This is just one of many examples of O'Keefe's complete lack of technical knowledge and political skill. It is just impossible that the US public and Congress will ever allow NASA to subject two astronauts to a ~%5 risk of death just to deliver groceries -- especially when Russia, Europe, and Japan will be doing the same job with unmanned vehicles that are much cheaper and don't risk any lives.

Clearly, NASA must adopt one of three options to maintain the ISS after 2010:

Plan 1: Adopt a dedicated Unmanned Supply Vehicle like Russia's Progress or Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle. This option decouples the crew exchange and supply missions, allowing more flexibility in launch scheduling. Since the unmanned vehicle does not require an abort system, it could use one of the many EELV versions with solid-fuel strap-ons (the OST will be restricted to using the liquid-only configurations since solids can't be shut off during an abort). Possibly OST and USV could be split between Delta 4 and Atlas V to help keep both boosters alive and maintain competition.

The big drawback of Plan 1 is that it requires NASA to develop two new space vehicles in the next seven years, when it is not clear that they will have adequate funding and technical competence for one such program.

Plan 2: Buy more ATVs from the same production line supplying ESA. This would be a quick and cheap option, but politically difficult. Congress is extremely reluctant to buy hardware made outside the USA. The manned space program is essentially a vote-buying program, and there is no point in bribing workers who don't vote in US elections.

Both Plan 1 and Plan 2 suffer from the criticism that it is basically pointless to have independent crew and supply vehicles, since the lack of either commodity will close down the ISS even if the other is abundant. So any extended stand-down in either program would put ISS into the kind of survival mode it is in now. The Europeans and Japanese are developing stand-alone supply vehicles because they expected to fly their ISS crewmen on the Shuttle. Once the Shuttle is retired, this concept will lose most of its rationale.

Plan 3: Incorporate a supply module into the OST. This was not an option for the original OSP program, because the huge weight penalties of the winged designs left little or no launch margin even for the largest EELV configurations. But the switch to a capsule design shrinks the mass of the return vehicle by at least 60%. If OST is launched on the heavy-lift versions of Delta 4 and/or Atlas 5, the surplus mass could make up much of the fuel, air, water, and food needed to maintain its passengers on their 4-month (or 6-month?) tour of duty on ISS. The OST's guidance, communication, and propulsion systems can do double duty. And NASA need only develop one vehicle instead of two.

A distinguished former astronaut has pointed out a problem with all these plans: They move manned space flight away from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merrit Island back to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the Cape proper, and leave the whole former Saturn V Launch Complex 39 unused. "Do you really want to turn on your TV someday and watch one of those controlled demolition companies blowing up the Vehicle Assembly Building -- the most visible remaining symbol of our victory in the Moon Race?"

It's a disturbing image, but a false one. We still have several huge zeppelin hangars standing around the world today, 63 years after the last of that earlier generation of flying white elephants was scrapped. Do we really want to require any new spaceship to use the elaborate facilities designed for the Moon Race when cost was no object?

This will burden it with a major up-front expense in repairs to LC39, which even the Shuttle program has been unwilling to fund. Ariane and EELV have demonstrated that these luxurious facilities are not needed. The VAB would make a great museum for the remaining Saturn Vs which should be preserved indoors instead of being allowed to gradually rot away outdoors exposed to the weather.

The real political problem with these plans is that they would render most of the civil service and contractor personnel employed at KSC redundant, and therefore generate fierce opposition from the "Space Coast" and its elected representatives. It might even be difficult to justify maintaining KSC as a separate facility from CCAFS once it stops launching anything and is reduced to support roles in the OST/USV program.

But this desire to perpetuate the huge infrastructure and work force that NASA inherited from the Moon Race is one of the fundamental problems with our space program. The NASA bosses of the 1961-69 era incorrectly thought that the Moon Race would evolve into a permanent prestige-oriented space exploration program in the way that the Manhattan Project evolved into today's huge Department of Energy.

That did not happen; the Moon Race turned out to be a short-lived one-time response to an anomalous situation. So today's shrunken NASA is burdened with an infrastructure too large for its current funding. This would be obvious if Dan Goldin's plan for full-cost accounting had ever been implemented and the cost of the facilities properly distributed as an overhead charge to the actual flight projects.

Dozens of former Cold War military bases stand empty all across the USA, and the Pentagon wants to discard many more. Why should NASA not have a postwar base disposal program as well? The EELV program has achieved a big reduction in staffing at CCAFS from the old ICBM-based boosters and this is a major reason it costs so much less.

So America's new spaceship will look like this (from top to bottom):

• A Launch Escape Tower for aborts on the pad or during the high-q portion of ascent.

• A Return Module with the shape and center-of-gravity of the Apollo CM, but lighter since thermal protection will be scaled down for the orbital mission. One attractive configuration would be a Mercury-style detachable ablative shield on the bottom and reusable hot-structure on the sides. Electronics and life support will use modern technology, and the cabin walls must be strengthened to hold in the standard ISS atmosphere. A version of the RM with simplified long-life systems and a small solid-fuel retrorocket will serve as the ISS lifeboat.

• A Propulsion Module with thrusters and a variable number of hydrazine/NTO fuel tanks. Fuel weight can be traded off against supply weight depending on the current needs of ISS. The propulsion system will provide 1) abort capability after the escape tower is jettisoned; 2) orbital circularization and automatic rendezvous with ISS; 3) reboost of the ISS; 4) insertion into the reentry trajectory. The PM could also carry most of the expendables needed to support the RM up to reentry.

• A Supply Module loaded with cargo for the ISS. This will be a simple pressurized can attached to the bottom of the PM. This module will be docked separately to the ISS (either by the RM/PM or by the Canadian robot arm on the ISS) and gradually emptied of supplies. The SM from the previous flight, now loaded with refuse, will be attached in its place and burn up along with the PM when the Reentry Module enters the atmosphere. Possibly two models of the SM could be designed, one for Delta 4H and one for Atlas 5H. This would allow missions to use both boosters for improved flexibility and competition.

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