NASA Prepares for Space Launch System Run by Private Industry

Ever since the early 1970s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been searching for a low-cost launch system that would throw open commercial development of space, but the dream has led only to dead ends.

But now, in a radical plan awaiting White House approval, NASA outlines how it intends to get out of the launch business and turn over the detailed development of future launch systems to private industry.

The plan would have NASA provide funds for the initial research and design of a future launch vehicle known as the X-33, but private industry would foot the bill for its multibillion-dollar development and production early in the next century.

NASA officials say the days of grandiose programs, in which the agency set out detailed plans and told thousands of employees around the nation exactly how to build launch vehicles, are over.

“This is a completely different approach than any launch system we have ever had in this country,” said Gene Austin, NASA’s X-33 technology chief at Marshall Space Flight Center.

At least three major teams of aerospace contractors are preparing to battle for a piece of the risky plan.

One signal of the aerospace industry’s interest came Tuesday, when McDonnell Douglas and Boeing announced that they had formed a team to pursue the nascent program. Lockheed’s Skunk Works in Palmdale and Rockwell International’s Downey unit are also expected to jump into the race in the near future.

The X-33 is a heavy lift vehicle intended for both commercial and government payloads. It would take off from a launch pad and reach space at a fraction of today’s launch costs. Just seven days later, it could make another routine trip into orbit--fulfilling space enthusiasts’ longstanding dream of routine space travel.

Once the White House grants formal approval--expected within the next two weeks--NASA plans to spend $24 million for a 13-month study of the X-33.

In 1996, the space agency would begin a second phase of the program, providing a single contractor team with about $638 million to build an experimental vehicle. The X-33 prototype would conduct flight tests but not necessarily reach orbit.

After flight testing is completed in 1999, however, major aerospace contractors would face the prospect of having to invest roughly $5 billion, by some NASA and industry estimates, in a program to build a fleet of commercial vehicles.

NASA’s ambitious plan is fraught with risk and uncertainty, however.

“I would characterize it as improbable,” said John Pike, a space policy expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “How many impossible things are we being asked to believe? That NASA will have hundreds of millions of dollars at a time we are trying to balance the budget and cut taxes? Or that private industry will put its own money on the table?”

But Dave Urie, director of Lockheed’s X-33 effort, said earlier this month that a commercial approach to such a space system is technically and financially feasible and that it has not only his support but that of Lockheed Chairman Daniel Tellep.

One major uncertainty is whether the X-33 would capture the large Defense Department launch business.

Under a policy the White House outlined this year, the Pentagon is separately pursuing a launch system of its own that would consolidate and upgrade three existing military rockets into a single family of launch vehicles. This program is known as the evolved expendable launch system, or EELV.

The Air Force had an industry conference on that program last week in Los Angeles, raising the prospect that the Pentagon might put up the $2 billion needed to upgrade either the Titan, Atlas or Delta launch systems.

“The Defense Department is running a directly competitive program,” Pike said.

Urie said that a fully reusable X-33 type spacecraft would be economical and profitable only if it could capture virtually all of the payloads that the NASA, the Pentagon and the National Oceanic and Atmospherics Administration plan to launch.

“The market is still unknown,” William Gaubatz, McDonnell’s X-33 program manager, said Tuesday. “It is like Douglas Aircraft in the 1940s trying to project what the market would be for the DC-3.”

But Richard Dal Bello, the Clinton Administration’s assistant director for aeronautics and space policy, said the parallel programs at NASA and the Pentagon “are fully complementary” because the Pentagon effort addresses medium-term requirements whereas the X-33 program represents a long-term investment.