AIAA San Francisco Section Newsletter
October 1994

National Space Transportation Roundtable
Looking for a New Approach

Brenda Forman

	It was Wednesday morning, 14 September 1994, in 
Washington, D.C., and the National Space Society was hosting 
the "NASA/DoD National Space Transportation Round Table for 
Reusable Launch Vehicles."
	It was a very interesting morning.
	Confronted with a couple of major government customers 
and a roomful of press, participants in such large, public 
affairs sometimes opt for caution rather than frankness.  
This group didn't.  I don't know if the result will be to 
break the logjam that has afflicted our space launch policy 
for upward of a decade now, but the issues were definitely 
aired fair and square over the morning.
	The meeting's purpose was to ask some thirty heavy-
hitters from the space industry and the government, plus 
intriguing new participants such as the investment banking 
community, for input and ideas that NASA and DoD could 
incorporate into the "90-day reports" they both owe the White 
House, saying how they plan to implement the responsibilities 
placed on them by the White House's recently released 
National Space Transportation Policy.
	Everybody agreed that we need 1) a next-generation 
vehicle and 2) a radically new approach to developing it, 
inasmuch as our launch policy paralysis has become a pretty 
classic case of Catch-22:
	-The government cannot (or will not) afford the 
multi-billion-dollar price tag to develop this 
vehicle via a traditional procurement.
	- Industry cannot afford to do it alone.
	- The investment banking community says there's 
commercial funding available to do it but 
only if the government  provides 1) a basic, assured 
market in the form of launch guarantees and 2) 
termination liability in case the government changes 
its mind.
	-NASA and DoD are both deeply uneasy about signing 
up to any such guarantee until they are very sure the 
vehicle will work as advertised.
	-Meanwhile, almost everybody seems to disagree over 
what the technical risks really are and what it 
would take to convince ourselves they are safely 
under control.
	Indeed, the meeting repeatedly pivoted on the question 
of risk.  At one end of the spectrum, Lockheed's Skunk Works, 
represented by Lockheed CEO Dan Tellep, believes that the 
technology is ready to go, with only relatively brief 
"maturing" in a preliminary development phase.  At the other 
end, Cong. Dana Rohrabacher (D-CA) insisted we should go 
"step by step" by building an "X-32" plane to prove the 
technology.  NASA, McDonnell-Douglas CEO John McDonnell, and 
Rockwell COO Kent Black agreed.
	Intertwined with the question of risk was the equally 
knotty question of timing.  Dick Scott, the Transportation 
Department representative, insisted that the U.S. needed to 
have a new competitive launcher flying by the year 2000.  
That is when the agreements with China and Russia, limiting 
the number of western payloads they may launch, expire and 
DoT wants the U.S. to be fully prepared to compete 
effectively in an unconstrained international launch 
marketplace.
	Prospective customers agreed -- although for very 
different reasons.  Describing himself as "a species long 
thought to be extinct, that is, the customer," Ed Tuck, Vice 
Chairman of Teledesic, declared that there wasn't time for 
basic research.  He noted that his company is planning a 
constellation of some 1000 satellites, not counting what his 
competition would be planning.  If an affordable vehicle were 
available, it would have a market so hefty as to make 
government launch guarantees largely secondary.
	NASA and others worried about technical risk, however, 
were unconvinced that the risks can be confidently limited so 
rapidly.  NASA maintained that the only way to proceed on a 
solid footing is through a thoroughgoing risk reduction 
program, involving a subscale demonstrator to prove out the 
technologies whose maturity NASA doubts.
	Meanwhile, Wolfgang Demisch of Bankers Trust Security 
stated that a subscale demonstrator wasn't "bankable," 
because the only way to attract commercial funds was to field 
a full-scale, revenue-producing vehicle.
	And so it went -- back and forth, adventurousness and 
prudence, innovation and the tried-and-true.  As I said, a 
very interesting morning. Meetings like this are for airing 
the issues, not for arriving at firm decisions, so there's no 
way of predicting what impact it might have on the paralysis 
afflicting our space launch policy.  But is was emphatically 
a step in the right direction.  Possibly the most arresting 
summation came from Shelley Harrison, Chairman of Spacehab.  
"If this was a venture capital proposal," he told the room, 
"I'd look at it and say, well, the U.S. Government has lots 
of satellites to launch, and so does the commercial customer.  
We have company with the technology, and we have a company 
ready to invest.  There's a deal to be made here!"
	Sure seems that way, doesn't it?