The Future of Exploration: Aldridge Commission and Beyond

05/19/05 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

Brian Chase, VP of Washington Operations, Space Foundation

The Honorable Robert S. Walker, Chairman, Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates

Brett Alexander, VP of Government Relations, Transformational Space, LLC

So far Brian Chase is saying that while some of what the Commission said is going forward but other things need help. The things that need help:

Outreach

Interfacing to industry

Entrepreneurial engagement (apparently the top is committed to this but not clear if the leadership can instill that into the agency below it)

Cost accounting has improved under O'Keefe but still has a way to go.

Sustainability, no solid grasp on politicla sustainability.

Space Exploration Steering Council, no progress.

Separate research agency (DARPA for NASA), no progress.

Field Centers, no progress and none expected.

Bob Walker: Perspective on what the committee members were thinking so you can determine if the direction is right. “We have a new leadership at NASA that is intently focused on the President's Vision.” He has made it clear that the Vision is where is going and that Bob Walker thinks this is a good direction.

Bob Walker thinks its a positive step forward to accelerate the CEV. The committee didn't feel it had the ability to say “move the timeframe forward” because that was set by the president. The whole effort of the committee was to do it in the existing budge constraints. So he is somewhat concerned about trying to do new vehicle development while you're still flying shuttle. It potentially conflicts with the goal of enabling and using the entrepreneurial community because that community is saying we can develop it faster than you can. [ed. but Griffin says he can't wait] And if you accelerate it that means going with a big Prime and that Prime is going to lobby against an entreprenurial parallel effort.

Also, by moving CEV forward you're going to impact existing programs (i.e. aeronautical). The committee suggested moving the centers to FFRDCs because they weren't getting the infrastructure resources. By moving to another economic source you can do that. If you don't there isn't going to be money to upgrade their infrastructure. So you can either BRAC 4 bases or find alternative money locations.

You can't do the President's Vision with old space policies and techniques. You have to have a space industry that is broad and deep. The Commission said its possible but only if there is a space economy that it exists inside.

Brett Alexander is recalling the tiime after Columbia when he was fighting for the Vision and for “human space flight”. But what made this vision different than SEI, etc:

Bold, powerful, intuitive

Sustainable, affordable over generations, not decades

Create a frontier

Private sector must play a role

Vision is to make space part of our “economic zone”

What should NASA do?

Moon, Mars and Beyond

Traditional development and contracting framework is fine in the main

Exploration is a proper role of government

LEO

Unlock the frontier

Pursue services to get out of the operations business

Cargo to the station

But that's only one customer

Crew - higher payoff

Significant public market if you get the ticket price low enough

Makes exploration sustainable and gets NASA out of the LEO business

Ways that NASA can be non-traditional now:

NASA “picks a winner” that meets a NASA need but in a way that enables capability that the private sector can use.

NASA pays for development cost so that resulting cost to the consumer is low enough

IP/hardware stay with the private sector, NASA buys a service along with others

Other non-traditional means: rapid prototyping, hardware milestones, and fixed price contracts done for 10% of the cost of traditional Primes.