Launch logjam exposes NASA quandary

June 15, 2009

A reporter pal of mine once told me this story about an editor he worked with who was struggling to integrate facts with narrative flow in one of his articles. “Everything needs to be moved up,” was the assessment. NASA is taking the same attitude as it tries to share a tight four-day launch opportunity this week between two space program mandates: finish the space station and move on to human exploration of the moon.

Most days, any incongruity in NASA’s marching orders is hidden beneath a shower of good will, shared philosophy and common budgetary concern. So, for example, the Constellation program, which is spearheading the post-shuttle and station human space initiatives, was happy to give its shuttle brethren extra time on the launch pad earmarked for the new Ares rocket program so a second shuttle could be ready to mount a rescue mission if the Hubble telescope servicing crew needed a ride back home.

Sometimes, though, where the rubber meets the road (or where the rocket meets the launch pad) the dance floor has room for only one. Pressed to make a decision about whether to proceed with a high-priority construction mission to the International Space Station or a high-priority moon mapping mission NASA, like a parent who doesn’t want to play favorites among its children, came up with a solution totally worthy of its engineering heritage: reducing the issue down to a numbers game of how to get the most launch opportunities out of the four-day window.

The rules of the game are thus: Both the shuttle and unmanned rockets, such as the Atlas that is scheduled to carry the agency’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter into space, require safety, tracking and other services from the military’s Eastern Test Range, which can only support one type of rocket at a time and needs two days between operations to reconfigure equipment.

As far as the shuttle goes, there are no launch opportunities between June 21 and July 10 due to the position  of the sun, which would cause excessive heating on the shuttle during the time when it would be docked at the space station. The LRO mission, which carries a small satellite that will crash into a lunar crater so scientists can look for water, has blackout launch periods every two weeks, due to Earth-moon positioning requirements.

NASA’s plan is to try launching Endeavour before dawn on Wednesday, then set up the range to support LRO launch attempts on Friday and Saturday afternoon.

If the shuttle is delayed again by technical problems or poor weather, the flight presumably would be bumped to July. Like one more charge on an already overburdened credit card, NASA managers say they can afford the slip, even though, eventually and not too far in the distant future, they know their time is running out. The agency has eight shuttle missions to pull off between now and Sept. 30, 2010. That's when the shuttle program is scheduled to come to an end.

Congress has proven to be very forgiving in the past about shuttle mission delays due to safety concerns, but it may be a far harder sell for NASA to extend the shuttle program because it wanted to give Constellation a firmer toehold.

I’m not casting blame here. I actually think NASA’s solution to its launch quandary is very creative. But the situation does illustrate the lack of leadership that has plagued the U.S. space program for some time now. So it is with a true appreciation for irony that I note the other significant event scheduled for Wednesday, the first day of the launch periods for both the shuttle and LRO. That’s the day when the presidential commission appointed to assess this country’s human space program holds its first meeting.

(Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 Pad B, with shuttle Endeavour, top, poised to serve as a rescue ship for the Hubble telescope servicing crew last month; and in an artist's rendering as the departure point for NASA's planned Ares moon rocket. Credit: NASA) 

 

 

 

Comments

[Emory Stagmer]

Actually, the LCROSS mission will crash the Centaur upper stage into the moon, then the shepherding spacecraft will follow it in, so there will be two impacts. The Centaur is BIG - about 45 feet tall and weighing about 2 tons. Should make a crater 18 feet wide and 100 feet long and kick 2 MILLION lbs of lunar regolith up about 30 km. The SSC won't make nearly as big an impact.
http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov

[Irene]

Thanks for the clarification

[sohbet]

Ben, did you happen to note the sunshine in the photo? How many stars do YOU see in the daytime?

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