In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r 8 W(h)ither SSTO? The installation of Dan Goldin as NASA administrator in 1992 eventually would have an impact on the SDIO’s SSTO program, as would the elections that November. In the meantime, the end of the cold war and the redefinition of the Strategic Defense Initiative promised to make 1992 the first of several difficult, if not agonizing, years for the SSTO program, even as McDonnell Douglas continued to build the DC-X. Max Hunter’s vision of a singlestage -to-orbit experimental vehicle created in a “faster, cheaper, smaller” program to demonstrate aircraft-like operations was no longer a set of ideas set out on paper and briefing charts, but a federal military program and a flight vehicle. The real challenge of achieving the vision, however, would not be creating the program or the vehicle, but dealing with the changing political arena of the immediate post–cold war era. The SDIO budget already had come under attack in 1990 and 1991, when a Democratic-majority Congress consistently voted lower funding levels than those requested by President Bush. The SSTO program accounted for a rather small segment of the SDIO budget. Phase I amounted to only $12 million, and McDonnell Douglas received just $59 million for the DC-X.1 Nonetheless, this last amount represented a budget reduction that translated into only one contractor award instead of two for Phase II. These cuts, moreover, preceded the new post–cold war demand to reduce the Defense Department budget and reflected application of the GrammRudman -Hollings Act. After years of growth under Ronald Reagan, the defense budget stabilized then declined during the Bush administration. After escalating to a high of $292 billion in fiscal 1988, military spending varied between about $290 and $291 billion during fiscal 1989 through 1991 before dropping to $276 billion in fiscal 1992 as Congress sought to collect “peace dividends .” The defense budget continued to diminish even after Bush’s term ended.2 “Peace dividends” translated into announcements of defense facility closures and aerospace and defense unemployment, as the aerospace industry entered an era of dramatic restructuring and downsizing. Defense cuts also meant that military launch programs would have to compete aggressively for an even smaller slice of the shrinking pie chart that represented the defense budget. Although the Titan IV expendable launcher and the Centaur upper-stage rocket came under congressional scrutiny, the two major launch systems competing for funds were the National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) and the Advanced Launch System (ALS). The ALS became the National Launch System, then Spacelifter, in a very short time. Its successor today is the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. These launchers originated in an air force program called the Heavy Lift Vehicle (HLV) whose purpose was to put pieces of the Strategic Defense Initiative into space. When some members of Congress objected to the Defense Department, rather than NASA, becoming the agency most involved in future launch vehicle development, the Reagan administration proposed a joint NASA-Defense program, the Advanced Launch System, which primarily involved technology development. The intent was to make the ALS a successor to the shuttle and the Titan IV. One of the main focuses of ALS was NASA’s development of a new engine, the Space Transportation Main Engine (STME). Then, in 1991, the Bush administration instituted the National Launch System (NLS), a joint NASA-Defense project to create a family of three heavy launchers using the STME. The largest would have serviced the space station. NASA and the Pentagon estimated the cost of the NLS to be about $11 billion, revised in 1992 to $12.2 billion. NLS defenders claimed that it would reduce launch costs, while its critics pointed to its exorbitant (and rising) price tag.3 Meanwhile, support for NASP waned. NASA Administrator Goldin limited his agency’s annual program contribution to $75 million, while the Defense Department set its NASP funding level at no more than twice that of NASA.4 That decision left the ALS and NLS as the primary source of hostility toward the SSTO program. Bill Gaubatz, DC-X program manager, found the animosity “interesting.” There was an interesting dynamic going on at the time between the SDIO project and the NASP project office, and interestingly, with the National Launch System. It was interesting. It was a little amusing because here was this fifty million dollar program [DC-X] that these billion dollar...

Share