Taking the High Ground

When President Bush's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy contemplated why Americans ought to return to the moon, one reason kept coming to mind: technological advancement and the national security benefits that can be gained from it. This is not the era of Sputnik 1, commission member Carly Fiorina acknowledged during deliberations last May. But ticking off a list of other countries with lunar aspirations-China and India among them-the Hewlett-Packard Co. chairwoman and chief executive officer added, "It's important for us to be the first to protect, candidly, our military, economic and political leadership in the world."

It is difficult to find anyone in a position of authority at NASA or the Defense Department who interprets President Bush's Jan. 14 speech announcing U.S. space exploration goals as the first shot in a new space race. But since the initiative requires a technology push unlike any seen since Project Apollo in the 1960s, it promises to draw the government's civilian and space organizations into closer cooperation-closer than they have been since the days of the first moon landings.

That cooperation continually has raised concern that NASA is a front for clandestine military operations. From 1985 to 1992, for instance, NASA's space shuttles flew eight secret military missions. That they deployed satellites was obvious, but most details remain classified. From a few leaked tidbits and a little public information, space observers pieced together some imaginative stories, such as the one about shuttle astronauts who released a spy satellite then faked its failure to throw off enemies. The image of NASA as a Pentagon front persists, particularly overseas. "As soon as the exploration vision was announced, I had European reporters calling, telling me, "This is NASA doing [Defense's] bidding,' " says Theresa Hitchens, vice president of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based security think tank. "I don't think [Defense] needs NASA to cover up its activities. It has Top Secret classification to do that."

NASA's partnership with the Defense Department is as old as the space agency itself. The bulk of the nation's space work was done by the Defense establishment before the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act established separate and independent civil and military space programs. NASA took its first 8,000 employees and a $100 million budget from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. It was civilian, too, but worked closely with the military services to foster aviation progress. NASA took its first projects-Vanguard (which produced the world's longest-orbiting man-made satellite), two lunar probes and a rocket engine-from the Navy and the Air Force and the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency. The fledgling space agency also took control of the Army's contractor-operated Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which had been developing weapons. NASA eventually acquired the 4,500-person Army Ballistic Missile Agency, for which German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was developing the Saturn booster. By 1962, NASA had crowded the Air Force out of the human space flight business.

Since 1997, the relationship has been managed by a committee of leaders known as the Partnership Council. The heads of NASA, U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Space Command, Defense's research and engineering directorate, and the National Reconnaissance Office meet quarterly to set the direction of collective work. The relationship has not always been as amicable as it appears to be today. "It would be fair to say that there was some resentment within the Department of Defense over the things that were then moved over to the civil agency," says retired Maj. Gen. Robert Dickman, the Air Force undersecretary's deputy for military space.

Adding insult to injury at the highest levels, the Air Force's Atlas and Titan boosters were pressed into service for NASA's manned Mercury and Gemini programs. Existing Defense infrastructure was used to track the manned launches in flight and to recover the capsules and astronauts from the ocean at the end of the missions. The dichotomy created tension in the engineering ranks. On either side of the divide, they were doing the same kinds of work. "Nobody wanted to be on separate paths," says Dickman. "Fast forward to 2004: A lot of that same dynamic hasn't changed."

The love-hate undertones are palpable. "Looking at it from the [Defense Department] end of things, the relationship with NASA is sort of bungee cords," observes Hitchens. "Sometimes, even their missions are at odds," she says, noting the Missile Defense Agency's acknowledgement in a recent environmental impact statement that planned tests of ballistic missile interceptors will leave explosive bolts, small pieces of hardware and other debris in low-Earth orbit. That's where the International Space Station is located, and protecting it from a potentially catastrophic encounter with space junk is one of NASA's toughest challenges. But NASA is compelled to snuggle up to Defense, according to Hitchens, because its budget pales in comparison with the Pentagon's. "Military space programs across-the-board continue to grow, and their budgets continue to grow, despite the fact some are well behind schedule and well above costs," she says. "That drives NASA to look at its own priorities in ways that allow it to piggyback onto the military budget. So you see some renovation of closer cooperation in things such as hypersonics."

Hypersonics-the science of high-speed flight above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound-does not apply directly to the Bush exploration initiative. But NASA can take credit for the world speed record, Mach 9.8, set by the X-43A, an experimental jet-powered aircraft, Nov. 16. NASA continues pursuing hypersonic air-breathing scramjet technology because Defense needs it to improve aircraft engine performance, according to O'Keefe. "We both have common objectives that can be met by doing this mutually," he says. Dickman says basic hypersonics research must continue if there ever is to be a fully reusable, quick-turnaround space vehicle. "We've had on a requirements list from Air Force Space Command for as long as I can remember some kind of space maneuverable vehicle," he says. Such a craft could deliver small payloads to orbit, or conventional weapons to global targets within a few hours.

Technology Is Blind

To O'Keefe, a technology with dual military and civilian uses is a marriage made in heaven. "Technology is absolutely blind to how you ultimately employ it," he says. With two notable exceptions-weapons and human life-support systems-the Defense Department and NASA apply fundamentally identical technologies to solve distinctly different problems. Whether on propulsion or electrical power systems or large space structures, each side is doing the same kinds of research. The differences are found in the actual products. "Technology is technology," says Dickman, quoting Newton's second law of motion: "Force equals [mass times acceleration]. It doesn't change."

Sharing is allowed. In fact, the Space Act requires it. So they collaborate, for the sake of efficiency and to reduce duplicated effort.

NASA's planned November test of a sophisticated autopilot system for missions to the moon and Mars was, for example, also intended to gather technical insight for a 2006 satellite refueling test the Defense Department plans. NASA wanted to show that two spacecraft can rendezvous and dock using only computers and sensors. Russia developed the automated capability and uses it when Soyuz crew taxis and Progress supply ships visit the International Space Station. U.S. astronauts, however, have piloted their own linkups since the start of the space race. The $100 million mission of a spacecraft called DART-for Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology-was to be accomplished entirely without human intervention.

Guided by a computer, not an astronaut, DART was to track down an old military communications satellite 500 miles above Earth, close to within 16 feet and fly circles around it. NASA will need such technology in 2008 for a robotic mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope and later for in-space assembly of large exploration vessels from a collection of smaller parts launched into Earth orbit. The mission was postponed indefinitely because of a technical concern in mid-November. When DART does fly, DARPA will apply the mission results to the design of its Orbital Express Space Operations Architecture, in which two satellites will join up and one will fill the other's fuel tank.

O'Keefe is proudest of NASA's partnership with the Navy, where he had a brief stint as secretary in 1992 and 1993. He sought the help of Navy submariners to prepare NASA's ambitious Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission. Targeted for launch in 2015, it will be the first NASA probe to employ nuclear electric propulsion and the Navy experts are helping to design the necessary reactor. Although the orbiter is a robot spacecraft, it will demonstrate the propulsion technology NASA eventually plans to use to send humans to Mars and beyond. "It is going to revolutionize the way we do business; I am absolutely certain of it," says the NASA administrator.

Despite the similarities in their work, both sides typically procure and maintain their own infrastructure, everything from satellite chassis to rocket engine test stands. The separateness allows for a "diversity of views" that Dickman appreciates. "Do we need the scale, do we need the breadth we have today? Are there better ways to spend money? That's always a budget debate," he says. "But are they literally lying on top of each other doing the same thing? They're not."

Both NASA and Defense are developing space-based radar systems. Their different missions-NASA wants to investigate what's below Earth's surface and Defense wants pictures of moving targets on the surface-dictate that they must build different satellites instead of sharing one. One notable break from tradition: the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System. NASA, Defense and the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will be partners in a common weather satellite program after 2010.

Getting There From Here

When it comes to space transportation, the division between civil and military space activities is least distinct. President Clinton attempted to draw the line in 1994, putting NASA in charge of developing shuttle-style and other reusable launch vehicles and leaving Defense with responsibility for expendable rockets that are launched once and discarded in space. Intent on change, President Bush's space advisers have been reviewing the Clinton policy for many months. "The reality is, it changed a long time ago. A lot of the programs that we've been doing were not pristinely separated," says Dickman. He expects the line will be "fuzzied up" officially in the reworked directive, which is expected to be made public soon.

The new policy will end the long-standing "bifurcation" in space transportation, according Lori Garver, a former NASA strategic planner who advised the John Kerry presidential campaign on space policy. "New development of vehicles will be the purview of the Defense Department and that is something new for NASA," she said during a February public policy roundtable sponsored by the Washington-based George C. Marshall Institute. "I have followed this for a long time and I believe this is as significant as the doctrine of transformation has been at the Department of Defense."

Putting Defense squarely in charge could be a good idea, given that reusable launch vehicle projects done jointly with NASA have gone nowhere. "You like to think there are places where they can work together and the nation is better served, but I think history tells us to be careful. Maybe there should be some ground rules about avoiding projects where one agency is going to be dependent on the success of the other," says Randall Correll, a senior scientist with Science Applications International Corp. in McLean, Va., who spent 1998 to 2001 at NASA, first as an Air Force liaison and then as part of the Bush administration's transition team.

The space shuttle is a classic example of the common transportation technologies NASA and Defense have pursued together to a disappointing end. NASA designed the shuttle to certain military specifications because, until 1986, Defense had planned to quit launching satellites on rockets and use the shuttle instead. "It didn't turn out to be as reusable and affordable as planned. Then, when [the space shuttle] Challenger [disaster] happened, the shuttle was down for a few years and that was a real problem for national security space," says Correll. Since then, Defense has pursued a variety of programs designed to upgrade expendable rockets and reduce launch costs, some with NASA, some without.

It finally settled on the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, which was to save 25 percent by improving and modernizing Lockheed Martin Atlas and Boeing Delta rockets that have been in use since the 1960s. Atlas 5s and Delta 4s continue flying and are among candidates for use in NASA's exploration initiative.

The government has been trying since the 1980s to develop a cheaper, safer replacement for the space shuttle. NASA and Defense worked together on projects such as the X-30 National Aerospace Plane in the 1980s and the X-33 and X-34 technology demonstrators from 1996 to 2001. All consumed billions of dollars before being abandoned for budget overruns or the lack of enabling technology.

NASA's most recent and mysterious effort with a Defense association, the Orbital Space Plane, was terminated soon after the president announced the new U.S. exploration goals. Conceived during O'Keefe's first year as NASA administrator, OSP would have done double duty as taxi and lifeboat for International Space Station crews. Its flight demonstrator was to be the X-37, created by Boeing Phantom Works for the Air Force and NASA in 1999 to study the feasibility of an unpiloted reusable space plane. The X-37 is a 120 percent scale derivative of the X-40, an unpowered version of a space plane laden with weapons the military envisions loitering in Earth orbit for up to a year. The Air Force stopped supporting the X-37 project after 2001, saying it was not specifically designed to demonstrate military technologies while orbiting. Earlier this year, NASA decided the space plane would do little to further its exploration goals and stopped work. NASA shifted its technology focus to a crew exploration vehicle fortified with life-support, communications, thermal protection and other systems suitable for trips beyond Earth orbit. It transferred the X-37 to DARPA in September.

Fiscal realities will continue to push NASA and Defense together in the technology arena. To stay in touch with spaceships traveling beyond Earth orbit, NASA likely will make use of laser communications being developed for the military's Transformational Satellite program. Dickman foresees the two working together on the rocket that will send humans back to the moon, and maybe on to Mars. "By the time NASA works their way through their exploration architecture we will not be able to afford two separate next-generation launch systems," says Dickman. "Whatever we do is going to be a synergy of what we need, what they need and what the country, at the technical level, can produce."