Price tag for shuttle upgrades could run into billions

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board's recommendations are certain to fuel a debate on how much should be spent to improve the U.S. fleet, which was designed 30 years ago


A comprehensive effort to improve the safety of the space shuttle fleet, including proposed upgrades that were abandoned or deferred over the past decade, could easily cost more than $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 shuttle supporters, who say the nation has no alternative but to invest in and use the shuttle for the next two decades, against critics who say the shuttle is inherently unsafe and does not deserve further investment.

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

But the board's recommendations are certain to fuel the much larger debate about how much the U.S. should spend over long term to update a shuttle fleet that was designed 30 years ago, the investigator said. NASA is planning to use the shuttle until possibly 2022.

Redesigning insulation

The space agency is already redesigning the foam insulation for the shuttle's external tank, aiming to prevent it from falling off during future launches and damaging orbiters. And the agency is developing new testing methods for the thermal protection system, which failed during the Columbia re-entry to Earth.

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

And the cost would go up 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 space suits, in-orbit repair kits and a range of other items that experts say the shuttle should have. New boosters, for example, could cost $5 billion. A crew escape system, which could have saved the seven Columbia astronauts, could cost $1.2 billion or perhaps as much as an entire new orbiter, experts say. "This could get expensive very quickly," said former NASA chief engineer 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 programme a non-starter. Apart from the money, some leaders in Congress are saying they lack confidence in the space agency or the shuttle programme.

"We should spend nothing to improve and upgrade the shuttle," Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher of Californaia, chairman of the House sub-committee on space and aeronautic, said. "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 programme."

Rohrabacher is hardly the only tough critic in Congress. Recently, Republican Representative Joe Barton said that the shuttle should be permanently grounded, even if it means no human space flights 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 programme. Another cost for the federal government is the accident investigation itself, which could easily be more than $500 million.

Political forces are forming battle lines. One set of space proponents say the nation must stop treating the shuttle like a low income family car that never gets needed maintenance and begin to make large-scale investments for the sake of astronaut safety.

At the other extreme are advocates who say the shuttle is so old and so unsafe that it should be abandoned as soon as possible and a replacement rushed into service.

"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. 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 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 ducked making the big ticket improvements that various independent advisory groups have suggested. Replacing the shuttle would hardly be less expensive than even the most lavish upgrade programme.

Two more decades

NASA unveiled a plan last autumn to continue using the shuttle for as long as two more decades, well after President Bush leaves the White House. At a conference in Mississippi earlier this year, NASA leaders outlined a plan to make as many as 60 major improvements to the shuttle, costing billions of dollars.

The Columbia accident report could provide a rationale for such an upgrade programme. Accident board Chairman Harold Gehman 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," Gehman said. "If we come up with recommendations that we believe would be prudent to continue safe manned space flight 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."


Upgrades under consideration by NASA

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. The plan 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 fly back to the launch pad, a system that would cost about $5 billion.

- A crew escape system, in which a pressurised pod would be ejected out of the main shuttle in a major emergency, allowing astronauts to safely return to Earth. After the Challenger accident, NASA responded to the proposal by giving astronauts parachutes, which could work only in lev