was set aside in next year's budget. Whether this flight takes place depends on the success of the next two shuttle missions. As you may recall, Griffin's predecessor, Sean O'Keefe, ruled out a visit by astronauts to Hubble due to safety concerns after the Columbia disaster.
