Friday, May 30, 2003
Importance of X38 Technologies
Few Americans know the significant advances and cost effective capabilities developed by NASAs X38 program. That program has been a victim of the cost cutting requirements of Sean OKeefs administration. No one doubts the need for cost improvement and program consolidation. This was especially true for the parallel programs of Crew Rescue Vehicle (CRV) and Crew Transfer Vehicle (CTV). Now those programs have been consolidated under a new (and typically NASAian way of renaming the same thing over and over again) program called Orbital Space Plane (OSP). There remains debate over the politics of program realignment at the agency, but unfortunately the progress made in the loosing programs was largely lost with the demise of that program (X38 in this case). The list of critical technologies that had advanced beyond paper studies and had in fact had reached first production is quite long. Electromechanical actuators with multi string redundancy, flush air data nose cone and processing, network elements to isolate processor faults, Space Integrated GPS / INS (SIGI), are all applicable to any new vehicle. The remarkable progress in the development of the parafoil may not apply to every configuration but surely is just as important. I would hear NASA managers say that the hands on experience gained by the development process for X38 would help the team for later programs, as if this was an equal replacement for the flight tests that would have been accomplished in the X38 program. While true that the experience remains valuable, a better approach would have been to integrate the Marshall and Johnson teams together for OSP and bring forward the technology programs of X38 as part of OSP. This still might happen. Johnson and Marshall made significant progress in team building during the Space Launch Initiative (SLI) program over the last two years (more on that later). I continue to hope that NASA can "harvest the seeds" that its motivated workforce continue to plant. For the agency to succeed with smaller budgets pressured by home-land security and defense it will need to yield return on every investment.
Few Americans know the significant advances and cost effective capabilities developed by NASAs X38 program. That program has been a victim of the cost cutting requirements of Sean OKeefs administration. No one doubts the need for cost improvement and program consolidation. This was especially true for the parallel programs of Crew Rescue Vehicle (CRV) and Crew Transfer Vehicle (CTV). Now those programs have been consolidated under a new (and typically NASAian way of renaming the same thing over and over again) program called Orbital Space Plane (OSP). There remains debate over the politics of program realignment at the agency, but unfortunately the progress made in the loosing programs was largely lost with the demise of that program (X38 in this case). The list of critical technologies that had advanced beyond paper studies and had in fact had reached first production is quite long. Electromechanical actuators with multi string redundancy, flush air data nose cone and processing, network elements to isolate processor faults, Space Integrated GPS / INS (SIGI), are all applicable to any new vehicle. The remarkable progress in the development of the parafoil may not apply to every configuration but surely is just as important. I would hear NASA managers say that the hands on experience gained by the development process for X38 would help the team for later programs, as if this was an equal replacement for the flight tests that would have been accomplished in the X38 program. While true that the experience remains valuable, a better approach would have been to integrate the Marshall and Johnson teams together for OSP and bring forward the technology programs of X38 as part of OSP. This still might happen. Johnson and Marshall made significant progress in team building during the Space Launch Initiative (SLI) program over the last two years (more on that later). I continue to hope that NASA can "harvest the seeds" that its motivated workforce continue to plant. For the agency to succeed with smaller budgets pressured by home-land security and defense it will need to yield return on every investment.
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