The Final Effort To Save Shuttle:

It was an emotional final three flights of the shuttle fleet, with the beginning of the end marked by Commander Steve Lindsey’s “Get ready to witness the majesty and the power of Discovery as she lifts off one final time” speech over the flight loop moments before the start of STS-133′s mission, with the flying days ended by Commander Chris Ferguson’s personal tribute to the fleet after Atlantis’ wheels stop, thanking them for protecting the crews.

As millions watched these final flights launch and land, each time marked by the emotional sound of the orbiter’s Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) being extinguished of life for the final time, the public started to realize the United States – and indeed the world – was losing the most capable space vehicle ever built.

While NASA went into a public relations overdrive to try and emphasize that America’s loss of its domestic crewed launch capability was only going to be for several years, political and public disappointment that NASA funding would be spent on buying taxi rides on Russian Soyuz vehicles to an International Space Station (ISS) mainly constructed and paid for by the United States, was main concern.

Eventually, commercial crew capsules, such as SpaceX’s Dragon will be able to ferry astronauts to the ISS, but not until after the middle of this decade. Even under the current best case scenario for commercial crew and cargo, a return to the full capability enjoyed by the shuttle will never be regained via the current commercial suitors.

However, behind the scenes, details of a major proposal were revealed to NASASpaceflight, pointing to what was the last – but by far the most comprehensive – attempt to return the Shuttle to flight operations.

The plan – held under an agreed embargo by this site’s editor, so as not to damage negotiations – involved billions of dollars of private investment being pumped back into shuttle operations, saving Atlantis and Endeavour to return to flight operations no earlier than the end of 2014.

Even before Atlantis had landed for the final time, opponents to shuttle extension were citing the problem of key contractors shutting down, all based around President Bush’s decision to retire the fleet following the completion of ISS assembly. This challenge would have been partially mitigated by potential changes to the contracts and mechanisms used by NASA during the Space Shuttle Program (SSP).

“One of the advantages of our purely commercial approach is that it allowed our engineers to consider alternative suppliers and advances in manufacturing, materials, processing, and production across the globe and across several industries,” noted Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar, who helped lead strategic development and served as the primary government and industry liaison for the team designing the restart plan.

“Our objective was to benefit the Commercial Shuttle venture by implementing best of breed systems engineering and risk assessment and maintaining a focus on shortening the post-flight-to-flight processing cycle while upholding safety as the prime consideration.”

While Discovery was officially removed from flight status during the evaluations, along with the Shuttle Program being handed over to Transition and Retirement (T&R) operations, Endeavour and Atlantis remained in a flow which did not technically preclude a stay of execution.

It was also these two orbiters which were the focal point of all recent “extension” studies (L2 Link to documentation), ranging back to the Augustine Commission into the future of Human Space Flight (HSF) and continued through to the United Space Alliance’s interest in commercial operations of the orbiters via NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) awards.

The United Space Alliance (USA) also submitted a proposal this year (L2 Link), one which called for funding of a study to finalize the architecture for a Commercial Shuttle Transportation Service (CSTS). But that proposal did not go forward.

By way of removing one of the major barriers to previous commercial proposals – government funding – members of the new team allied with potential investors both in the United States and in Europe, which proved to be the breakthrough for the new proposal to approach NASA.

“A number of potential investors were contacted, and one of those was Kevin Holleran – a businessman and investor from London, England. Kevin was sufficiently interested to enter into a process of due diligence and eventually decided he would invest in the concept. He then set about identifying individuals and organizations that would be critical to the success of the venture and the building of a credible plan.

These included former NASA scientists and officials, notably ex-Deputy Center Director and former Director of MOD Randy Stone, who introduced Kevin to Dr. Dittmar as someone with substantial political, industry and operational expertise within the space industry.  The team then evolved, ensuring many complex elements of a restart plan were evaluated.

Over time the concept developed toward a full “go forward” plan, based around a return to flight operations returning at a gradually increasing pace, notably wiping out the majority of the US domestic launch capability gap, before hitting the pace of four flights per year in 2017.

Based on “available demand” – details of which are proprietary – it was anticipated one flight would have taken place at the end of 2014, then two in 2015, three in 2016, and four a year beginning in 2017.

The major difference between the team’s concept and the extension studies of the past was the cost impact to NASA. It had always been a central problem for the Agency, where it simply could not afford to pay for everything it wanted to do – specifically the continued flight of the Space Shuttle and the development of the next generation exploration vehicles.

This proposal partially removed that barrier, as explained by Dr Dittmar.

“In previous proposals, NASA was asked to put a substantial amount of funding into the effort – anywhere from $500M to over $1B a year, basically to subsidize the commercial effort as well as to purchase services from the Commercial Shuttle organization.

“In our case, however, Private Investment, individuals, as well as institutional investors and banks, came to the table with significant startup funding for refitting the Orbiters, refurbishing processing facilities, starting up production lines, etc. 

“However, one of our guiding principles was a “non-interference/no negative impact” policy with regard to existing NASA programs and another was that a commercial shuttle would require rapid access to infrastructure in order to be responsive to the market. 

“Much more of the infrastructure had been repurposed toward the existing NASA Programs of Record than we knew when we began.  In the end, it became obvious that this  is one of those situations in which even very substantial funding could not address these issues sufficiently.

“NASA’s support of the discussions was invaluable in helping everyone fully understand the ‘facts on the ground’, while at the same time encouraging the team’s interest in space. We are also grateful for the support of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who advocated a thorough consideration of the initiative from early on in the process.”

The End Of The Restart Effort:

The orbiters continue to be cared for at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), a facility which has already started to transition towards the 21st Century Launch Complex – the name given for the conversion of the Florida spaceport into a future home for the Space Launch System (SLS) and commercial vehicles.

One Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) is being redesigned to host the flow requirements of Boeing’s CST-100 capsule, resulting in one orbiter taking her turn to enjoy a vacation inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).

Unlike Discovery, whose wings have effectively been clipped by the decommissioning of her OMS Pods, Atlantis and Endeavour have not reached a point of no return – at least not during the evaluations.

Via the construction and evaluation of the restart proposal, the team was aware of the programmatic, technical and operational issues which required resolution before returning the orbiters to flight operations, not least because the vehicles will be changing call signs from Agency to Commercial spacecraft.

The plan was to request NASA issue a “stop order” on further T&R work for Atlantis and Endeavour, allowing for a several month period to finalize solutions to all known challenges relating to restart.

Via the discussions with NASA, the main problem did not prove to be the technical ability to return the two orbiters to flight, nor the often-used dark cloud of crew safety. The roadblock in the plan – a plan which remained in discussion between the team and NASA until this week – was the transition to SLS.

This is ironic, given one of the most expansive shuttle extension studies via the Augustine commission into the future Human Space Flight resulted in former astronaut Sally Ride presenting findings that a preferred transition be the extension of space shuttle operations through until around 2015, providing the follow on program worked with an element of commonality with Shuttle’s hardware. (L2 Link to Documentation)

Despite it taking over two years for NASA to finally announce the Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLV) configuration as one which was Shuttle Derived, it came after the last flight of the Shuttle Program. Regardless, Sally Ride’s plan did fail on costs, which showed NASA funding simply could not afford to continue flying the space shuttle at the same time as developing the new vehicle, a key component which would have been mitigated by the new proposal.

In the end, it was the amount of “repurposing” that has already taken place for SLS which resulted in agreement with NASA that any potential return of the Space Shuttle was no longer viable, ending the discussions.  Whether the technical issues could have been overcome will therefore never be known.

“During the past few months, a last ditch attempt to re-fly the Space Shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis under a truly commercial banner has finally come to an unworkable conclusion,” noted Mr. Holleran in a statement to NASASpaceflight.com.

“A group of space interested investors and technical and operational experts have been working quietly in the background with NASA and major Shuttle suppliers to look at the feasibility of operating the Shuttles commercially. Despite the best efforts of all involved it was simply too late.

“Much of the infrastructure has already been disassembled, or repurposed for SLS and opportunity is lost.”

Despite the setback, Mr. Holleran added the group is now refocusing its efforts on a next generation vehicle, one which includes the numerous advantages of the Space Shuttle’s capabilities. This effort is now in work behind the scenes, ahead of an announcement next year into the outlines of the new system.

“This space interested investment group has now switched its focus to a next generation Space transportation vehicle with Shuttle capabilities,” added Mr. Holleran. “The group hopes to make announcements as to its intentions end of the first quarter of 2012.”

Follow on resources:
Public Forum Reaction Thread.
L2 Q&A with team members on the Shuttle Restart Effort.
L2 Q&A and Updates on the Next Gen Vehicle Effort.

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Images: Via L2 content. Larry Sullivan MaxQ Entertainment/NASASpaceflight.com Other images via NASA.)

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MAF:

Working under the motto of “Finish Strong”, the Michoud managers, engineers and technicians proved to be the unsung heroes of the final phase of the Space Shuttle Program (SSP).

Fighting back from the tragedy of Columbia’s loss, caused by a piece of hardware from one of their own External Tanks – as much as a series of events outside of their control contributed to the disaster – the MAF team and center became one of the focal points for the implementation of Return To Flight (RTF) modifications – L2 link.

Initially, this proved to be anything but smooth sailing, with the first tank to fly since Columbia’s launch liberating a large slice of its PAL (Protuberance Air Load) ramp during Discovery’s STS-114 ascent – resulting in further changes via the complex science of mitigating foam loss during the ride uphill.

Further finite modifications were made to the tank’s Thermal Protection System (TPS) as the fleet began to up the pace, itself a massive challenge, with each change to a highly refined system carefully studied and refined further.

One such example was the modifications made to the LH2 Ice Frost Ramps (IFRs), which were fine-tuned over a number of flights, based on their performance during actual launches. The LO2 IFRs were also monitored through to the end of the program.

These numerous changes, in tandem with an improving flight rate, resulted in additional challenges, such as achieving the delivery dates for the tanks based on the projected flight manifests created by the Flight Assignment Working Group (FAWG) – L2 Link.

Via the mix of ingenious management brainstorming at numerous Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs), the dedication of the Michoud workforce working seven days a week and solid leadership from Lockheed Martin’s ET boss Wanda Sigur, refined delivery dates supported the desired manifest – as seen ahead of the flagship STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

Click here for numerous ET news articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/et/

More importantly – not least in the case of Atlantis’ Hubble mission – the tanks started to enjoy a run of increasing success in the mitigation of foam liberation from the critical areas of the tank, resulting in mainly “clean” orbiters – no serious TPS damage caused by foam loss) – especially in the latter missions for the fleet.

Michoud even managed to add a tank to the manifest, namely ET-122, allowing for the addition of STS-135, a mission which has proved to be extremely vital for the International Space Station’s logistical health, especially during what has proven to be a problematic year for the Russians.

ET-122, damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when it was located in Cell-A of MAF’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), required a large amount of work, both from a repair standpoint, but also via the requirement to implement the numerous RTF modifications.

And Katrina didn’t just damage the tank, but also displaced large amounts of the MAF workforce, some of whom were technically homeless at the time NASA needed them the most during the comeback from negative delivery dates.

Sadly, most of that workforce fell foul of NASA’s ongoing transition, as much as most saw it coming since the decision was made to retire the Shuttle fleet once ISS assembly was complete - although the since-cancelled Constellation Program (CxP) was a hammer blow to the facility. Just a handful of ET engineers remained at MAF by the end of August, with the rest of what is now a small workforce working on Orion and other contracts.

The official end of ET work at MAF resulted in the spare tanks – such as ET-94 – no longer being serviced by Lockheed Martin. They have been turned over to the ownership of Jacobs Technologies.

A number of workers might of been saved, had NASA administrator Charlie Bolden announced the Space Launch System (SLS) when lawmakers had requested it. MAF leaders had hoped for an end to the delays earlier this year, extending the period prior to the handing of WARN notices to a number of workers several times, before finally losing patience.

Now the SLS program is up and running, MAF are hoping to be involved in the resulting contracts, with one of the main contractors likely to be building the core stage, Boeing, already noted to have utilized the facility for their SLS-related Pathfinder tank. Meanwhile, other major weld tooling has been placed into storage.

MAF At The Movies:

Ironically, some of the remaining workforce found themselves with job sheets that had nothing to do with the space program, as they spent some of their days removing equipment to make space for a string of production companies to use the facility to film parts of their blockbuster films, per L2 information.

The first of which was GI Joe 2 (Retaliation) – which has now completed filming inside MAF, ahead of its summer 2012 release date.

This movie stars Bruce Willis – who is no stranger to space hardware, following his staring role in the blockbuster movie Armageddon, which filmed at numerous NASA centers, including the Johnson Space Center (JSC) and the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

Universal Pictures will arrive in January to film two movies (the titles of which are being kept secret), while Disney and MGM are also in the process of negotiating the use of MAF’s 101 building for filming purposes.

Despite the major handover to Jacobs, Lockheed Martin still had control of final assembly position 3. However, current MAF employees have been told to clear out all equipment to make room for yet another studio. At this time all four final assembly positions, the entire VAB, and the 420 building at Michoud are now classed as movie sets.

It has also been noted that the BP oil company has also taken control of BLDG 451 – otherwise known as the LH2 proof test building – to store the blow out preventer that caused the Gulf oil spill in 2010.

It is hoped that sometime in 2012, MAF will see the work being carried out on the Orion which will fly on the Exploration Flight Test (EFT-1) being joined by work on commercial vehicles and the SLS, as opposed to providing a large indoor facility to Hollywood.

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Hearing:

Wednesday’s hearing by the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics was headlined as a review into the “lessons from the Soyuz Rocket Failure and Return to Flight”, which resulted in positive responses on both the Russian investigation into the failure of the Soyuz – which saw Progress M-12M/44P crash back to Earth - and the effort to return to flight in November.

Those responses came from the high level witness panel, led by Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, Lieutenant General Thomas P. Stafford, USAF (Ret.), Chairman, International Space Station Advisory Committee, and Vice Admiral Joseph W. Dyer, USN (Ret.), Chairman, Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP).

During the hearing, which was led by lawmakers noting it was ironic the failure came one month after the final shuttle mission – with the STS-135 crew in attendance at the hearing – the root cause of the Soyuz problem was noted by Mr Gerstenmaier as related to a low fuel feed to the gas generator – caused by contamination – resulting in the Upper Stage engine failure.

With confirmation the Russians have been cooperative and forthcoming with NASA with regard to the failure investigation – with Mr Gerstenmaier adding they were given overviews first hand, consisting of detailed data, allowing Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) engineers to conduct a background check which resulted in agreement with the Russian findings – questions turned towards the eventual end of the reliance on Soyuz vehicles.

Questions remain on the schedule of handing over to the commercial fleet for US independence – with dates ranging between 2015 and 2017 – although it was stressed by Mr Gerstenmaier the commercial partners are aware they should only fly only when they are ready to fly.

Funding remains the key element of the commercial schedule, while NASA’s two main partners, SpaceX and Orbital, are also working through what was described as “normal start-up transients” – referencing Orbital’s major work at their launch site at Wallops, and SpaceX’s unspecified software issues.

From a cargo perspective, the ISS isn’t racing against deadlines, partly due to the support of other vehicles, such as Europe’s ATV and Japan’s HTV, but also because the final flights of the Shuttle provided the orbital outpost with enough supplies to last until the end of the next calendar year.

Despite this, one lawmaker posed the question on the viability of restarting the shuttle program.

Shuttle Restart:

While General Stafford correctly identified the long pole was the restart of External Tank production at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) – citing a period of two years (as much as claims have been made it would take 18 months) until the tanks reached their flow points to support missions – Admiral Dyer was dismissive, claiming this had been previously looked into and that the question would have only been “interesting” if it had been asked three or four years ago.

This wasn’t a surprising response from the head of the ASAP, who has been steadfast in his opposition to all additional shuttle missions, even the ones which were praised for leaving the ISS in the current acceptable logistics state.

However, a more expansive explanation – at least from a post-retirement standpoint – was forthcoming via the ASAP 2011 Third Quarterly Report, acquired by this site, which quoted an exchange between Scott Spencer, Transportation Management Consultant and co-author of an open letter to the NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, with the ASAP board.

The letter, co-authored by Christopher Kraft, former Director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and endorsed by Space Shuttle astronauts Robert Crippen and Frederick Hauck; Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, James Lovell, and Eugene Cernan; the former Director of Mission Operations and Flight Director, Gene Kranz; and other space industry experts, expressed concerns with the Space Shuttle fleet’s retirement from ISS operations.

As noted in the ASAP report, the letter noted concerns with the inability to make repair spacewalks to restore safe and reliable operations if an incident rendered the ISS uninhabitable; and an uncontrolled, catastrophic reentry (with risks to populated areas around the world and the attendant ramifications to foreign relations) from an abandoned ISS.

Ironically, the letter was written before the Soyuz failure and the potential decrew situation.

“Mr Spencer stated that the Space Shuttle fleet is the only spacecraft that is equipped with the airlocks, life support supplies, and robotic arm needed to support the required two-person spacewalking repair crew,” noted the ASAP report into his comments.

“He noted that the letter’s authors and endorsers also believe that the loss of the ISS would destroy the commercial viability of commercial cargo and crew, which is essential for the U.S. return to manned spaceflight if the Shuttles are retired. Keeping the Space Shuttles in service would maintain vital backup contingency for possible risks to U.S. manned spaceflight and the ISS business for the emerging commercial space industry.

“In addition, the letter recommended establishing a new, internationally accepted flight safety criterion: Any object in orbit that is too large for an uncontrolled reentry must have a spacecraft available to support independent extravehicular activity (EVA) repairs.

“With regard to costs associated with the Shuttle fleet, he contended that use of private capital would make it financially and technically feasible to reverse the retirement of the Shuttles and restore U.S. manned spaceflight capabilities in as little as 18 months.”

As such, Mr Spencer requested that the ASAP issue an immediate recommendation for NASA, Congress, and the White House to reverse the decision to retire the Space Shuttles. This request received a negative response from Admiral Dyer.

“In the Panel’s opinion, there was a time for this debate, but it has passed. In the latter part of the last decade, the ASAP highlighted in its reports to both Congress and the NASA Administrator that if the Shuttle’s continuation beyond the planned retirement was to be discussed, the subject needed to be taken up at that time – not only because of knowledge loss, but especially for the second and third tier suppliers of piece parts and critical components, which have now been out of business – well over three years in many cases.

Click here to read further coverage on Shuttle Extension: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/extension/

“VADM Dyer noted that the Panel understood Mr Spencer’s message and what he highlighted, but in the Panel’s opinion, the time has passed for implementing Shuttle’s continuation.”

In response, Mr Spencer stated that that issue was addressed before the letter was written and endorsed, and it was confirmed that the ability to reconstitute and return Shuttle to flight could be accomplished safely and successfully in about 18 months. That would be a faster return-to-flight than what is anticipated for commercial alternatives. He agreed that there would be a delay, but opined that it would not be technically insurmountable.”

Turning to safety – an issue which Admiral Dyer went on the record to cite concerns about when sat alongside then NASA administrator Mike Griffin at the 2009 House hearing to discuss the initial findings of the Augustine Review into the forward path for Human Space Flight – Mr Spencer was questioned on his evaluations into safe flight.

“Mr Spencer noted that the Shuttle’s ability to continue to fly safely is not without risk. However, in his opinion, the safety of the subsequent spacecraft will not be determined until they pass a 100-flight threshold themselves. In terms of relative risk, tradeoffs would have to be accepted,” the notes recorded.

“He felt that the potentially uncontrolled ISS reentry threat to populated areas around the world is an unacceptable risk. Even if the ISS remains safely in orbit after being abandoned, the hearing and review boards that would result would criticize NASA’s decision to leave the ISS without any way of being restored.”

Mr Spencer also noted that the late call to continue shuttle operations came in part due to the lack of an EVA capability being seen on any of the future vehicles, something he felt no one specifically discussed this before Congress or the ISS partners. Mr Spencer also claimed the ISS was designed and built to be operated, maintained, and de-orbited with the support of the Shuttle’s capability.

It was then noted that plans have been in work for the commercial operation of the Shuttle. These plans have been very secretive due to the investor-related nature of such proposals, although it appears Mr Spencer and his co-authors had been made aware – likely the reason for the passionate pro-shuttle return comments from former Apollo commander Gene Cernan at a recent hearing when he claimed the shuttle was in the prime of its life.

“Plans for commercial operation of Space Shuttles have been proposed, but they were never presented to Congress,” Mr Spencer was noted as claiming. “One aspect is the use of private capital and revenue from countries that would want to have space-faring capabilities, which would ultimately neutralize the additional budget that would be required to fly the Shuttles.

“Interest is already being expressed from capital sources who say that with a 20- to 30-year flight service agreement, a significant amount of private capital could be funded to reconstitute the Shuttle program and its operations and minimize the impact on the NASA budget. When safety is at stake, cost is a lower issue to consider in the criteria.”

ASAP appeared to be unaware of such plans and asked Mr Spencer for further information, to which he noted one example, which related to the United Space Alliance (USA) looking at about $1.5B per year for at least two Shuttle flights per year, as well as a Shuttle being available for launch-on-need capability.

He added that at least $500M would be required up front to restart the parts and tanking line, that private capital could put these funds into place to supplement NASA’s effort, although he wasn’t able to say specifically what return-on-investment rate would be required for investors. However, in the discussions that USA had, they were satisfied with the business case.

Notably, the United Space Alliance were not party to Mr Spencer’s letter and no recent news has been heard on any progression to the commercial shuttle effort.

With Endeavour now signed over to her retirement home in California, Discovery’s wings effectively clipped by the decommissioning of her OMS Pods and the effort to remove Main Propulsion System (MPS) hardware for use on the Space Launch System (SLS), it is likely the question from lawmakers on Wednesday was the last time it will be asked.

To read about Atlantis and her sisters – from birth, processing, every single mission, through to retirement, click here for the links:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=25837.0

Click here for the amazing MaxQ Entertainment STS-135 Mission Review Music Video:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26178.0

(Images: L2 (animation via L2 sequence set), NASA, USA and Hearing Webcast).

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1. Senate pass NASA bill for extra funding – shuttle extension goals The US Senate has passed the new NASA Authorization Bill...

SLS Development:

With all related centers and contractors noting a significant ramp up in planning for SLS – now that it has finally been announced by NASA’s top brass – the development phase will be key to ensuring the mistakes of the Constellation Program (CxP) are not repeated.

CxP claim their problems were related to a lack of promised funding, although continual changes to the baseline design and integration between the Ares I first stage and the Orion capsule – from very early in the process – caused major impacts to the schedule milestones.

NASA managers know such a repeat would likely result in SLS being the last vehicle they’d ever gain political support to build.

Thankfully – from a design standpoint – the SLS is utilizing a lot of commonality with the esteemed Shuttle engineering arm, utilizing a workforce which is fully focused on vehicle engineering, as opposed to the CxP days, when Shuttle was still the priority and hosted the majority of the hardware skillset, leaving CxP noticeably short in that department.

While the SLS’ heritage from both CxP and Shuttle are obvious – via the likes of the “External Tank” core, J-2X driven Upper Stage, and initially the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) – the aft of the SLS relies on the power which was very specific to the Shuttle orbiters.

Initially three RS-25Ds will – along with the boosters – provide the thrust to launch the giant vehicle uphill, prior to five engines – by that time moving to the expendable RS-25Es – providing part of the evolvability of the SLS.

Given the commonality with the SSME’s partner in crime, the orbiter MPS, engineers felt it would be a waste of valuable, flight proven, hardware to send it out on display (as much as it won’t be visible) with the rest of the orbiters – when they head to their retirement homes.

This led to a study into removing the orbiter’s array of plumbing, allowing for it to be donated to the SLS development program.

PRCB STS-MPS-SLS:

Following a Program Requirements Control Board (PRCB) meeting this month, those plans have been refined, to the point of an overall approach and associated costs, along with the impacts such work would add to what is known as the Transition and Retirement (T&R) phase for the orbiters.

“The purpose of this (review) is to identify both specific and general guidelines to be followed in the preparation (work paper generation) and execution of the removal of Main Propulsion System hardware from the Space Shuttles in support of SLS,” noted one of three PRCB presentations on the effort (all available in L2).

“Potential Cost and Schedule mitigation option for SLS. MPS component development can pace the overall core stage schedule. Retaining and utilizing SSP MPS hardware can have large initial cost savings.

“Beyond the existing Transition & Retirement (T&R) plan: Acquire high value items from the Orbiters, LRU (Line Replacement Unit) spares, GSE, Tooling and Documentation. SLS is needing hardware to support a test program and first two flights. Core Stage Option Utilizing Shuttle MPS. RS25 Engines. MPS. TVC (Thrust Vector Control) and Avionics.”

The initial plans involved all three orbiters. However, following an opening evaluation into the best path forward, Discovery won’t be donating any hardware – other than the three SSMEs which flew on her final mission (STS-133).

It is not documented as to why this decision was made – although it would match the shuttle extension studies, which concluded Discovery would be retired, allowing Atlantis and Endeavour to continue with additional flights.

This was partly based on Discovery being due for her Orbiter Modification Down Period (OMDP), which would have likely involved work on ‘areas of interest’, such as the MPS feedline ball struts and VJ annulus on the LH2 side and all the MPS components. Previous engineering notes did reveal small cracks in the ball strut.

Further checks – along with a high level of protection – will be provided on all MPS hardware to be removed, now specific to Atlantis and Endeavour, as the PRCB documentation outlined.

“All SLS-hardware is to be maintained ‘flight like’. The term ‘flight like’ is defined as follows: Parts will be maintained visibly clean, appropriately handled/transported, and maintained in good working condition. Part cleanliness shall be maintained using best shop practices: Cleanliness will be maintained via work in an environmentally controlled atmosphere.”

This relates to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) maintaining purges as appropriate, using double clean bags/tape/caps/plugs to secure open ports/lines, and undertaking a best effort to maintain an acceptable level of cleanliness using field expedient techniques if work is to be performed in an uncontrolled environment, such as the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where the orbiters are taking it in turns to visit.

“Field cleaning of MPS parts/tooling using approved cleaning materials/fluids is acceptable. Parts obstructing removal of MPS components such as pneumatic tubes, clamps, brackets etc., are not required to be re-installed but shall be recorded in a list of removed parts within the Work Authorization Document,” added the presentation.

For SLS/HLV Articles, click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/hlv/

“All removed parts will be identified by part number, part description, and serial number (when readily identifiable). Cosmetic discrepancies (not affecting fit/form/function) of the part do not require Squawk (issue) initiation, but shall be noted/documented during the part final inspection results.”

All of the removed MPS hardware would then be placed into storage at the Assembly & Refurbishment Facility (ARF), which also includes the large GSE equipment used on the orbiter MPS, which is currently located in the NSLD (NASA Shuttle Logistics Depot) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

“Preserve Shuttle Heritage MPS Hardware for SLS Opportunities: Put a Hold on Retired Shuttle MPS, TVC and Avionics Assets. Remove & Store Critical Orbiter MPS, TVC and Avionics Components at the ARF. MPS components are the most critical – saving cost and schedule,” added another presentation.

“Develop cost and schedule impacts to remove & store existing orbiter hardware. Develop cost to retain all MPS, TVC and Avionics related LRU spares and sub-assemblies at the KSC logistics warehouse. Develop cost impacts to retain all MPS GSE, tooling and component documentation from NSLD.”

The ARF is under the control of the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), while some hardware will also take up residency at KSC’s Logistics Warehouse.

“Remove high value MPS, TVC and Avionics hardware from the aft compartment of orbiters prior to sending them to museums. Package, transport and store the hardware in the Assembly Refurbishment Facility. Floorspace is available to store hardware in an environmentally controlled area,” the overview continued.

“NSLD Bld 3 MPS Test equipment, special tooling and servicing documentation. Building needs to be restored to original configuration and GSE needs to be removed ASAP. Maintain Spare MPS, TVC and Avionics components, subassemblies and parts at the KSC Logistics Warehouse.”

While long lists of specific hardware and costings are noted, two different schedules are shown, one showing no delay to the final departure of the orbiters to their exhibitions, while another shows a seven month impact for Endeavour’s trip to the West Coast, and a 12 month slip to Atlantis’ trip up the road to the KSC Visitor Center.

Regardless, no official dates have been confirmed, even with Discovery, who’s role with the SLS is now no longer required, ahead of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) ferry to the Smithsonian.

“The Museum is working closely with NASA to determine the schedule for delivery of Discovery and removal of Enterprise from the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. No date has been set,” noted Isabel T. Lara, Media Relations at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, adding their timeline closely involves Enterprise, as she would have to be moved to make way for Discovery.

“The tentative plan calls both spacecraft to be moved over the course of a few days. Enterprise is expected to be on display until Discovery arrives to replace it.”

Enterprise will eventually be taking up residency in New York City.

If the new plan can avoid impacts to the T&R timeline – as may now be the case with only two orbiters involved – all associated facilities will also be released on a nominal timeline. However, if the additional T&R impact becomes the reality, the slip is significant, per the documentation.

“OPF-1 remains occupied for an additional 17 months. OPF-2 remains occupied for an additional 7 months. Logistics remains occupied for an additional 17 months. Release of MDD (Mate Demate Device) delayed ~7 months. Overall completion of T&R delayed 8.5 Months.”

In conclusion to the documentation, the PRCB noted they are in a position to green light the MPS donation, with the final approval likely to be forthcoming in the coming weeks – following the conclusion of the ongoing hardware inspections and planning.

Click here for Shuttle T&R Articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/T&R/

“Recommendation: Approve CR (Change Request) to remove MPS, TVC and Avionics hardware from orbiters and store at the ARF. Concur with Plan to remove transport MPS component GSE tooling and Documentation from NSLD and store at the ARF. Concur with plan to maintain orbiter MPS, TVC and Avionic spares at the KSC logistics Warehouse.”

(Images: Via L2 content, driven by L2′s new SLS specific L2 section, which includes, presentations, videos, graphics and internal updates on the SLS and HLV. Other images via NASA and Larry Sullivan, Chris Gebhardt (MaxQ Entertainment/NASASpaceflight.com) orbiter engineering tour video (1000mb) available on L2.)

(L2 is – as it has been for the past several years – providing full exclusive SLS coverage, available no where else on the internet. To join L2, click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)

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End of Shuttle:

The three world famous vehicles now look rather forlorn – with missing Forward Reaction Control Systems (FRCS), Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) and Orbital Manuevering Systems (OMS) – as they are processed under Transition and Retirement (T&R) flows at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), ahead of eventually shipping to their retirement homes.

As noted previously by Mr DeCastro, the vehicles could have flown on, and indeed should have gained additional flights via an extension – or a continuation under a commercial deal – at least until the United States had an alternative domestic crew launch vehicle ready to fly.

The risks of relying on the Russians for transporting NASA astronauts – as is now the case for another four or so years – were made all too apparent when Roscosmos grounded their Soyuz fleet, due to commonality with the launch vehicle which failed to deliver Progress M-12M to orbit.

Regardless of such a standdown likely being shorterm, the challenge of providing the International Space Station (ISS) with a lifeline of logistical support – following the loss of the shuttle fleet’s unrivalled upmass and indeed downmass capability – also remains at the mercy of a fleet of international agency vehicles and new commercial ships all working without major issues and/or notable schedule slips.

As much as the decision not to continue the life of the Space Shuttle past STS-135 was political, the fleet’s days were already numbered after the loss of the flagship Columbia.

However, the subsequent fight back and major improvement in safety during Return To Flight (RTF) – resulting in a long run of the “cleanest” flights in the history of the program – was never fully acknowledged, and in some cases dismissed, by those who continued to lobby for the shuttle’s end.

“The NASA/Contractor Team did a magnificent job in coming back to a full operational capability after the devastating loss of Columbia and her crew,” noted Mr DeCastro in an interview with NASASpaceflight.com. “We improved the culture, improved communications, improved our understanding of the risks associated with the External Tank and the Orbiter, and we were able to conduct 22 excellent missions.

“The final three missions of Discovery, Endeavour, and Atlantis were among the best missions flown in the Shuttle Program. As the crews can attest, those vehicles were the “cleanest” ever returned, which in layman’s parlance means we made important steps in the right direction to eliminating the loss of foam and the resultant impacts on the vehicle.

**To read about all the Shuttles - from birth, processing, every single mission, through to retirement - click here for the links:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=25837.0 **

“The skill and dedication of the Shuttle Team was clearly demonstrated in the completion of those missions. The Team members are proud of the way we finished and sad that the Nation does not have a vehicle ready to begin the next step in the evolution of human space exploration.”

With the end of the Shuttle Program, thousands of talented space industry workers have lost their jobs from all over the United States – not least at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, but also at the large array of Shuttle supplier companies.

The United Space Alliance (USA) – as a contractor – felt the pain more than most, though Mr DeCastro fears the job losses may be far more than economic, pointing to the NASA reductions as holding the potential to rip the core out of the Agency’s operations capability, which in turn risks the current high levels of efficiency and safety.

“It is very difficult to measure the impact of the loss of skills on the future programs or our Nation’s economic health”, the retired US Marine Corp. Lieutenant Colonel noted. “From a contractor perspective, while there will be a tremendous loss of core personnel, experience shows that skilled people will flock to work that is important to the nation and is satisfying to the individual workers.

“Right now and in the next 5 to 10 years, that work is likely to be in other business sectors. I worry more about the loss of the critical NASA personnel who are skilled in the planning, training, and operation of Human Space Flight.

“Without something to operate, it is highly likely that NASA will lose its core ‘operations’ capability and will have a difficult time rebuilding that capability. The probable loss of skills in NASA will manifest itself in a costly and slow return to the current level of efficiency and safety.

“Finally, the negative impact on many States from the loss of the Shuttle supplier industries has occurred at a very bad time for many communities. The economic hit to the State of Florida is expected to be the most devastating.

“I hope the folks in Washington worrying about the economy find a solution which employs those dedicated and very highly skilled workers in jobs which warrant their expertise. Our Nation cannot afford to lose that talent to overseas employers.”

Mr DeCastro is hopeful that the lessons learned from the Space Shuttle team work practises provides a baseline for the next human space flight programs, lessons which include elements that can’t be learnt in training sessions, or hired off the street, such as treating the vehicles with dedication and love – as seen with how the shuttle workforce cared for the orbiters as much as the astronauts.

“The wonderful dedication and caring attitude of the Shuttle Team has been at the center of its successful operation since the beginning. The people who worked on the Space Shuttle truly cared about Human Space Flight, about the Astronauts who risked their lives each mission, and about the value of exploration and leadership in space to our Nation. 

“It is very important that people care when lives are on the line. Human space flight is a very risky business. A lesson we learned when we lost our friends and colleagues.

“We were blessed to find workers who were not only qualified but who came to work each and every day ready to go beyond their work requirements to make those ships as safe as humanly possible.

“I hope the next human spaceflight program will find people who care just as much. I am optimistic that will happen.”

As far as the United Space Alliance, the end of the Shuttle Program does not mark the end of the company. Members of the USA team are embedded into the International Space Station (ISS) program, while others are supporting Department of Defense (DoD) and commercial companies.

Mr DeCastro also added that USA will continue to be involved with the NASA centers developing the Space Launch System (SLS), a Shuttle Derived (SD) Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLV) with a large amount of heritage from the Space Shuttle Program.

“United Space Alliance has a broad capability to support NASA and non-NASA projects. We are very proud of the role we played and in the many accomplishments of the Space Shuttle Program. Our Company will continue to support NASA and Human Space Flight and we will work to help the United States regain its position of leadership in space exploration,” added Mr DeCastro.

“We continue to support the ISS in mission planning, training, and on orbit support. We will support JSC (Johnson Space Center), KSC, MSFC (Marshall Space Flight Center) and other NASA Centers as NASA develops its Space Launch System. We also have the capability to provide support to the Department of Defense and to commercial companies who are engaged in high tech projects.

“USA is interested in any and all NASA Human Space Flight Programs and in the various commercial programs that will support the ISS and, eventually, Human Space Flight. We already are engaged in many of the programs and will continue to seek ways to help the United States regain its leadership position in space.

“USA has very talented workers who are supporting many new NASA and non-NASA ventures.I invite (people) to come to our facility in Florida and tour NSLD (NASA Shuttle Logistics Depot) where we are engaged in work for the DoD,  commercial satellite companies and NASA.”

Click here for the amazing MaxQ Entertainment STS-135 Mission Review Music Video:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26178.0

(Images: Via L2, NASA, and @OV105GirlEngr (Victoria Hulbert) photo published on twitter. Further articles on the fleet will be produced during her down processing, driven by L2 – which is continuing to follow the orbiters via a wealth of FRR/PRCB/MER/MMT and SSP documentation/pressentations, videos, images and more.

(NSF/L2 continuing to provide full exclusive shuttle coverage, available no where else on the internet. To join L2, click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)

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Shuttle to SLS MPS:

The MPS relates to the powerhouse in the aft compartment of the vehicle, aiding the acceleration from lift-off of an orbiter to Main Engine Cutoff (MECO) – the phase of ascent referred to as “powered flight”.

As such, the Integrated MPS consists of the three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs), an external propellant tank (ET), a propellant management system used to transport fuel and oxidizer from the tank to the engines, and a multipurpose helium system.

For SLS, the External Tank will be translated into the core stage, becoming part of the in-line HLV. The second stage will ride on top of the core, with the Orion (Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle) riding on top of the second stage on the crewed version of SLS, replaced by a payload on the cargo version.

Two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) will be attached to either side of the core stage, not unlike the Shuttle stack, as much as these boosters will be larger five segment motors, potentially changing to a liquid version later in SLS’ lifetime.

For SLS/HLV Articles, click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/hlv/

As has been noted previously, SLS will utilize SSMEs – otherwise known as RS-25s. The stock of SSME (RS-25D) engines are currently being preserved at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), after being donated by the Space Shuttle Program (SSP). There are at least three sets of three engines, removed from each orbiter, along with a spare set of three engines (12 engines in total).

Prior to the orbiters going on display at their respective exhibition sites, each vehicle will be fitted with three Replica Shuttle Main Engines (RSMEs) – made from previously scrapped nozzles and installed via an adaptor – which are being fabricated by SSME contractor Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR).

Given the adaptor will be installed inside the SSME domes shields, visitors to the orbiters at their exhibitions won’t notice the difference, especially as the nozzles will be real hardware, repaired from their previous scrap designation.

The recommendation to preserve the flown SSMEs for future use was called for by NASA’s MSFC (Marshall Space Flight Center), KSC and JSC (Johnson Space Center), providing free engines for SLS to utilize on its opening flights.

All of the reusable engines will be destroyed when the unrecoverable core stage burns up in the designated disposal corridor, not unlike the shuttle ET.

As seen in the latest SLS documentation, the plan is to move to a cheaper, non-reusable version of the SSME – known as the RS-25E – once the RS-25D stock is exhausted by the SLS flights.

Now SLS managers have requested the use of the major plumbing inside the orbiter’s own MPS system, which is a natural match for the RS-25s.

“There has been a request to removed the entire MPS (Main Propulsion System) from the orbiters for SLS (Space Launch System),” noted KSC processing information (L2), adding such an operation would delay the shipping dates of the orbiters by over half a year.

“This would be six to nine month impact to the T&R (Transition and Retirement) schedule (for the orbiters).”

This effectively relates to the guts of the orbiters, specifically known as the Orbiter MPS.

The Orbiter MPS includes major hardware items such as the Propellant Management System (PMS).

The MPS PMS consists of manifolds, distribution lines, and valves that transport propellants from the tanks to the three main engines for combustion, and gases from the engines to the tank for pressurization.

The PMS is the lifeline of the integrated MPS. In addition to its primary function of feeding propellants from the External Tank to the engines during powered flight, the PMS also controls the loading of propellants before launch, the post-MECO propellant dump and vacuum inerting.

The removal of this hardware inside the aft compartments of the orbiters would involve disconnecting major hardware – such as the Propellant Feedline Manifolds, which consists of 17-inch and 12-inch piping – through the three spaces left vacant by the removed SSMEs.

Items which would be removed includes the feedlines – vacuum jacketed for H2, insulated for O2 – Fill and Drain (F&D) lines, recirculation lines (H2), and gaseous H2 and O2 lines – which are used to maintain pressure in the ET – via more well known items of hardware such as the Flow Control Valves (FCVs).

The FCVs were highlighted during an investigation into a small liberation from one of the valve’s poppet’s during STS-126.

Mitigation procedures – which included screening of flown valves post-flight at the frabricator Vacco - resulted in no further issues.

Click here for NASASpaceflight.com articles on the FCV issue since STS-126

These are all natural elements of hardware which would provide both the SLS core and the SLS engines with the role they had previously enjoyed with the orbiter, such as the FCV-related Ullage Pressure System (UPS) – which deals with the volume in the LH2 and LO2 tanks not occupied by liquid propellant.

The ullage pressure system consists of the sensors, lines, and valves that are used to collect gaseous propellants (gaseous hydrogen and gaseous oxygen) from the three main engines; the system supplies the gaseous propellants to the External Tank to maintain propellant tank pressure during engine operation, as well as maintaining tank structural integrity.

Propellants must be supplied to the SSME with adequate head pressure for proper engine operation.

Also to be removed would be the MPS helium system, which consists of storage tanks, distribution lines, regulators, and valves that supply helium to the main engines and the MPS PMS.

The helium supply tanks consist of three large (17.3-cubic-foot) and seven small (4.7-cubic-foot) helium tanks known as Composite Overwrap Pressure Vessels (COPV). Each large tank is plumbed to two of the small tanks to form three clusters. Each cluster provides helium to one of the main engines. The remaining small tank is the pneumatic helium supply.

Although this would all result in a large amount of hardware being removed from the aft of the orbiters, visitors to the exhibitions would not have been able to see – or likely have any access – to the aft compartment, meaning their visual appearance will not be altered.

A final decision on proceeding with this work is expected later this year.

(Images: Via Larry Sullivan, Chris Gebhardt (MaxQ Entertainment/NASASpaceflight.com) orbiter engineering tour video (1000mb) available on L2, plus L2 content - driven by L2′s new SLS specific L2 section, which includes, presentations, videos, graphics and internal updates on the SLS and HLV available no where else on the internet).

(L2 is – as it has been for the past several years – providing full exclusive future vehicle coverage, available no where else on the internet. To join L2, click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)

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The Space Shuttle: A Labor of Love

It goes without saying that the Space Shuttle is a labor of love – not only for the teams that worked their hardest to get these graceful vehicles ready for mission after mission, but also for the hundreds of diligent and dedicated media representatives who sacrificed in their personal lives to stay up late, get up early, adjust their sleeping schedules to bring the missions to life for the general public.

Over the course of the Space Shuttle Program, numerous documentaries have been made about these magnificent vehicles, including their triumphs, their tragedies, and the people who have flown aboard them.

But something was lacking: the media.

In September 2006, a small team of individuals – who were nothing more than fans of the Space Shuttle Program – came together to produce a music tribute video for the return to service mission of Shuttle orbiter Atlantis on the STS-115 flight of the Shuttle Program: the mission that resumed construction of the International Space Station in the wake of the 2003 loss of Shuttle Columbia.

The music from that video – “Infinity” – would serve as the inspiration for the start of a permanent partnership between Larry Sullivan, Brian Papke, and Mike Astles – who played a major role in the formation of MaxQ before events in his personal life changed his contribution ability in the following years. Mike was, nonetheless, and instrumental figure in MaxQ’s formative years.

Over the years, Nathan Moeller, Steven Burgess, and I, Chris Gebhardt, joined the group as permanent members, serving to expand the knowledge base and technical expertise of the group.

And from STS-115 through STS-128, the music video tributes for each and every Shuttle mission in that timeframe churned out.

But for certain members of the group, one thing was missing, something that was only thought to be a far-out dream: witnessing the launch of a Space Shuttle from the Kennedy Space Center’s press site.

In association with NASASpaceflight.com, plans for an up-close and personal music video for the STS-129 flight of orbiter Atlantis began in the spring of 2009.

As the project evolved, three of the MaxQ team members – Larry Sullivan, Brian Papke, and Steven Burgess – were fortunate enough to be granted media access to join me in covering the launch campaign for STS-129.

From there, Larry became a permanent fixture at the Kennedy Space Center, covering numerous Shuttle-based events for every single mission from STS-129 through the closeout of the program in 2011.

But we at MaxQ were not content with simply producing music videos with images captured by members of the team. We wanted something more. We wanted to share our experiences with everyone.

And from that idea, the Press To MECO documentary was born.

With a new focus, work began on capturing as much video and images as possible, as well as interviews with some of the most recognizable reporters on the Space Shuttle beat.

Within six months of the start of MaxQ filming operations at the Kennedy Space Center, the final member of the MaxQ team, Nathan Moeller, was able to dedicate a full week of time to filming for the documentary surrounding the launch of Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-132 mission in May 2010.

The team would then assemble almost in its entirety again for the final launch of Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery and the STS-133 mission.

From there, filming continued through STS-134′s retirement flight of the Space Shuttle orbiter Endeavour and culminated along with the Program with the emotional flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis and STS-135.

And for it all, the MaxQ team filmed the excitement of hearing the final “go/no go” polls at T-9mins and holding, the anticipation when the countdown clock started counting backward from T-9mins, through the all-important hand off of the Ground Launch Sequencer to the orbiters’ onboard computers, to the large intake of breath at T-6.6 seconds… and holding that breath through SRB ignition, liftoff, and the initial climb out from Kennedy… all the way to the “go at throttle up” call.

In Press To MECO, the MaxQ team brings forth the excitement, the joy, the sights, the sounds, and the activities of the launch of the most-recognizable space vehicle in the world.

To us, reporting on and following the Space Shuttle Program was more than a job… it was a passion – and one that we are pleased to have the opportunity to share with you.

As Wayne Hale, Manager of the Space Shuttle Program from 2005-2008, once remarked, “The new vision of manifest destiny is to explore the universe. We go into space not merely because it helps us economically or fosters building new and improved gadgets; we go into space because that experience fulfills the nature of what it means to be human.”

And the Space Shuttle helped us do just that. From the MaxQEnt team, we hope that you will take a journey with us behind the scenes for an entire processing flow of the Space Shuttle.

The information presented in our documentary “Press To MECO” is a compilation of our experiences, our thoughts, our adventures, and our passions as we got the humbling opportunity to be up close and personal with three of our United States’ greatest technological achievements: the Discovery, the Atlantis, and the Endeavour.

We hope you all enjoy this very special look at what it’s like to be a reporter at the Kennedy Space Center. For the MaxQ team, the experiences from 2009 through 2011 were truly some of the greatest and unexpected experiences of the team members’ lives.

And none of it would have been possible with the support of the NASASpaceflight.com community and the thousands Space Shuttle workers throughout the United States.

With all our thanks and gratitude,
The MaxQEnt team.

Additional note from Chris Bergin, Managing Editor, NASASpaceflight.com: It goes without saying that I’m extremely proud of the MaxQ Entertainment team, not only for their tireless work towards improving NASASpaceflight.com’s coverage via their video and photography work, but also for creating what is now a highly impressive media organization - as seen in this superb documentary.

NASASpaceflight.com is very honored to be heavily associated with the MaxQ team on both a personal and professional level. Their dedication and loyalty to both the site and the subject matter is an example to all, and epitomizes the forward direction of the entire NSF/MaxQ team.

Click here for the amazing MaxQ Entertainment STS-135 Mission Review Music Video:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26178.0

(Images: Via the PTM Video - MaxQ Entertainment/NASASpaceflight.com.)

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Howard DeCastro Interview:

The Shuttle Program closed out a 30 year career this summer when Atlantis returned home after a highly successful STS-135 mission.

She was welcomed back into the warm embrace of her NASA and contractor workforce, of which the United Space Alliance (USA) team provide the role as the main guardians of the fleet.

The term “bitter-sweet” was mentioned numerous times before, during and after Atlantis’ mission, although the overwhelming public response to the realization that STS-135 was the last NASA shuttle mission saw the word being used in the negative connotation.

Reactions varied from proud, through to sad, bemused and somewhat angry – as the United States effectively gave up its leadership in space – feelings which Mr DeCastro empathizes with.

“I can easily understand the public’s response. All Americans share a common desire to feel secure,” noted Mr DeCastro in an interview with NASASpaceFlight.com. “The U.S. Government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year in Defense and Homeland Security funding to provide for the defense of the nation. 

“Technological developments in space-based battlefield intelligence and war fighter assistance have played a significant role in the tactical successes of the U.S. military in recent campaigns.  Superiority in the air – now space – has long been the key to our national security.

“History has shown that our human spaceflight program promoted domestic security; fostered the development of new technologies and industries; created high-skilled, well-paid jobs; and inspired many of our youth to study science, math and engineering – the technical human capital that ensured our country achieved its global economic strength in the 20th century.”

With the United States losing its own domestic human launch vehicle capability, Americans face a reality of watching their astronauts ride to a Space Station – which they have paid the majority of funding towards – on the Russian Soyuz, at the cost of several hundred million dollars of NASA funding over the next four or so years.

Although this is a temporary requirement, Mr DeCastro – a US Marine Corp. Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) -  added that the implications of this interim agreement are centric to the potential problems a dependency on a foreign nation can result in. Directly, the highly respected manager feels the effective utilization of America’s national laboratory may suffer.

“Based on what I have read in the press, Americans are wondering why the United States would turn over the “high ground” – America’s lead in Human Space Flight – to other nation’s at a time when both our national and economic security are at risk,” he added.

“The United States is now dependent on the Russians to move our U.S. astronaut corps to the Space Station. In addition to the national security and economic concerns that dependence on Russia to transport American astronauts severely limits the amount of time U.S .research can be conducted aboard the Station at the exact point in time when the Station is finally assembled and open for business.

“Despite the fact that the U.S. taxpayer paid tens of billions of dollars to construct the Station’s unique microgravity research laboratory, in the future, the annual mix of astronauts aboard the ISS will be six Russian, four American, and two others (shared by Europe, Japan, and Canada).

“The day-to-day operational workload for the American astronauts aboard the ISS will be high and will provide only limited time for research into important vaccines such as salmonella and MSRA to mention only two of the experiments started by U.S. astronauts this past year.”

Shuttle Extension Articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/extension/

While the decision to retire the Space Shuttle was effectively made as a result of the tragic loss of Columbia during her return from STS-107, a retirement plan drawn up under the stewardship of former NASA administrator Mike Griffin – part of the now-defunct Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) – was carried forward and supported by current Administrator Charlie Bolden.

It is often argued whether or not the current administrator could have reversed the retirement decision – had their been the political will – with the shutdown of shuttle-related vendors already in work by the time General Bolden took office.

However, from the early days of his leadership of NASA, it was clear the former Shuttle Commander had no intention of providing the Shuttle with a lifeline – as noted during an interview with the BBC, as he shook his head saying “no, it’s time to move on” when asked if there could be some additional flights.

Since then, General Bolden and especially his number two – Lori Garver – have been using nearly every opportunity with the media to talk of a “bright future”, centralized around the use of commercial vehicles, which are tasked with replacing the human domestic launch capability lost by the retirement of the Shuttle for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) operations.

While that capability is set to return in the 2015 timeframe, Mr DeCastro believes NASA’s transition places the United States human spaceflight program in “jeopardy” via the insistence of “subsidizing” the development of commercial companies which have already shown signs of not being able to keep to their projected schedules.

“In my opinion, the decision to terminate the Shuttle Program does not make sense since the “bright future” is further off than advertised and is dependent on the success of  “commercial” space companies who, so far, have failed to meet their schedules for cargo resupply to the station,” Mr DeCastro noted. 

“As yet those are the same entities NASA wants to rely upon for U.S. astronaut transport. As a business man, I applaud our Nation’s entrepreneurs since they are the backbone of our Nation’s economy. I have been in numerous business sectors during the past 50 years and I value the risk takers who created the industries that made our nation great.

“But if you study this particular situation closely, NASA is placing our Nation’s human spaceflight program in jeopardy in order to subsidize the development of some “commercial” space companies. Personally, I would not risk so much for the benefit of so few.

“I believe the public’s opinion will change only if the United States regains our Nation’s leadership position in human space exploration. I hope I live long enough to see that happen.”

Currently, it is more likely than not that the commercial partners will be able to take up the reigns of providing transportation to NASA astronauts, although that will only be one element of the capability lost by retiring Shuttle both during the gap and the initial ramp up of commercial cargo flights.

“NASA was not provided the funding needed to fly the Shuttles until a replacement program was operational. As a result, NASA has developed plans to support the International Space Station with the transport that is now available,” added Mr DeCastro.

“There is some risk that the providers may not be able to meet the manifest and there is some risk that a component failure on the ISS could reduce its capability and even its length of service. All of this has been carefully considered by NASA and the plans in place have an excellent chance of success.

“Tradeoffs were needed due to funding constraints. Not an uncommon problem these days. If the Shuttle had remained available through the life of the ISS the likelihood of success would be greater. The Shuttle is the only vehicle capable of providing the large component up and down mass necessary to ensure replacement of some systems/components and is the only vehicle capable of providing EVA service should that be required.”

It’s been known for over a year that efforts behind the scenes were being drawn up to provide a commercial option via the use of the orbiters themselves, a plan which would have more than halved the operational costs of NASA’s running of the fleet, running two orbiters (Atlantis and Endeavour) around two flights per year.

Sources note this plan could have been activated even after Atlantis came to a stop on the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), resulting in the first commercial flight of a shuttle in around 18 months after an official green light.

Hints towards the continuation of such planning could be seen via comments made after STS-135, when NASA managers John Shannon and LeRoy Cain both noted a “do no harm” processing order was in place on both Atlantis and Endeavour, ensuring they could be returned to flight if required.

While the full details of the plan are restricted, it is understood this remains “technically” available, as much as Mr DeCastro notes it would now require a “miracle” from a funding and political standpoint.

“The decision to terminate the Space Shuttle Program was driven by budget constraints, not the health of the vehicles. Endeavour and Atlantis are capable of flying further missions but, by the end of the year, all three vehicles – Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis – will be well into processing for transport to their final destinations in Museums throughout the nation.

“Trying to return them to a flight ready status would be costly and time consuming once that processing is completed.

“If a miracle occurred and funding became available to continue Shuttle Operations, it could be managed by NASA or the private sector. The original NASA contract with USA put into place by NASA Administrator, Dan Goldin had a three phased approach with the last phase having USA operate the Shuttle program as a “commercial” venture selling NASA launch services.

“Needless to say, that Phase of the contract was not well received by some powerful decision makers in Washington so it was never implemented.

“During the past decade, NASA, USA and others have examined many ways to eliminate cost from the Shuttle program and operate it in a “commercial” manner so we know it could have been done.

“But it would have required the approval of many different Washington decision makers, some of whom worried about the risk involved in sending U.S. astronauts into space aboard a “commercially” operated vehicle, some who think the government should indemnify a “commercially” operated human space flight vehicle, some who did not think it would benefit the nation if NASA was still paying the bulk of the cost of the program and finally, some who viewed the Space Shuttles as global symbols of America’s leadership and freedom and did not want our Nation to lose that symbol.”

Political obstruction towards any form of extension was seen via the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), who sided with Mr Griffin during his insistence it was too “risky” – from a Loss Of Vehicle/Crew (LOV/C) standpoint – to extend the Shuttle Program.

ASAP’s remarks drew a rare reaction via Mr DeCastro’s NASA counterpart, John Shannon, who classed ASAP’s comments as “disturbing”. However, ASAP’s stance has never changed – despite a run of amazingly “clean” missions – as seen comments made less than a month ago, when another call to continue flying the Shuttle was strongly dismissed by the advisory body. (An upcoming article will be produced on the ASAP meeting, which was also wary of the commercial companies).

With such staunch opposition, the opportunity for the orbiters to fly again – even via a commercial role – always had a major roadblock from the proposals reaching a level where a serious consideration could be made.

“I could go into lots of details on how to make a “commercial” shuttle program succeed but bottom line there are many ways to make it work and if there were non-NASA customers, the program costs could have been shared,” added Mr DeCastro. “That said, the politics of such a decision blocked it from ever being seriously considered.

“The issue is almost entirely about cost and politics. The Orbiters are fully capable of continued safe operation. It is unfortunate that some have used the argument of “safety” to shorten the life of the Shuttle program. Those of us who have been closely involved in the process know it was a budget decision and a lack of political will to maintain our Nation’s leadership position in Human Space Flight.

“The safety records of the Soyuz compared to the safety records for the shuttle are about even. The most recent Shuttle missions have been among the best ever flown. The Team’s understanding of the Shuttle is better now than at any time in the past.

“The reason to shut down the Shuttle Program is that the Nation doesn’t want to spend any more money on Shuttle. President Bush cancelled the Shuttle Program to fund the Constellation Program. President Obama cancelled the Constellation Program to fund commercial companies.

“It would have been prudent to reinstate the Shuttle Program as part of the cancellation of the Constellation Program to eliminate our gap in America’s ability to access space with human transport.”

The second part of Mr DeCastro’s interview will be published next week.

To read about Atlantis and her sisters – from birth, processing, every single mission, through to retirement, click here for the links:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=25837.0

Click here for the amazing MaxQ Entertainment STS-135 Mission Review Music Video:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26178.0

(Images: Via Larry Sullivan, MaxQ Entertainment/NASASpaceflight.com, L2 and L2 presentations, NASA.gov, SpaceX, and USA. Further articles on the fleet will be produced during her down processing, driven by L2 – which is continuing to follow the orbiters via a wealth of FRR/PRCB/MER/MMT and SSP documentation/pressentations, videos, images and more.

(As with all recent missions, L2 is providing full exclusive level mission coverage, available no where else on the internet. To join L2, click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)

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1. Senate pass NASA bill for extra funding – shuttle extension goals The US Senate has passed the new NASA Authorization Bill...

Wayne Hale Interview:

Q: How did you get involved in the book? Were you involved at its inception?

Mr Hale: A lot of people had the idea that we should do something to document the Shuttle program — I’m talking about after the President’s [George W. Bush] speech in January, 2004, where he announced we’re going to end the Shuttle program.

Many of us had been working on the Shuttle program for our entire career at the agency, and there was a lot of talk about how do we capture the knowledge. We have a knowledge capture office, people are supposed to write down lessons that they’ve learned — design, test, and operations — things that go into the next program. I have one of the books from Apollo that’s along those lines, it’s fascinating. And these days it’s all got to be electronic — everybody wants to build a database, put it in some kind of relational database so you can search it — and that’s good and there are people doing that. But that’s not going to talk to the public.

Also, many of us in the program feel like we’ve been beaten up quite a bit, because it didn’t ever achieve the goals that way back in 1971 and 1972 people had thrown around as what we ought to do with a resuable spacecraft. And that’s always held up — ‘it’s never been economical.’ So I said let us write down what we really did and then let people judge whether it was worth it or not.

And so when I was program manager we had some informal discussions, myself and a few other folks, and we said in addition to doing these formal engineering knowledge capture kind of things, let’s write a book for the public that we could get published through the Government Printing Office.

There are plenty of books out there in the history series where they talk about Apollo or the Great Observatories, any number of books. JPL has got a lot of books on a lot of their missions — one of my favorites is the Viking book, where they talk about how they developed it and what it did.

So I said why don’t we write a history book and being program manager I had the latitude and a little bit discretionary money, but even more than that we could get people. And we said we’re not going to give you a task, but in your spare time, could you write an article on how this happened on the Shuttle or that happened on the Shuttle. We talked to a bunch of retirees and a lot of people volunteered their services. So it’s kind of a labor of love.

So over the past four years, five years, it’s slowly been coming together and because…we were always aiming to have it done at the end of the program, so we knew the deadline was about in the 2010, 2011 timeframe, that was the schedule we were working toward — people were doing it almost as a volunteer effort.

The only thing we really paid for was some of the professional graphics, we had to hire a professional indexer — if you’re going to do a serious book, you have to do some things like that. So I was able to get that started and provide a little dab of money for it. Some other organizations — the history organization — provided a little bit of money to pay for those kinds of things.

We put together an editorial board, a really impressive editorial board, to help us scope out ‘what should we talk about,’ what are the parameters. And then as chapters started coming in, we’d review the chapters [and decide] ‘yeah, this is good, this is what we want’ or ‘no, we missed the mark, let’s go back and redo some things.’ So it’s really been a labor of love. There are…two or three hundred different people that have provided written material to this book, so it’s not any one person’s book. I’m just pleased that I was able to be in the right place at the right time to push it over the hump to get it from just a coffee table conversation to a real project.

And…Dr. Helen Lane, who works out of the Sciences Office at JSC, and has published other articles, is really the key person who has done the yeoman’s job of organizing the book — she’s the ‘project manager,’ I guess you would say, that has seen it through. And she gets the lion’s share of the credit, if anybody does. We’ve got articles by astronauts, flight controllers, designers, testers, people at KSC, people at Marshall, people all around the agency that have worked on the Shuttle. So I think it’s a pretty comprehensive book and the biggest problem we had was keeping it to one volume.

Everybody wanted to write more — every article we got was too big and we had to develop a page count limit, a word count limit for each section. I don’t think there’s an article that came in under [the limit], everybody came in over. So we could probably have written a ten-volume work, but we wanted to keep it to one volume. I think it’s going to be about 550-ish pages, maybe 575. We were really thinking more than that, so we allocated some pages that would have all the payload information — which payloads flew on what flight. That’s unfortunately not ready for the print copies, but we’re going to have a web copy, and it will be on the electronic web copies.

This is not an engineering book, we were aiming for the ‘Scientific-American’ kind of level; this is not a novel, it’s not a light read, but on the other hand, it’s not as technical as most NASA technical publications are. It’s a history — what did we set out to do, how was it done, what did we accomplish. So some of the engineering sections may be a little tough sledding for some people if they’re not technical; on the other hand, there are history sections that I think will be very interesting to people that aren’t technical or to technical people, as well. ‘No equations, no equations.’

Q: How would you describe the style or tone of the book — is it in the style of a set of interviews or written papers?

Mr Hale: Some people wanted to write their things out, some people wanted to be interviewed — we transcribed it and let them look at it…and made it grammatically correct, but otherwise kept the contents. I would say it’s a mix.

Q: What parts of the book did you write?

Mr Hale: My contribution is the introductory chapters, it talks about what is the Shuttle and what is it’s place. In about five or six pages, I tried to put it all in perspective. 

The rest of the book then fleshes that out. They told me I had to write mine first, so I had to write that introductory section first, and then all the authors were given it to read and then ‘go from here’ — it sets the tone.

My section, the introduction, is not at all technical — we celebrate the technology and the engineering accomplishments. It’s really overview — nothing that the people at NSF wouldn’t already know. And then we fill it out in the rest of the book, the history.

And of course, we provide an honest account — we don’t want to whitewash it, we know there are things wrong with the Shuttle, we had two horrible accidents, it’s all in there.

Q: Do you have a favorite part of the book?

Mr Hale: I really enjoyed the whole thing — it’s a fascinating program. It’s been a huge program that involved tens of thousands of people and we couldn’t tell everything. My only regret is that we couldn’t tell everything.   One of the real joys of the jobs I’ve had is that I’ve got to travel around the agency; I’m just one part of the program, but I got to go all around the agency and I got to talk to people that do all sorts of things that support the program. Everybody is proud of what they do, everybody is excited about working for the Shuttle program. Everybody feels it’s important. There may be a few malingerers out there, but I haven’t run into them. I wish we could tell everybody’s story, but obviously we can’t do that.

Q: What are you doing today?

Mr Hale: I came to the point in my career, given what was going on at the agency and where I was with regard to the civil service system, that it just didn’t make sense for me to continue at the agency. But I’m only 56, I’m not ready to sit on the rocking chair on the front porch and watch the world go by — I would be bored to tears. I was fortunate enough in my travels around to have encountered this small company, Special Aerospace Services out of Boulder, Colorado, run by folks that are mostly former NASA folks.

They are interested in spaceflight safety, that’s what they do, working with a variety of firms. I was able to sign on with them. I told them I only wanted to work part time. Their idea of part time was a little bit more than what I [thought]. [Smiles.] I’ve been able to do things with my grandchildren and my family that I really enjoy doing, but it’s really exciting to me to still be in the business, to be able to take some of the knowledge and experience that I’ve gained over the years and help some of these folks out that are trying to build the next generation of human spaceflight vehicles. And help them avoid some of the pitfalls that we fell into. It’s been enough to keep me busy.

Q: How would you compare the time demands of your new job with being Shuttle Program Manager?

Mr Hale: It’s a lot less than being Shuttle Program Manager. Shuttle Program Manager is a 100-hour a week job.

The last couple of years I was with the agency, I was on Bill Gerstenmaier’s staff and that kept me full time busy — that was a 50-hour a week job. This is about half-time, although it comes in spurts, and my wife points out there’s almost as much travel as I ever used to do, because we have these clients and we fly out to their place and…give them advice.

So I spend a lot of time at the airport, which I’m really tired of. [Laughs] I get to go a lot of places, and see a lot of things, things you read about other people are doing. Now I get to see what’s really going on. We give them advice, and sometimes they even take our advice [smiles], that’s good.

Q: How does the book address the Shuttle’s legacy?

Mr Hale: That’s the book, that’s the subtitle — what did we actually accomplish? What did it mean to the American people? There’s a whole section on the culture — what did it do for not just American culture, but world culture. So we’re trying to hit that. I suspect that when the book comes out and people get copies of it, like every other book or movie or anything else that comes out, there are going to be critics that say ‘well, they missed the mark’ or ‘they didn’t have this right’ — I’m fully expecting that, because it’s not perfect.

But it’s our attempt to put the story together, to tell it from the perspective of the folks who were in the program, [that] actually designed, built, flew, operated, got the scientific results from [the Shuttle] and tell it from our point of view. And hopefully it will make a pretty impressive case that the Shuttle was really good. When I say really good, I mean it really contributed to the advancement of technology, engineering, and even in social fields.

Could we have done better? I’ll be the first person to tell you, yes we could have done better. I keep going back to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, who said that the failure to replace the Space Shuttle was a failure of national leadership.

When we designed the Space Shuttle, it was going to fly for 10 years, and the thought was ‘well then we’ll build the next one.’ And if you look at the history of aviation, which a lot of people…like to cite…when they talk about what we ought to do in space, the one thing you know about the history of aviation is that people built lots of vehicles — there were lots and lots of airplanes. And design changes, and people would try things out and see if they worked. In space, we have the Shuttle, and you’re not going to advance if you just keep doing the same thing.

We should have, my opinion now, after 10 years said ‘we need to build the Block 2 Shuttle and it’s going to be different than the Shuttle we’ve got.’ We’re going to take the lessons that we’ve learned — maybe it won’t be as big, maybe it will be bigger. Maybe it doesn’t need the crossrange so it won’t have wings and it will just be a lifting body.

Maybe it will have more crossrange. But we should have sat down and said ‘how can we make it safer?’, ‘how can we make it more economical to fly?’ And we should have made an investment as a country.

The problem was, the Shuttle we got was just good enough that nobody wanted to say ‘we need that next vehicle.’ Let’s just keep flying what we’ve got, we’ll kick the can down the road, because developing new vehicles is expensive.

But we would be a lot better off today as a nation if we had built a second-generation Shuttle, and maybe by now third-generation Shuttle. We would have vehicles that are safer, more economical, and we would really be opening up the space frontier, dramatically more than the Space Shuttle has done. But that’s a question of national will, politics, and economics — not technical issues.

I got into a little back-and-forth with somebody on one the forums about ‘why doesn’t NASA leadership do something better?’ Well it isn’t NASA, it’s above NASA, it’s at the national level — [it's a] ‘write your Congressman’ kind of thing. But if you’re interested in space, why would we not build the next generation vehicle that could do a better job?

The Shuttle is what it is, we got what we paid for. OMB said ‘cap the development cost at 5.5 billion dollars (in 1974 dollars) and that’s all you’re going to get.’ So you get what you pay for, and if you don’t pay to buy the new car, you’re going to drive the old clunker for a long time. I really think that might be the best analogy — you have to ask yourself ‘at what point does your old clunker need to be replaced with a new vehicle?’

That’s the kind of debate you get into, and we should have in my opinion replaced the old bird a long time ago, as proud as I am [of them]. But in spite of being an old bird, she’s done some pretty amazing things.

(All images via NASA.gov).

No related posts.

MOD Director Paul Hill – Question and Answer:

1) What is your vision for the future of spaceflight operations at MOD?

MOD is committed to “bullet proof” technical support to the operational programs, continuous improvement and leveraging our key strengths – technical and leadership culture – to make any next human space program successful.  I expect that we will realize ongoing reductions in the manpower and costs required to do the same type of work, while also continuing to ratchet up the level of expertise in the work force.

Said in less bureacratise:
i) Our primary goal every day is to be perfect in the technical work that will most directly effect the missions we are preparing, the spacecraft the programs have entrusted us with, and most importantly, the astronauts who are relying on us providing the same, bullet proof MOD support they have always had in this dangerous business.  We are relentless in pursuing answers to the unexpected or unknowns in mission prep, training and flight – following up on and resolving things that are referred to as “links in the error chain”. 

We are equally relentless in evaluating our individual and team performance.  There’s a line in the Foundations of Mission Operations that reads, “To always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has ultimate consequences.”  And we are.

ii) I typically remind the MOD leadership team that our expectation is “ruthless” continuous improvement.  While it’s great to have mastered the way we did things in the previous decade, we expect our high performers to then look back and ask, “What could we have done better?  What could we now do better?  Where is my performance and prep the weakest, and what can I do to strengthen those areas? 

And the same questions for my organization and my employees or team members?  It is not a natural act for most engineers to discuss those things, rather, we tend to focus on doing the job, answering the technical mail.  Thus, the expectation is that MOD leaders will deliberately break that natural tendency and call out those weakest areas for themselves, their org and their folks. 

The point isn’t the weakness, it’s the action that is then taken to strengthen it.  We are not trying to be as good as MOD was in July 1969.  We seek to be better than we were in the previous program, the previous year and the previous mission, realizing there are billion dollar spacecraft and missions, and priceless people at stake.  Interestingly, self-imposed continuous improvement isn’t something a government organization is typically known for, and we’re proud to have the data to back this claim up.  

iii) As I said at the Baker Institute in December, our goal is to leverage the considerable technical expertise, experience base and MOD leadership culture to enhance the success of every next human spaceflight program.  The connection to a NASA managed spacecraft and booster, e.g. Orion/Ares and MPCV/SLS is obvious.  However, we continue to make the case that MOD can contribute directly to the mission success of a commercial crew vehicle as well.  That contribution is via the same technical expertise, experience base and leadership culture to directly enhance mission assurance. 

Further, similar to our approach with the USAF in the 1980s, commercial provider team members could be spread throughout all parts of the MOD team as a way of passing on MOD best practices to the commercial provider and to increase data flow with the commercial vehicle developers in support of operations development.  This also defers the investment required by the commercial provider in both infrastructure and the larger team until the provider begins scaling up for broader commercial, human spaceflight.

However the future vehicles pan out, I envision MOD remaining a key player in NASA’s human space operations as well as the steward of the skills and culture required to operate at the frontier.
 

2) How do you envision the transition from operating government vehicles to/from LEO, to an era where commercial operators are managing most/all LEO ops? What possible relationships might there be between MOD and commercial during that transition?  What role(s) might MOD play?

This could go a couple of ways.  The scenario that I think is a win for NASA/MOD and the commercial provider would be the one I outline above. 

In the 1980s, we were on a path for the USAF to launch Shuttle for DOD missions from Vandenberg AFB, controlled by an Air Force team in a control center in Colorado Springs.  To do prepare them for that, USAF personnel were assigned throughout all parts of the MOD team as a way of passing on MOD best practices, on-the-job training, passing on the culture, etc. 

In the same way, commercial provider team members could be spread throughout all parts of the MOD team for the same purpose and to increase data flow with the commercial vehicle developers in support of operations development.  This also defers the investment required by the commercial provider in both infrastructure and the larger team until the provider begins scaling up for broader commercial, human spaceflight.

As the commercial provider works past hardware and software manufacturing surprises, corrects/optimizes subsystems, and matures vehicle processing and flight operations, there will come a decision point regarding the size of the commercial market and the resulting scaling up to higher rate and non-NASA missions. 

Approaching that scale up, I’d expect the commercial provider to build out their own infrastructure and use the cadre of folks embedded with MOD to build a larger team around, again, the same as the USAF intent in their build up to military Shuttle operations.  When up and operational in their facilities and with a broader passenger base, it would make complete sense then for NASA to book passage and have no greater part in the operation than as the operator of the ISS receiving a visiting vehicle. 

For this to work, the relationship between MOD and the commercial provider must be very similar to the traditional relationship between MOD and a NASA program office.  MOD would be a team member and ops agent to the commercial provider for any mission MOD supports them on.  When the commercial provider scales up and manages the full process, the relationship would evolve to the same that MOD has today with an ISS international partner with an ISS visiting vehicle, i.e. as the ISS ops agent coordinating with the visiting vehicle ops agent for safe trajectories, proximity operations go/no-go criteria, joint emergency procedures, etc.

Theoretically, as this market expands and NASA realizes the associated cost savings, NASA would then reinvest those savings into human missions beyond LEO which MOD would then be focused in planning, training and flying while the commercial providers serve LEO the way commercial aviation serves commercial air travel.

3) How can NASA as an Agency help MOD sustain and transition its well known talents into the new era?

Help establish the Space Act Agreements and cost models that enable the partnership I describe between MOD and a commercial provider.  This includes an agency level strategy to not seek reimbursement from a commercial provider for the fixed costs that NASA will incur with the ongoing ISS mission. 

Presuming the agency approach is to minimize/defer the initial investment and to leverage the skills of an organization like MOD, redistributing fixed costs may serve only to make the partnership cost prohibitive to the commercial provider, who may then elect to operate from less capable facilities without the mission assurance value of leveraging MOD. 

Instead, recognize that the fixed costs NASA bears for ISS operations are our “minimum cost for operations”.  Once we accept that, it makes sense then to negotiate only the additional cost incurred for commercial vehicle specific support, e.g. command/telemetry products, unique software, mission plan/train/fly support.

While this is oddly non-technical, it stands as a significant hurdle in advancing the discussion.  And it is one that only the agency can resolve, not a NASA center.

 
4) HEFT – and other bodies such as at Marshall – are continuing to evaluate the Space Launch System/HLV options. How much influence does MOD have in this process, given its role within the Constellation Program? Would MOD have a preference – or not – for a Shuttle-Derived system (SRBs, SSMEs), given the commonality with STS and to a level with Constellation?

MOD has some participation in the various ongoing studies offering observations based on lessons learned from our long history.  Final decisions on direction will be led from NASA Hq and ultimately are Executive Office policy points that lead to MOD direction.

MOD preference for Shuttle derived or not?  Complicated question.  It is obviously a simpler evolution from Shuttle operations to those of a Shuttle derived system, from flight rules and procedures, to software and hardware peculiarities.  From that very parochial perspective, sure that leads to a strong preference.  

That said, there are compelling arguments regarding the ascent performance requirements for lunar and Mars missions that could not be met with Shuttle derived systems without more launches, which could tilt the cost and safety scales. 

Further, by the time common Shuttle components are repackaged and recertified into a new boosters and spacecraft, the aggregate MOD effort required to plan and fly them will look a lot like the effort we’d require for an all new vehicle.  Presumably, the system development risk would be lower though.

Either solution must fit into the budget we have available.  That trumps things like a parochial MOD desire to evolve rather than reinvent.  In the end, the stronger MOD preference is that we have a next generation human rated vehicle and booster, sooner rather than later, and a heavy lift capability that supports missions out of LEO where we’d all like to get back to and extend the human frontier.

 
5) How important will MOD’s (continued) role be with Orion/MPCV, such as via MOD’s vast experience and skill with “Plan/Train/Fly”? Is it expected that MOD will hold a primary role with the proposed test flight of Orion on an EELV? (2013 ish) onwards?

MOD’s role for Orion/MPCV is unchanged.  Experienced MOD personnel remain engaged with the NASA and Lockheed team developing the spacecraft and associated operations.  Our plan is to engage the MOD infrastructure and plan/train/fly community in preparing for and flying the test flight on whatever booster it rides to orbit on, including an EELV.  

I’d expect that a commercial EELV would be launched and monitored by the experienced commercial launch team.  An MCC-Houston team would then be responsible for the spacecraft, team with the EELV provider on spacecraft related ops decisions during first stage, powered flight and have full responsibility through splashdown. 

This arrangement would both benefit from MOD’s previous flight and Orion-development experience, and also provide a good pathfinder in developing MPCV mission systems and plan/train/fly products.  MOD’s support to the test flight would fit within the cost required to prepare for the follow on MPCV missions with crews aboard.

6) What is the role MOD envisions the ISS will play in researching, testing and verifying systems for future space exploration? In other words, what knowledge can ISS give MOD that will be required for future space exploration?

The most valuable roles MOD sees ISS serving for exploration are in: 1) field testing incrementally improved generations of closed loop life support systems which clearly must evolve for long duration missions outside of LEO and relatively easy resupply; and 2) ongoing study and mitigation of the prolonged effects of micro-gravity on crew health, both short and long term.  

There are discussions regarding operations oriented experience we could gain by modifying ISS operations to simulate the long transfer flight we’d see for missions to a NEO or Mars.  For example, we could insert artificial time delays in commands, telemetry and voice communications similar to the delay we’d experience in a mission well outside Earth orbit to facilitate earlier changes in our ops approach to overcome them. 

While this, and ideas like it, are not without merit, these types of operational challenges and their solutions do not represent show stoppers.  However, low confidence in closed loop life support and crew health over a 12-18 month mission outside the reach of Earth resupply is a deal breaker, because we can’t simply adapt if some element of life support, like CO2 removal, fully fails. 

ISS gives us an outstanding laboratory right here in the neighborhood to keep “tinkering” with the systems with the lowest readiness for long duration missions outside of LEO as well as to continue studying and mitigating the effects those long flights will have on our astronauts.  Unlike ground based labs, ISS is continuously in the space environment with the full range of micro-gravity, vacuum, atomic-oxygen, MMOD, radiation, thermal cycles, etc that challenge the systems and astronauts.

 
7) As the Shuttle heads into its final year of operations, many of the workforce, especially at the contractor level (USA etc) are losing their jobs. As MOD director the loss must be painful, but the professionalism of “finishing strong” – which is often cited both openly and privately despite the harsh reality of losing their careers – must fill you with pride. What are your thoughts surrounding the departures from MOD family during the transition?

I could not be more proud to be part of this great MOD team and the people that comprise this national treasure.  MOD’s workforce has retained all of the key attributes of the organization that invented NASA’s Mission Control in the 1960s on the way to the Moon. 

Not only does MOD remain at the top of the field in human spaceflight planning, training and operations, but we continue to sharpen the culture and challenge ourselves to adopt best practices from other industries and to make the organization better, more focused and more efficient today than we were 5 years ago, 10 years ago…  Today we plan, train and fly both Shuttle and ISS missions and participate in developing the follow on spacecraft and booster as well as numerous other human spaceflight studies, and we do it with half the people we had in 1990 while only flying Shuttle.

Add to that the pressures that come with the end of the Shuttle program.  We’ve known that was coming for some time now, so no surprise.  Even in a program-of-record, Constellation scenario, MOD was projected to be at least 30 percent smaller than we were in the last few years as we continue our practice to do the same technical job with less resources.  Up the ante with the significant shift in policy away from Constellation following Shuttle, and in an extreme case that has MOD only supporting ISS, MOD would be half its current size in the next year or two. 

It would be reasonable for anyone to lose focus if not abandon us altogether in the interest of being able to put food on the table and pay their rent if nothing else.  And yet, every day, these folks come do the same stellar job in preparing the next mission, flying ISS and Shuttle.  It is humbling to see.  Like the generations before them, most of these folks are drawn to this work as something much more than just a job or paycheck. 

And I mourn for every one of them and their families.  These people are the heart and soul of MOD’s community with expertise in launch, entry and space rendezvous.  Shrinking the size of that community is very tough.  The risk of fully eliminating it keeps me awake at night, both for the technical capability and the human impact to these people who are carrying the load for the cause.

It’s even more heartwarming to see that this commitment is so much bigger than MOD, by the way.  Across the Shuttle Program, there are thousands of contractors who either know already that their jobs will end with the program, or don’t yet have a confirmed place in the much smaller workforce we foresee for the follow on vehicles, and yet they keep processing Shuttle flight hardware and preparing for the final missions.  

 
8 ) Are you of the belief the Shuttle Program should have been extended (either 2012 or 2015), as evaluated in extension studies during the time of the Augustine Commission?

In a perfect world with the budget to support it, I would have liked to see us continue flying Shuttle until the next vehicle is flying and thus have no gap in U.S. access to LEO.  The reality is that we must fit within the budget we’re given, and it was concluded years ago that we could not support developing the new vehicle in parallel with flying Shuttle.
 

9) Are you of the opinion that the Shuttle is the safest its ever been since RTF? How much of this can be attributed to the lessons learned/skill set/knowledge base of MOD?

I’m confident Shuttle is as safe as it’s ever been since RTF.  Program-wide, we made huge strides in adding rigor to engineering studies, failure analysis, etc. during the return-to-flight, and it has become healthier still since then and better focused.  So, again, for a still dangerous endeavor, Shuttle is as safe today as it has ever been since RTF.  I am equally confident that we will fly through wheels-stop on the last mission with the same focus and rigor we always have. 

For MOD’s part, it’s all about the lessons learned/skill set/knowledge base you mention, in addition to a operations leadership culture that doesn’t tolerate anything less from the top of MOD’s leadership team to the individuals in the workforce.  Listen to John Shannon leading a tough engineering discussion some time, and you will hear that same intolerance for anything but good data and solid analysis.

As a reminder, managing the energy required to leave the pad using rocket propulsion, achieve orbit at over 17,000 mph and return to Earth through a 6,000 deg F fireball will remain dangerous.

 
10) While some people want to be astronauts and others would love to be hands on with the vehicles by being techs and engineers, many of us have seen the controllers and FDs working in the FCRs and thought “I’d love to do that as a career!” While that is just one visible part of MOD, can you assure people there will always be an MOD, that astronauts in the future will still be calling down to “Houston”, that the dream of being a controller, CAPCOM or Flight Director within MOD for the manned missions to NEOs and eventually Mars is a dream one should still aim for?

NASA plans to fly ISS at least through 2020; thus MOD, astronauts, et all will still be in place and in need of new generations at least through 2020.  Similarly, NASA currently plans to develop MPCV and SLS and ultimately employ them for missions outside LEO to destinations still under evaluation.  I expect MOD and NASA astronauts to be right in the middle of that too. 

Presuming the nation remains committed to NASA’s current plans, we sure look like we’ll be hearing calls to “Houston” and this great MOD team to plan, train and fly the folks who make those calls for decades to come.  We’ll just keep hearing those calls from astronauts who are further and further from home while they push the frontier and human presence out.

The only way we get there is for people who are drawn to this work to come be part of it and make it happen.  It’s never been easy or guaranteed to go on forever.  Every generation since Apollo learned from the veterans before them.  And each one in turn worked to become experts and leaders in the field, making MOD and human spaceflight successively stronger.  That’s still true today.  Putting people on Mars remains a daunting ambition.  Building yourself into an MOD leader is a great way to contributing to that cause, but it isn’t a given or tenured position.

Every day is an opportunity to confirm the unique value MOD brings to the cause.

(NASASpaceflight.com thanks Mr Hill for his time and expansive comments! Discuss this article on our forum pages here: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=23857.0)

(All images via NASA.gov, with additions via L2 stock).

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