Sunday May 11, 2008

NASA looks to private sector help for next shuttle

By Wendell Roelf

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - NASA wants the private sector to help develop the next generation of shuttle craft to serve the International Space Station and is providing $500 million in "seed" money to kick start work, its chief said on Sunday.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin speaks, before viewing a selection from over 100 hours of high definition archival footage of space travel that Discovery Communications is returning to NASA, on Capitol Hill in Washington May 6, 2008. (REUTERS/Larry Downing)

"The cost of space transportation even 50 years into space flight is very high. We wish it were lower. It isn't yet," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told Reuters in an interview.

The escalating cost of cargo and crew transport to and from the $100 billion low-orbiting space station worries NASA, which will be without crew transport capacity once its current shuttle craft reach the end of their working lives in 2010.

The station is a research facility being assembled in space and counts among its partners the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and 11 European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Griffin said NASA had budgeted $500 million in "seed funding" over several years to help develop private transportation capability for cheaper space travel.

In South Africa to attend a science research centre launch, Griffin said private companies would not only provide the transport, but would be able to conduct experiments and use lab facilities at the space station if the plans work out.

"I am hopeful that opening up the space station to more commercial activity will spur the development of enough traffic to and from the station that commercial space transportation entities may be induced to develop a more accessible, cheaper capability than we have today," he said.

The major players include Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co, with smaller companies such as the Orbital Sciences Corp and the Space Exploration Technologies Corp showing early promise to deliver crew vehicles, possibly by 2012-13.

These commercial developments are separate from the U.S government's plans for the lunar Orion crew vehicle and Ares rocket, which are expected around 2015.

"The lunar system can be pressed into service for space station utilisation if necessary ... but it will be a more expensive alternative," said Griffin.

He said the United States would be dependent on Russia to provide crew vehicles to the space station in the gap between the space shuttle's retirement and the deployment of a new crew transport vehicle.

NASA has set aside $2.6 billion in its 2009 budget, which must still be approved by the U.S. Congress, to purchase crew and cargo transport services to support the space station.

Griffin said in the next couple of decades, NASA would like to expand the space station partnership back to the moon, man's first major space triumph.

"This time (we would like to do it) with the establishment of a permanent outpost, much like the multi-national outposts that you see in Antarctica today," he said.

After that, it would be time for the human race to visit Mars for the first time, Griffin said.

Griffin is in Cape Town along with other international scientists to attend the launch of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences research centre.

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