NASA Sees Only 65 Percent Chance Orion-Ares Will Fly In March 2015; CBO Says Costs Might Exceed Plans By As Much As $7 Billion Over NASA Budgets

Chances Of Retiring Shuttles By October 2010 Seen At 20-60 Percent; Lunar Mission May Not Launch In 2020 As Scheduled, CBO States

There is only a 65 percent probability that the next-generation Orion-Ares spaceship system will lift off on schedule for an initial manned mission to low Earth orbit in March 2015, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) watchdog agency disclosed in a report to Congress.

That confidence-level estimate by NASA was just one critical finding in the report to top-ranked Democratic and Republican senators and representatives leading committees and subcommittees overseeing NASA.

The report also revealed an estimate that costs of developing the new spaceship system might overrun budgets by $7 billion, a 50 percent increase, and if Congress doesn’t provide those funds, and NASA budgets inch up just 2 percent annually, then the first manned flight of Orion-Ares might be as late as September 2016, instead of the March 2015 target, CBO cautioned.

One major problem confronting the space agency is that President Bush ordered the space shuttle fleet to retire by October 2010, and the new Orion-Ares crew exploration vehicle and rocket won’t achieve manned flight until March 2015, leaving a half-decade gap when NASA won’t be able to transport a single astronaut even to low Earth orbit, much less to the moon or Mars.

That has left NASA in the "unseemly" position of having to pay the Russians to provide taxi service to space for U.S. astronauts.

Worse, the gap could be even longer, the CBO warned.

"The five-year gap in U.S. human spaceflight could also increase if delays consistent with past space shuttle missions occurred in launching the remaining missions needed to complete construction of the International Space Station," CBO observed. For example, the STS-125 Mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis to repair and refurbish the intermittently ailing Hubble Space Station has been delayed more than half a year, to wait for experts to ready a replacement component for the telescope. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Nov. 3, 2008.)

Also, many members of Congress wish to add a shuttle mission to the existing manifest of future shuttle liftoffs, to take a $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station. Otherwise, the multinational experiment will sit uselessly on Earth, the money wasted.

Further, some NASA officials muse privately that they expect Sen. , who was elected last week to be the next president, will demand further shuttle missions.

But without an increase in the total NASA budget to pay for those missions, the money to fund them likely would come out of the Constellation Program developing Orion-Ares, further delaying the first manned flight of the new spaceship system.

"Such delays could postpone retirement of the shuttle, thereby increasing the funding needed for its operations and, under a constrained total NASA budget, decreasing the funding available to the Constellation Program," the CBO report stated.

"A one-year delay in retiring the space shuttle, CBO estimates, would result in a corresponding one-year delay in achieving initial operating capability for Ares 1 and Orion," a zero-sum exercise in futility that wouldn’t reduce the half-decade gap in spaceflight capabilities.

"NASA officials estimate that the probability that the shuttle can complete its 10 remaining missions by September 2010 is between 40 percent and 69 percent; CBO estimates that a delay is more likely and that the probability of carrying out those missions on that timetable is between 20 percent and 60 percent. NASA has also stated that if delays occurred that required missions to be flown after September 2010, it might cancel those missions so as not to use funding that would otherwise have been reallocated to the Ares 1 and Orion programs."

In other words, there is a harsh choice between losing money needed for developing Orion-Ares, or losing the benefits of some space shuttle flights and what their crews might achieve — unless, that is, the next president bites the bullet and presses for a substantial increase in the total NASA budget.

So without added funding, further shuttle flights wouldn’t shrink the half-decade gap in American spaceflight capabilities. And the problem could become even worse, the CBO cautioned.

"The five-year gap in U.S. human spaceflight … might increase if NASA could not avoid the risks to the successful completion of those projects that it and others (in particular, the Government Accountability Office, or GAO) have identified in the Constellation Program," the CBO observed.

Even now, risks that are known include a weight gain in the Ares rocket, excessive vibration (thrust oscillation) that would be rough on astronauts in Orion, and development of a rocket component called the J-2X engine, CBO stated.

However, Constellation Program officials said in a teleconference with several space journalists that NASA and contractors are tackling those risks even now, planning to eliminate or circumvent them. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Nov. 3, 2008.)

Also at risk is the U.S. goal of returning its astronauts to the moon by 2020, a goal that may not be met because of a deep budget cut in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2007.

"NASA’s decision to accommodate the $577 million reduction in its 2007 funding by forgoing robotic surface exploration of the moon has the potential to delay the launch of the Constellation Program’s first human lunar missions beyond 2020," the CBO warned.

To read the CBO report titled "An Analysis of NASA’s Plans for Continuing Human Spaceflight After Retiring the Space Shuttle" in entirety, please go to http://www.cbo.gov on the Web.