What Price Shuttle Safety?

A comprehensive effort to improve the safety of the space shuttle fleet, including proposed upgrades that had been abandoned or deferred over the last decade, could easily cost $5 billion to $10 billion, according to aerospace experts and technical reports.

An intense political debate is starting over whether such major upgrades make technical or economic sense. It pits supporters, who say the nation has no alternative but to invest in and use the orbiter for the next two decades, against critics who say it is inherently unsafe and does not deserve further investment.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board will propose safety improvements for the shuttle fleet by this summer, although the panel is likely to focus its recommendation on a narrow range of fixes to address the causes of the Feb. 1 accident and avoid dictating a more expansive improvement program, according to a key member.

But the board’s recommendations are certain to fuel the larger debate over how much the nation should spend long-term to update a shuttle fleet that was designed 30 years ago, the investigator said. NASA plans to use shuttles until possibly 2022.

The space agency is already redesigning the foam insulation for the shuttle’s external tank, aiming to prevent it from falling off and damaging orbiters during future launches. NASA is also developing new testing methods for the thermal protection system, which failed during Columbia’s reentry.

Officials at NASA headquarters say they don’t have any idea even what those relatively straightforward efforts would cost, although some outside experts speculate they would run into tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.

And the cost would increase astronomically for major improvements, such as a crew escape system, redesigned boosters, new auxiliary power units, updated launch control computers, safer thermal protection systems, additional spacesuits, in-orbit repair kits and a range of other items that experts say the shuttles should have.

New boosters, for example, could cost $5 billion. A crew escape system, which could have saved Columbia’s astronauts, could cost $1.2 billion for each orbiter, or perhaps as much as an entire new shuttle, experts say.

“This could get expensive very quickly,” said former NASA chief engineer W. Brian Keegan. “In returning to flight, the effort may well have to go beyond addressing the specific causes of the accident.”

The political realities of the nation’s already overextended federal budget could make such a comprehensive safety program a nonstarter. Apart from the money, some leaders in Congress say they lack confidence in NASA or the shuttle program.

“We should spend nothing to improve and upgrade the shuttle,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), chairman of the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics.

“One would expect it would be on the way out. Yet, we hear these people still plan to use the shuttle from here to forever. Maybe they are thinking of the way things work in some other solar system, because none of that makes any sense to me. It shows you just how bad they have been at planning and managing America’s space program.”

Rohrabacher is hardly the only tough critic in Congress. Last week, Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, said the shuttles should be permanently grounded, even if it means no human spaceflight for the next five or 10 years.

Beyond investing in shuttle safety, NASA wants to complete the international space station and build a new astronaut transfer vehicle, known as the space plane. The space plane will cost $5 billion to $10 billion or more if NASA decides to accelerate the program. Another cost for the federal government is the accident inquiry, which could easily be more than $500 million.

Not since the end of the Apollo moon missions in the early 1970s has America’s space program arrived at such a critical juncture that will determine its long-range future, said W. Henry Lambright, a space policy expert at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York and a consultant to the accident investigation board.

“We are stuck,” he said. “We have the shuttle and nothing else. We need to invest in it, but we need to invest in an advanced system to replace it. We need someone to step up and be a political champion for this decision.

“No one has stepped up yet.”

Nonetheless, political battle lines are forming. One set of space proponents says the nation must stop treating the shuttle like a low-income family car that never gets maintenance and begin making large-scale investments for the sake of astronaut safety. The existing fleet has been badly neglected over the last half-decade because NASA presumed incorrectly that it would be replaced by now.

At the other extreme are those who say the shuttle is so old and so unsafe that it should be abandoned and a replacement rushed into service. These advocates call for a much bolder space program that would attempt a human mission to Mars or a landing on an asteroid.

“If they invest in the shuttle until 2022, it will preclude NASA from investing in any other space transportation architecture,” said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society. “It is a terrible outcome to invest billions into the shuttle. In 2022, it will be 50 years old. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Another alternative assumes the most cynical outcome of all: Congress will pay for only modest fixes and force NASA to use the shuttle for the long haul without improving safety.

“The plan is to pretend the accident didn’t happen and not change anything,” said space policy expert John Pike. “They are going to invest chump change in upgrades. The risk is you are going to blow up another one.” In a sense, that is what has happened over the last decade as the federal budget process has ducked making the big-ticket improvements that various independent advisory groups have suggested. Replacing the shuttles would hardly be less expensive than even the most lavish upgrade program.

NASA unveiled a plan last fall to continue using the shuttles for as long as two more decades. At a conference this year, NASA leaders outlined a plan to make as many as 60 major improvements to the shuttles, costing billions of dollars.

The Columbia accident report could provide a rationale for such an upgrade program. The accident board’s chairman, Harold Gehman Jr., has said he expects to make recommendations intended to make the shuttle safe without regard to what it may cost or whether the fixes are affordable. “We will not be constrained by costs,” he said. “If we come up with recommendations that we believe would be prudent to continue safe manned spaceflight in the shuttle vehicle and it ends up being too expensive for the nation to bear, so be it. Someone else will have to make that decision.”

Richard D. Blomberg, past chairman of NASA’s advisory panel for shuttle safety, has recommended an ambitious modernization effort that would provide astronauts with an escape system for emergencies. He notes that NASA has adopted a requirement for such a system for any future human spacecraft and questions why the shuttles should be exempt. In testimony to the accident board last month, he also advocated building orbiters to replace the oldest in the fleet.

“I don’t think there is a new technology that would give you a significantly better vehicle than the shuttle,” Blomberg said in an interview. “Some people think we can design and build a new space transportation system in seven years, but I don’t think that is realistic.”

Parker Counts, a senior space shuttle manager at NASA, said the agency is awaiting the recommendations of Gehman’s panel before it makes any public statements about the upgrades it will seek. But under NASA’s effort to extend the life of the shuttle, it is considering a number of big-ticket items. They include:

* A redesign of the solid rocket boosters, which caused the 1986 Challenger accident. NASA is looking at whether to design a larger five-segment solid booster to replace the current four-segment booster. With a larger booster, the shuttle could reach orbit even with the complete loss of its liquid hydrogen main engines. A parallel proposal calls for NASA to develop reusable liquid boosters that would automatically return to the launch pad, a system that would cost about $5 billion.

* A crew escape system, in which a pressurized pod would be ejected out of the shuttle, allowing astronauts to return to Earth. After the Challenger accident, NASA responded to the proposal by giving astronauts parachutes, which could work only in level flight at fairly low altitudes. Don Nelson, a former NASA shuttle engineer, said the agency has studies showing an escape system could be retrofitted for $1.2 billion per orbiter.

* New auxiliary power units to replace the current systems that are powered by flammable hydrazine fuel. NASA had a program to make the replacement, but dropped it when research into new batteries bogged down. A National Research Council report estimated the cost of the system at about $350 million.

* Infrastructure improvements at Kennedy Space Center. Blomberg estimates this would cost a few billion dollars. It would include new ground launch computers to replace the current 1970s-era system. A replacement was under development, but NASA canceled it when its estimated price hit $533 million.

* A vast array of smaller improvements, including a reassessment of the shuttles’ failure modes, a painstaking task that is long overdue, experts say. Other improvements would include buying more spacesuits and developing a kit that would allow astronauts to repair damaged heat protection tiles in orbit.