Most space advocates and many in the nascent private manned spaceflight industry have been enthusiastic about the benefits of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, which the Senate passed Wednesday and now awaits the president’s signature, but a close reading of the bill gives reason for pause.
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NASA is embarking on a bold new strategy to spur new private investment in spaceflight technology. If the effort succeeds, it could transform both the agency and the U.S. aerospace industry, but first there is the matter of congressional authority to overcome.
On Nov. 15, one day before the successful last flight in the now-dead X-43 project, NASA officials held a meeting at headquarters in Washington to promote a new agency-sponsored prize program inspired by the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.
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NASA’s recent flight test of an experimental vehicle capable of hypersonic flight was an engineering triumph, but it also could turn out to be another in a long list of the agency’s bureaucratic failures.
Last Tuesday, the X-43 test program made its third and last flight — the first had failed when the Pegasus launch rocket went out of control while the second reached Mach 6.8 — using a scramjet engine to achieve a record-breaking speed of Mach 9.6. It was a breathtaking success, which — in a stark demonstration of NASA’s standard operating procedure — immediately resulted in the program’s shutdown.
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The decision by Boeing and Northrup Grumman to join forces in their bid to build NASA’s next generation manned spacecraft, dubbed the crew exploration vehicle or CEV, significantly reduces the number of major aerospace players available to the agency.
This also forces NASA to make its choice from only two camps, neither of which is ideal: the oversized and experienced vs. the undersized and innovative.
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The latest postponement of the space shuttle’s return to flight has left many wondering whether NASA’s launch window in late May 2005 is realistic. It may be, but with more risk than anticipated.
One reason is the lingering questions: Will NASA have sufficiently fixed the shuttle by then to complete a safe launch? Are the problems uncovered by the loss of Columbia solved? Are there any issues unresolved that might cause the launch date to slip further?
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