New NASA Boss Pushes to Replace Shuttle, May Cut Research to Pay for It

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=753132

New NASA Boss Pushes to Replace Shuttle

New NASA Boss Pushes for Faster Shuttle Replacement, May Cut Research
to Pay for It

By MARCIA DUNN
The Associated Press

May. 12, 2005 - NASA's new boss made an impassioned case Thursday for
speeding up development of a new spacecraft so that the United States
will not lose access to space when the shuttle is retired, but warned
something else will have to be sacrificed.

Administrator Michael Griffin told a Senate subcommittee in Washington
that to cover the cost of the shuttle replacement's accelerated debut,
he may be forced to delay some space station and exploration research.

"We can't do everything on our plate, and we have to have priorities
and first things first," he said.

Griffin wants to fly the proposed new spacecraft as soon as possible
once the space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010 avoiding a four-year
gap in which the United States would have no way to launch astronauts.

The current plan, which he inherited when he took over NASA last
month, calls for the new vehicle to carry a crew into orbit by 2014
and be capable of traveling to the moon and Mars, with modifications,
in the years beyond.

Griffin said he finds that four-year launch gap unacceptable and hopes
to have a plan for closing it by mid-July. The new crew exploration
vehicle, or CEV, is a key part of President Bush's plan for returning
astronauts to the moon by 2020.

"CEV needs to be safe, it needs to be simple, it needs to be soon,"
Griffin told reporters later in the afternoon.

The six-year gap between the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission and the 1981
debut of the shuttle damaged both the U.S. space program and the
nation, Griffin said. "I don't want to do it again."

"The United States of America should always have its own access to
space," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.

Griffin told the Senate subcommittee on commerce, justice and science
that he does not know how much it will cost to accelerate development
of the crew exploration vehicle, still in the early design phase. But
he said by choosing a single contractor in 2006, rather than having
two contractors competing in flight in 2008 as envisioned by the
former NASA administrator, $1 billion or more could be saved for use
in the near term.

Additional money could be saved by putting off research at the
international space station such as experiments geared toward
long-term moon stays or Mars habitation and possibly eliminating the
handful of shuttle flights needed to fly that equipment, Griffin said.
Eighteen shuttle missions are currently on the books to finish
building the space station, along with 10 supply runs for a grand
total of 28.

Right now, NASA's three remaining shuttles are grounded as the agency
struggles to remedy all the safety concerns arising from the 2003
Columbia tragedy. Managers hope to launch Discovery on the first
mission since the disaster in mid-July; repair work is going slow,
though, and the schedule is tight.

Griffin assured the senators he would use a scalpel rather than a meat
ax in cutting the research budget for the space station and other
exploration systems, and would look at delaying projects not yet
begun.

"Now the research ... is very valuable and it must be done," he said.
"But if it is delayed a very few years in order to allow us to
complete and affect a suitable transition between systems, then I
believe that that delay would be worth it. And that would be where I
would look for the money."

Griffin pledged that NASA will complete the space station, currently
just half built. But if the station still isn't finished when the
shuttles are retired, the space agency may turn to unmanned rockets to
haul up the remaining gear.

As for the Hubble Space Telescope, Griffin has ordered work to begin
on one last shuttle servicing mission, with $291 million set aside in
next year's budget. Whether that mission takes place will depend on
the success of the next two shuttle missions.

Griffin's predecessor, Sean O'Keefe, ruled out Hubble visits by
astronauts because of post-Columbia safety concerns.