WALK through the double glass doors on the ninth floor of NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, and it鈥檚 another world. Or worlds, to be more precise. Heroic paintings are everywhere: space shuttle launches, astronauts, the planets at the edge of the Solar System, distant galaxies, futuristic spacecraft and experimental planes. There is even a model of the Starship Enterprise, sitting in the expansive office of Dan Goldin, the man who has run NASA since 1992.
Goldin was finishing a degree in engineering at City College of New York in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy announced that America was going to the Moon. 鈥淚 wanted to help, so I joined NASA鈥檚 Lewis Center, working on electric propulsion for spaceships to Mars,鈥� he explains. Thirty years later, he has reached the top but there are no more Apollo programmes in sight. Instead, Goldin must oversee the biggest shakeup that NASA has ever experienced; a painful period of restructuring and cutbacks. His job is to turn a vast bureaucracy into a lean organisation which works closely with private enterprise. Just earlier this month, Goldin was fielding questions about possible plans to privatise the shuttle programme. Goldin鈥檚 mantra is 鈥渇aster, better, cheaper鈥�. And, at the same time, he must provide a new vision that will allow NASA to maintain its leadership in space exploration on a much reduced budget.
Goldin is quite frank about the financial outlook. 鈥淭he Apollo programme took about 5 per cent of the federal budget in its time. Today鈥檚 equivalent of that should be around $80 billion per year, a truly astronomical figure,鈥� he explains, 鈥淥bviously we can鈥檛 afford that.鈥� Four years ago, government projections were for a NASA budget of between $22 billion and $24 billion in 2000. Since then the budget has been cut again and again. Earlier this year, President Bill Clinton suddenly ordered another $5 billion reduction over the next five years. The bottom line is that in 1998, NASA鈥檚 budget will sink to around $13 billion, just a sixth of the Apollo levels. The loss of projects and jobs has already begun.
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Behind the cuts are the need to balance federal budgets, the end of Cold War rivalry and NASA鈥檚 own failings. It committed billions of dollars to a small number of vastly ambitious projects. Then the Challenger space shuttle exploded, the Hubble Space Telescope developed blurry vision and the Mars Observer simply vanished in space.
Goldin doesn鈥檛 believe in 鈥淏ig Space鈥� projects. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want any more billion-dollar, multi-year programmes where you lose everything if you lose the launch vehicle,鈥� he says, 鈥淲e will have lots of smaller craft 鈥� if we lose one, the others carry the mission. We will make it affordable.鈥�
The new approach is showing its first results with the Discovery programme. Last year, NASA put out a call to universities, research institutes and laboratories for innovative missions to the planets. The total cost of each project had to be kept under $245 million and the launch had to be accomplished within three years 鈥� a fraction of the development costs and times of past NASA missions. NASA also made it plain that if the projects overran their budgets, it wouldn鈥檛 bail them out, another departure from its past largesse.
Voyage of discovery
The first Discovery missions have already been chosen: a rendezvous with the asteroid Eros which passes close to Earth in February 1996, trips to survey and land on Mars in November and December 1996, and a lunar lander in June 1997. All these spacecraft use the latest and lightest technology and none weigh more than 1000 kilograms. The Eros rendezvous craft, for example, weighs only 775 kilograms. It will circle the asteroid for a year and use miniaturised solid-state detectors to take measurements.
Beyond this series come plans for spacecraft that are lighter still. Mars probes which will be launched every two years between 1998 and 2005 will weigh only 400 kilograms. Goldin believes the New Millennium project (see 鈥淪pace 1999: the true story鈥�) will help build still more and lighter probes. 鈥淓xpert decision making systems, advanced materials, along with advances in nanotechnology, microelectronics and microelectromechanical machines. Integrate these three 鈥� that鈥檚 the goal of our New Millennium spacecraft project,鈥� says Goldin. 鈥淏y the year 2000, I want to be launching 12 missions a year.鈥�
While there may be a bright future for tiny intelligent spacecraft at the turn of the century, making NASA鈥檚 big projects affordable now has meant cuts, international part nerships and reorganisation. Over the past three years, Goldin has cut back the scope and scale of the space station, depending now on cooperation with the Russians to use their Mir space station as the central core of an international station. Goldin has scrapped projects such as the advanced solid rocket booster, which was to have replaced the shuttle鈥檚 existing solid boosters, and has consolidated responsibilities for various projects at specific NASA centres.
Blueprint for the future
At the same time, Goldin is reshaping NASA鈥檚 relations with industry. Instead of the old system, where the administration鈥檚 bureaucrats tell industry how to build something, Goldin wants partnerships where NASA provides sophisticated new technology and test facilities. 鈥淚 saw an entrepreneurial contractor just yesterday,鈥� Goldin explains. 鈥淗e didn鈥檛 want government money, or a government contract. He did want to work out an agreement so that he could use our unique facilities 鈥� wind tunnels, supercomputers, material testing labs 鈥� to help in the development of his commercial spacecraft.鈥� This is Goldin鈥檚 blueprint for future of commercial space. 鈥淧rivate industry will design spacecraft and test them using our facilities. We will purchase launches when we need them.鈥�
Access to space must be cheap and reliable, he says. 鈥淚 want launch systems that are ten times faster, ten times better, and ten times cheaper. By 2000, we will have proven that we can develop pre competitive technologies, in preparation for major break throughs in turnaround time, durability, robustness and operative costs. We want to build the analogue of an all-purpose road car, not an expensive, finely tuned racing car. We want rocket engines that can operate thousands of times without maintenance, not just a few times. We want our spacecraft to operate like airplanes 鈥� you just refuel the thing and you take off again within minutes or hours.鈥�
Goldin has set his sites on achieving the same level of reliability as commercial aircraft with one unplanned landing per million take-offs. The Shuttle鈥檚 rocket engines usually last only three times, then have to be taken off and rebuilt, says Goldin. 鈥淚n 36 years of space flight, we have not yet broken the code on converting rocket-ships to be like airplanes. And at $3000 to $10 000 per pound to orbit, we鈥檙e not ever going to launch payload that costs only hundreds of dollars per pound. We have to get down to launch costs of hundreds of dollars per pound, otherwise we鈥檒l never open the space frontier.
The intermediate step towards opening that frontier comes in the shape of the X-34, a new uncrewed launch system which NASA is working on with the Orbital Science Corporation, an aerospace company based in Dulles, Virginia. The project is intended to cut the cost of launching a payload weighing 2700 kilograms 鈥� the weight of a small satellite 鈥� from its current cost of $2500 a kilogram to around $500 a kilogram.
The X-34 aims for low launch prices by trying to get the best from a mixture of three different launch vehicles 鈥� a large airliner, a reusable winged booster, and a small, powered orbital vehicle. The airliner will fly up to a height of 10 kilometres, carrying the booster slung beneath it. The booster will then be jettisoned and its rocket engines ignited, carrying it up to 90 kilometres. There, it will turn upside down, open its cargo doors, and release the payload, which will power itself into orbit. The booster will then fly back to the Earth and land on a conventional runway in the same way as the space shuttle. Each launch is expected to cost as little as $3 million and a 15-strong team could prepare the booster for another flight in just 16 days after landing. The X-34 will also launch the New Millennium spacecraft.
While this new craft may help the US compete against the cheap launches on offer from the ESA, Russia, China and other emerging space nations, it is just the start of what Goldin has in mind. Only when the price of a launch falls by a factor of ten is the sky expected to fill with low-orbit satellites offering a massive new range of cheap services such as direct-broadcasting, remote sensing, geopositioning, mobile communications and broad-band data relay.
May the best rocket win
That is the goal of the X-33, an experimental single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) reusable rocket (鈥淨uest for the supershuttle鈥�, 快猫短视频, 8 April 1995). The design will have to be rugged and reliable. If NASA can afford it, Goldin wants to build two different designs and have a 鈥渇ly-off鈥� competition to decide which is best.
By the year 2000, NASA should thus have three classes of rocket launchers: vehicles like the X-34 for launching small satellites, medium-sized launchers such as the current Atlas, Titan and Delta rockets for payloads of up to 11 000 kilograms, and a more powerful launcher for crewed missions, possibly the result of the X-33 project.
Goldin has other 鈥淴鈥� (experimental) projects as well. One example is the Delta Clipper: an experimental rocket designed and built in less than two years by McDonnell Douglas for the US Air Force and at a cost of only $60 million (鈥淲ill the Space Clipper stay a dream?鈥�, 快猫短视频, 28 May 1994). When the project ran out of money last year, Goldin stepped in with $1 million and an offer to continue the programme. The vehicle uses new technologies such as microelectronics, thermal protection systems and lightweight fuel tanks and structural materials that Goldin hopes will help American contractors in the other programmes.
Some of these new technologies are already making their impact on the larger space science projects that were planned over a decade ago. Goldin cites as an example the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) which is scheduled for launch in 2001. The telescope will orbit the Sun looking for comets and other bodies in the outer Solar System as well as planetary systems around nearby stars.
Initially, the craft was going to cost $2 billion and weigh over five and a half tonnes. By the time Goldin had finished, it weighed 700 kilograms and cost $400 million. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 an eighth of the weight and a fifth of the cost. Not quite ten-to-one in each case, but it鈥檚 pretty good.鈥� He says that, technically, the craft is almost as good as it was. This has been achieved by waiting for better imaging technologies to be developed and by transferring one SIRTF instrument to a Japanese spacecraft.
Unlike some critics of crewed space travel, Goldin doesn鈥檛 believe that building more sophisticated spacecraft will end the need for sending humans into space. 鈥淧eople ask me, why not just send robots and forget humans in space? I always say, if robots are so good, why aren鈥檛 we using them in labs on Earth?鈥�
Next stop Mars
Goldin is adamant that a human presence in space is necessary to prepare for a crewed mission to Mars early next century. The first step is the international space station which will be in orbit and almost completed by 2000. 鈥淭he purpose of the station is to figure out how people can live and work together in space. It鈥檚 a cultural issue as well as a technological one.鈥� Astronauts at the station will develop ways to counter the effects of zero gravity and study the debilitating effects of cosmic and other types of radiation. It is also a perfect platform for identifying and studying processes that occur on Earth, he says.
The station will require many new technologies: new space suits with built-in breathing systems and head-up displays in the helmet, regenerative air supplies and liquid reprocessing systems, medical screening for space travellers so that disease can be prevented in space and ways to treat them should anyone fall sick. 鈥淲e can鈥檛 afford sick-building syndrome up there,鈥� points out Goldin.
Eventually, new technologies will make crewed missions to other planets much easier. 鈥淲e have plenty of time to get to Mars,鈥� says a confident Goldin. The previous NASA administration had wanted to start in 1989 and launch in 2004. But Goldin maintains that this was always unrealistic. He prefers to wait until the technology arrives that will allow NASA scientists to plan and launch over a shorter timescale. The next feasible launch date occurs in 2018. He says NASA will not need to start planning until 2010.
Goldin says he wants to propose a fantasy for the future: 鈥淚t is the year 2020, and the Mars 2 spacecraft is returning.鈥� He suggests that the first person on Mars may have been a woman. But before she left Earth, NASA had sent robots there to build laboratories for humans to work in and machines that could generate and store fuel for the return journey.
The future mission planners will not have made the mistakes that NASA made in the 1970s when Viking visited Mars. Then, the craft landed in safe, high spots, dug into soil but found no life. Goldin points out that on Earth, it is possible to dig into the Antarctic soil and find no life. But the rocks in the region contain lichens. 鈥淚nstead, the Mars 2 crew are bringing back rocks from what used to be lake beds, where life, if it ever existed on Mars, must have lived,鈥� he continues.
鈥淚n a scientific laboratory here on Earth, our scientists will open up the Martian rocks, and in the middle of one is a fossilised single-celled organism.鈥� He suggests that the technology of the age will allow scientists to reconstruct it. 鈥淲e will have a single-celled Jurassic Park,鈥� he speculates.
Goldin goes further. Some scientists say that the molecular precursors to life may have arrived on Earth via comets. If so, then similar comets may have hit Mars and Martian creatures may be distant relations of those on Earth. 鈥淚magine the original Mother Cell,鈥� he ventures. 鈥淗ere on Earth, it is long gone or unrecognisable. But on Mars, maybe it evolved so far and then died.鈥� Finding that cell could lead to incredible advances in our understanding of biology.
Goldin knows that not everyone shares his visions. 鈥淚n some intellectual quarters around the world it is fashionable to criticise technology, to be pessimistic about mankind鈥檚 ability to build a better world.鈥� He has a message for these people: 鈥淛ust go out on a clear night, away from city lights and smog. Look up at the heavens and let your mind wander. Then you鈥檒l know why we ought to be in space.鈥�
Space 1999: the true story
THE SPACECRAFT of the future will be very different from today鈥檚. The New Millennium project will determine just how different.
Back in February this year, Goldin allocated $30 million to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, to develop the technnology that will make spacecraft in the 21st century smaller and cheaper but, above all, more capable.
One way to do this is to make each craft autonomous. Today鈥檚 spacecraft have to be nursed through every stage of each procedure they carry out. For example, if a craft is about to photograph an asteroid, it has to be told to point, shoot, point back to Earth and beam back the data. 鈥淎 smarter spacecraft will do all that by itself,鈥� says Jackie Green, a planetary scientist who helps coordinate the project. This will slash the size of ground crews from hundreds to about ten scientists.
Lightweight technologies are also central to the programme. These save money because light loads are cheaper to launch. Lasers, for example, are lighter than radio transmitters and can broadcast more information. So the next generation of spacecraft could communicate via thin pencils of light.
鈥淢any people would be surprised at how old-fashioned most spacecraft are,鈥� says Ellen Stofan, the chief scientist on the programme. Materials such as carbon fibre are lighter and stronger than metals but have yet to be tested extensively in space. So far, most computers used in space have been heavy and rugged to survive high radiation doses but this was at the expense of processing power compared with their Earthbound counterparts. The New Millenium team hopes to test the more powerful models that will be needed for autonomy and data processing.
Another idea is to construct every spacecraft from interchangeable parts so that the communications or navigation system, for instance, would fit any model. The idea is that the expensive business of designing each module need only be done once. 鈥淲e call it the Lego bricks approach,鈥� says Green. Many of these parts will have dual uses. A laser communications system must have a mirror to focus the light towards Earth. This mirror could also be used for imaging and to monitor the position of certain key stars for navigation.
Each module has to communicate with the other parts. Today鈥檚 spacecraft use heavy coaxial cables for this but the next generation could use optical fibre. Green says it might be possible to do away with cables entirely by communicating via weak radio or infrared signals rather like remote control units for TVs.
During their journey and at their destination, spacecraft have to carry out experiments. So the New Millennium team is looking for ways to make scientific instruments smaller. 鈥淐onventional temperature and pressure sensors are the size of coffee cups but it is possible to build microchips that do the same job,鈥� says Stofan. Even a gyroscope weighing hundreds of grams could be replaced by microchips weighing micrograms, she adds.
The cost benefits will be enormous. Missions with conventional technology sometimes cost billions. By 2015, this should drop to less than $50 million, including the launch, says Stofan. By then NASA hopes to be launching one spac science mission every month. 鈥淚n the past we鈥檝e had one interplanetary mission every five to ten years,鈥� she points out.
By the turn of the century, the team hopes to have launched three New Millennium craft, and Stofan is currently deciding where they should go and what they should do. The most likely options are missions to nearby asteroids or comets, or micropenetrators that will land on the Moon or Mars. Stofan is confident of success: 鈥淚n 2020, people will look back at this project and say 鈥榯hat is when NASA stopped waiting for the future and started making it happen鈥�.鈥�