Space transportation policy

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the Bush Administration is considering a new policy that would require the Air Force to settle on one of two EELV launch services providers—Boeing or Lockheed Martin—in the next several years. The Air Force has insisted that it needs both to provide “assured access to space” in the event one vehicle family is grounded. (Never mind that both use variants of the RL-10 engine on their upper stages, and that at least for the next few years the Delta 4 is the only vehicle that can provide heavy-lift capability.) Because of the downturn in the commercial market, the Air Force has been providing additional funds to support both companies; that extra funding, which could cost as much as $5 billion through 2009, is the reason for the renewed push for an EELV downselect.

Although the article doesn’t state it, it appears that this would be part of a long-awaited space transportation policy that the administration has been working on for some time. Back in mid-2002 the administration announced that it was undertaking a “phased review” of the existing federal space policy, starting with remote sensing and space transportation. The remote sensing policy was completed and released in April 2003, but work on the space transportation policy was halted after the Columbia accident. At that time White House officials said the policy was “90% complete” (sometimes 95% complete), but they wanted to wait until the CAIB was done before resuming. Back in April Brett Alexander of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy said that they hoped to finally complete the space transportation review in a couple of months. It hasn’t been released yet, but the WSJ article suggests that it is complete enough that the administration is starting to brief industry on its contents.

What else the policy will contain isn’t clear, although the Journal reported that the policy would require NASA to use existing vehicles for its space exploration programs, rather than develop a new launcher. It doesn’t make clear whether NASA would be able to fund upgrades of EELV or other vehicles to improve reliability and/or capacity. While the Journal article states that NASA is opposed to this because it “foresees manned space flights relying on either the most advanced Boeing or Lockheed Martin rocket currently available”, I would be surprised if the policy specifically locked in NASA to the Atlas 5 or Delta 4, instead allowing it to use other commercial vehicles that may become available down the road.