Teams duel over NASA’s next spaceship

By Leonard David

Senior space writer

updated 12:24 p.m. ET May 26, 2006

Leading aerospace contractors are eagerly awaiting NASA’s multibillion-dollar decision on who’ll build the space agency’s follow-on to the space shuttle, now set for retirement in 2010.

Flying NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV, by 2014 is vital to what’s dubbed the Constellation Systems — the spaceship, boosters and related hardware needed to tend the international space station, return to the moon by 2020 and plant footprints on Mars in future years.

Will it be Lockheed Martin or the team of Northrop Grumman/Boeing — each group partnered with a cast of all-star subcontractors — that will work with NASA to field the space agency’s first new human transportation system since the space shuttle?

Companies are tight-lipped about their respective, now-submitted-to-NASA proposals. Final revisions are due late July. Handling acquisition of the CEV is NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We are currently evaluating proposals and plan to down-select and award the Phase 2 contract in the August/September time frame," said Michael Braukus, a NASA Headquarters spokesman. "All other information is competition-sensitive and will not be provided at this time," he told Space.com.

More runway ahead
NASA’s chief, Mike Griffin, has dubbed the CEV effort "Apollo on steroids" — and there’s every indication that industrial-strength ways to recapture human adventuring beyond low Earth orbit are in the offing.

The Northrop Grumman/Boeing CEV team is holding their cards tight. "We’re clearly in a competition. I don’t feel it’s the right time to be coming out with a lot of details about how we plan to tackle the job," said Doug Young, vice president and CEV program manager at Northrop Grumman.

Young said NASA requirements are evolving as the result of the space agency’s own internal studies, with their team providing data to the customer. That process has been smooth, Young told Space.com. The various technological approaches they have taken, he said, have been weighed in terms of development risk and cost risk.

"One does that very carefully … and that’s really what is embodied in our proposal," Young added. Until the process is completed, he is reticent to discuss details, as "there’s still more runway ahead."

Workforce challenges
Workforce issues are a concern, says Boeing’s John Elbon, vice president and program manager for Constellation/space exploration. "A big challenge NASA has ahead of them is transitioning the shuttle and space station workforce of today to work on CEV and other programs … and do it in such a way that we safely fly the shuttle and finish the station," he said.

Northrop Grumman The Crew Exploration Vehicle, equipped with solar arrays, orbits above the moon in this artist's conception from the Northrop Grumman/Boeing team.

Elbon said combining the shuttle and station workforce under one leader will jump-start the transitioning of experienced people to take on the upswing in CEV work.

"NASA is not pushing a lot of technology around the exploration program … at least I don’t see it," said Art Stephenson, sector vice president for space exploration systems at Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems. "They are more interested in getting the job done. To do that you need to reduce risk, and that means using existing technology," he told Space.com.

For the long term, Stephenson said, NASA will be embracing new technology, such as liquid oxygen/methane engines. "But when budgets are tight, it’s hard to bring in new technology. That adds risk and cost to the program," he said, with any good program manager trying to reduce new technology in order to maintain schedule and cost.

Apollo technology was significantly less capable than what is available, ready to be pulled off the shelf now, Stephenson said. By implementing CEV with today’s upgraded technology, "it’s a matter of just going and doing it," he said.

"We think we are offering NASA a really good team," Stephenson said. "Our proposal is focused on what’s the best answer for the taxpayer and for NASA."

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