"I already have a heavy-lift vehicle," NASA administrator Michael Griffin told reporters at an informal briefing last week at the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA has not ruled out expendable launch vehicles built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, nor new boosters in the making, such as Space Exploration Technology's Falcon 5, but Griffin clearly favors using components of the space shuttle, which evidently are exempt from the directive by President George W. Bush to retire the fleet by 2010.

"What we'll be retiring are the orbiters," Griffin said, referring to the winged, reusable crew/cargo components of the shuttle transportation system.

The fleet has been flying since 1981, but the trio of ships still in service - Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour - are the newer additions. Columbia, the first shuttle, and Challenger, the second, were lost in accidents in 2003 and 1986, respectively.

Nevertheless, Griffin is determined to follow Bush's orders to stop flying the orbiters by 2010, whether or not their mission to complete the International Space Station is fulfilled.

"I report to the president," Griffin said. "The president has said we're retiring the orbiter by 2010, and that's what we're doing."

In addition to speeding up development of the CEV, which is NASA's next passenger ship, Griffin is examining alternative ways to fly components of the space station to orbit if delays or problems preclude delivery by the shuttle.

"The shuttle is inherently flawed," Griffin testified recently before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee.

"It does not have an escape system for its crew. We all know that since human perfection is unattainable, sooner or later there will be another shuttle accident. I want to retire it before that flight can occur."

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommended that NASA recertify the fleet if it chose to continue flying beyond 2010 - an expensive, time-consuming process that so far has garnered no public support.

Parts of the shuttle system, however, have a good chance of outliving the orbiters. The first incarnation likely would be a single solid rocket booster - the shuttle uses two for each launch - coupled with a newly developed upper-stage motor to carry the new crew capsule to low-Earth orbit.

"We already have the first stage of the vehicle," Scott Horowitz, a former astronaut and the director of space transportation and exploration for shuttle booster manufacturer ATK Thiokol told a Senate oversight committee last week.

"It's already built and flying today, so we can minimize the amount of development time, the amount of cost, and then we can meet the ambitious schedule of having a Crew Exploration Vehicle ready to fly in 2010, because we have most of the propulsion components already," Horowitz said.

"The (solid rocket boosters) are already rated (for human spaceflight), and it will be safer and more effective than anything else we could do."

Additional lift capacity could be achieved with multiple solid rocket boosters, coupled with shuttle main engines in various configurations. Griffin has commissioned a study team to consider the various options and report back later this summer.

Using shuttle propulsion systems is expected to save money because facilities, personnel, materials and ground support equipment for launch and recovery already are in place.

NASA does not intend to cut entrepreneurs out of the picture entirely, however. A new contract for cargo delivery services to the space station is expected to be released soon, opening a potentially lucrative niche market for aspiring launch services firms.

At least two startups, Kistler Aerospace of Kirkland, Wash., and Space Exploration Technologies of El Segundo, Calif., have expressed interest in the contract. First flights for both firms' vehicles, however, are pending.

Also last week, NASA opened a new frontier for commercial space endeavors with the announcement of a $250,000 cash prize for the first individual or team to come up with a way to extract oxygen from lunar soil.

"Oxygen extraction technologies will be critical for both robotic and human missions to the moon," said former astronaut Sam Durrance, who now heads the Florida Space Research Institute, which is co-sponsoring the competition.

The contest is the latest in NASA's Centennial Challenges program, which is designed to lure private industry and research groups into helping NASA find alternative and lower-cost technologies for moon and Mars exploration.

The competition is based on the successful Ansari X Prize, which last year award $10 million to the developers of SpaceShipOne for building and flying the world's first private spaceship.

Contenders in the new contest will use a simulated lunar regolith, which is the loose soil found on the moon's surface, to extract at least 5 kilograms of oxygen within eight hours.

Although several methods to extract oxygen from lunar soil already have been developed, none have produced the quantity of oxygen required to win the prize.

NASA is looking at ways to produce large amounts of oxygen on the lunar surface to support a manned base and to fuel vehicles that will be designed to land and launch from the moon.

Teams competing in the Moon Regolith Oxygen challenge, also known as MoonROx, will have until June 1, 2008, to vie for the prize. In March, NASA announced prizes of $50,000 to the first teams to develop a space tether and a wireless power source for robotic devices.

Pending approval from Congress, NASA also is working on plans for multi-million-dollar awards for more ambitious contests, such as demonstrations of orbital spaceflight.

Space Race 2 is a weekly series by UPI exploring the people, passions and business of commercial human spaceflight by long-time aerospace journalist Irene Klotz.

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