ORBITAL SPACE PLANE BLAST OFF! NASA PUSHING AHEAD WITH SPACECRAFT PLAN.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - Less than three weeks after the Columbia tragedy grounded the U.S. space shuttle fleet, NASA is expected to release to aerospace companies its requirements for a new spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

And the companies are gearing up: Boeing is contemplating an enlarged version of the unmanned space plane it is already building in Palmdale, and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences and its partner Northrop Grumman are considering a wingless ``lifting body'' craft.

Also interested is Lockheed Martin, which was building the unmanned X-33 rocket plane in Palmdale before NASA canceled the $1.2 billion program in 2001.

While NASA has cut high-technology space programs in the past and many uncertainties surround the agency as its officials try to learn what destroyed Columbia during its Feb. 1 re-entry, the Orbital Space Plane program - as the new plan is called - will move forward.

``We've been told to implement the plan,'' OSP program manager Dennis Smith said in an interview last week. ``We are focusing in on the Orbital Space Plane to ensure ourselves we have alternative transportation for crew and cargo to the space station.''

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is looking to have the new spacecraft ready for use as an emergency rescue vehicle for the International Space Station by 2010. By 2012, NASA hopes to have a booster rocket rated safe for humans to allow the Orbital Space Plane to take astronauts to the space station.

``We need to create a long-term crew return capability to complement and augment the Soyuz vehicles now provided by our Russian partners,'' NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told Congress last week. ``We intend to build on that new return capability to create a crew transfer system that will allow us to rotate crews on the International Space Station independently from the space shuttle.''

The new spacecraft, however, is envisioned as augmenting, not replacing, the space shuttle fleet.

It would be one-third of a three-pronged effort by NASA to keep humans in space through 2020.

The second part will be improving the shuttle's reliability and durability, though how that will change in light of the Columbia accident investigation remains to be seen.

The third part is developing new technologies that will ultimately be used in an undetermined replacement for the space shuttle.

``We thought this plan was a good one when we proposed it, and we believe that it is not only valid today but even more compelling to pursue,'' O'Keefe said.

NASA is planning to seek $550 million in the 2004 budget for the space plane. That funding will pay for advanced design studies and support flight demonstrations at Edwards Air Force Base of Boeing's X-37, an unmanned, experimental craft that will test technologies to be used on the spacecraft.

After NASA releases its space plane requirements this week, early next year it plans to request formal proposals from aerospace companies.

NASA has not decided whether it will immediately select one contractor to develop the spacecraft or whether it will seek a competition between two or more competing designs.

By 2006, NASA hopes to have selected one contractor and complete what it calls the critical design review - the point at which about 90 percent of the design and 70 percent of the working drawings are complete, allowing construction to start.

There will be three or four years of flight test work, Smith said.

``It's not going to be easy, but it's not like we're doing the impossible,'' Smith said of the timetable.

The new spacecraft must be low-maintenance so that it does not distract the International Space Station crew from its work and it must have a reliability of at least 99 percent - meaning it would be available for immediate use 99 days out of 100, NASA says.

While the name of the program is the Orbital Space Plane, the craft might not have wings. It could be a winged spacecraft or space capsule or a wingless craft similar to the ``lifting body'' experimental planes flown at Edwards in the 1960s and 1970s.

The first of those lifting bodies once was familiar, in an odd way, to millions of American television viewers. Film of the 1967 crash of the NASA's M2-F2 at Edwards became part of the opening credits to the 1970s series ``Six Million Dollar Man.''

As part of the effort to develop the Orbital Space Plane, NASA awarded a $301 million contract to Boeing's Phantom Works division in November. The money will pay to continue development of the X-37 test craft now about two-thirds complete in Palmdale and to build a more advanced version to be tested in space.

Engineless, controlled by computer and 27 1/2 feet long, X-37 test craft will be dropped from a modified B-52 bomber over Edwards to show how it lands in approach; landing tests are scheduled for next year.

Orbital flights are scheduled for 2006.

NASA has brought in former Dryden Flight Research Center director Ken Szalai to head up an external review team that will watch over and provide guidance on the spacecraft's development.

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(1 -- 3 -- color -- ran in AV edition only) NASA has plans to replace the aging shuttle with a newly designed orbital space plane. Vehicle concepts are varied, including ``piggy-back'' designs to get the orbiter into the upper atmosphere, using both jet and rocket engines and the tried-and-true expendable rocket booster.

Jon Gerung/Staff Artist

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