1993 &eakinq Neun Award Winrrcr

llelense llaily.
The Daily
TEURSDAT NOVEMBER 3, 1994

of Aerospace and Defense

Page

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37th Year, Vol. 185, No. 2!i

AUGUSTINE GIVES LITTI.E HOPE FOR NEIV I,AUNCH VEHICLE

Martin Marietta chief Norman Augustine, offering a reality check to the space industry,
warned yesterday that NASA's tight budget cannot support construction of a new reusable space launch vehicle. "There will be plenty of money to start from but there probably won't be enough money to finish it," Augustine told the Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon yesterday. "I'm very optimistic there are breakthroughs out there, I'm just not optimistic about our ability to pay for them." Nor should NASA expect the private sector to immediately assist its effort to identiry cheaper routes to space, he said. "If you look at how much it costs to develop a new launch vehicle...the gains are at such a low rate and so far in the future that you just don't get your money back unless you have huge reductions in cost-per-pound-to-orbit." A major question in the access to space debate thus far has been how to finance the next generation vehicle. But Augustine would not even begin work on that vehicle unless it could deliver "a true breakthrough" in terms of cost and reliability over today's systems. Since the NASA budget is unlikely to grow enough to support a new vehicle, he said, the space agency should begin examining a new main engine for launch vehicles and spend a "modest amount of money" on improving existing launch vehicles. "When [the engine] gets to an age of maturity you ought to start the launch vehicle. But to start everything at the same time is a mistake we've made too often in the past'' NASA officials take a different view of the new launch vehicle situation. Augustine is "probably not alone in his view, but there are an equal number of private companies who are available [to carry NASA's plans for a new vehicle]," Jack lre, special assistant for access to space, told Defense Daily yesterday. "There's no basis for industry to be reluctant over the next five years of this program...It's their program." ke met with more than 20 industry officials Tuesday to discuss NASA's plans for the vehicle, which the agency will deliver to the White House today. NASA was required to formulate those plans by the White House's National Space Transportation Study, released last summer. NASA is seeking the administration's permission to request $127 million in FY'96 for reusable launch technologies (Defense Daily, Oct. 3l). "The most desirable situation would be that at the end of the decade, private industry could pay for development," I-ee said, adding that NASA was working diligently to find ways to soften the risk and liability of launch development for industry.

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