New NASA chief pushes faster shuttle replacement

WASHINGTON – Less than a month after taking the job, NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin is pushing an ambitious but risky plan to shave four years off the timetable for building a next-generation spaceship to replace the space shuttle, and he wants to launch it with a crew by the end of 2010.

The shuttle has not flown since the Columbia tragedy in February 2003, and even after safety modifications are completed and flights resume, the orbiter will not get beyond “low Earth orbit” and will become obsolete as soon as construction of the international space station is completed in 2010.

NASA has planned for more than a year to build a new workhorse spacecraft to carry out President Bush’s long-term vision for space exploration, aimed at returning humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually sending them to Mars, but the initial strategy called for completion of the new spaceship by 2014. That would leave the United States without its own access to space for four years.

A bilateral arrangement allowing the United States to use Russian Soyuz for transportation to the space station expires next year.

Griffin, as have many members of Congress, has frequently criticized a strategy that would cede U.S. pre-eminence in human space travel, and at his confirmation hearing last month he advocated building the new spacecraft faster to shrink or eliminate the four-year gap.

He has moved quickly since his April 13 confirmation. Internal NASA documents and interviews with a number of NASA officials, industry contractors and other space experts show an alternative plan to build the new crew exploration vehicle is evolving rapidly.

The new strategy has virtually halted the original program NASA put in place 16 months ago to develop the spaceship and could cause additional upheaval as the agency struggles to ready the shuttle for its scheduled return to flight in July.

To execute the new strategy, sources said, Griffin intends to assemble a small, Apollo-style team of NASA experts and scrap the current plan to have two civilian contractors compete for several years for the right to direct development of the exploration vehicle.

Several sources said Griffin’s initiative has put him at odds with retired Navy Rear Adm. Craig E. Steidle, the principal architect of the original plan, but Steidle said in a telephone interview that he sees “no change in the way the program is going to be managed” and denied disagreements with Griffin might prompt him to resign.

“We’re on the same path,” said Steidle, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems. “If there are rumors out there that we are differing on this, that is not true.” He said he plans to leave NASA “some day,” but “not in the short term.”

Many sources interviewed for this story declined to be identified because they were in sensitive positions as prospective NASA contractors, feared retribution as NASA employees or did not wish to take sides in an internal dispute.

Griffin could not be reached for comment, but NASA spokesman Dean Acosta denied the agency has any internal conflict. He said agency leadership is working to “find a way to close the gap.”

Steidle, a retired Navy fighter pilot and Defense Department procurement specialist, was hired by former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe in January 2004 to implement the Bush initiative, with development of the crew exploration vehicle as the early centerpiece.

On March 1, Steidle’s office made a formal “request for proposals” to develop the spacecraft. NASA said it would select two proposals in August, fund their development for three years and have them compete in an unmanned “fly-off” in 2008, with the winning entry expected to be ready for human spaceflight by 2014.

By spreading costs over a number of years, NASA planned to bring the new spacecraft to the launch pad without ballooning the agency’s slow-growth budgets. The president’s $16.5 billion request for 2006 asks for $753 million for exploration vehicle development.

The plan’s clarity and Steidle’s procurement expertise won plaudits from industry, but discontent has grown among some scientists and lawmakers who fret that storied NASA programs are being cut to fund the new initiative.