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 NASA Chief Speeds Plan For Spacecraft
 
 By Guy Gugliotta
 
  Less than a month after taking the job, NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin is pushing an ambitious but risky plan to shave four years off the timetable for building a next-generation spaceship to replace the space shuttle, and wants to launch it with a crew by the end of 2010.
 
 The shuttle has not flown since the Columbia tragedy in February 2003, and even after safety modifications are completed and flights resume, the orbiter will not be able to get beyond "low Earth orbit" and will become obsolete as soon as construction of the international space station  is completed in 2010.
 
 NASA has planned for more than a year to build a new workhorse spacecraft to carry out President Bush's long-term vision for space exploration,  aimed at returning humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually sending them to Mars, but the initial strategy called for completion of the new spaceship by 2014. That would leave the United States without its own access to space for four years.
 
 Meanwhile, a bilateral arrangement allowing the United States to use the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for transportation to the space station expires next year.  Russians and their guests will continue to operate the space station.
 
 Griffin has frequently criticized, as have many members of Congress, a strategy that would cede U.S. preeminence in human space travel, and at his confirmation hearing last month he advocated building the new spacecraft faster to shrink the four-year gap or eliminate it altogether.
 
 He has moved quickly since his April 13 confirmation. Internal NASA documents and interviews with a number of NASA officials, industry contractors and other space experts show that an alternative plan to build the crew exploration vehicle  is evolving rapidly.
 
 The new strategy has virtually halted the original program NASA put in place 16 months ago to develop the spaceship and could cause additional upheaval as the agency struggles to ready the shuttle for its scheduled return to flight in July.
 
 To execute the new strategy, sources said, Griffin intends to assemble a small, Apollo-style team of NASA experts and scrap the current plan to have two civilian contractors compete for several years for the right to direct development of the exploration vehicle.
 
 Several sources said Griffin's initiative has put him at odds with retired Navy Rear Adm. Craig E. Steidle, the principal architect of the original plan, but Steidle said in a telephone interview that he sees "no change in the way the program is going to be managed" and denied that disagreements with Griffin might prompt him to resign.
 
 "We're on the same path," said Steidle, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems. "If there are rumors out there that we are differing on this, that is not true." He said he plans to leave NASA "some day," but "not in the short term."
 
 Many sources interviewed for this story declined to be identified, either because they were in sensitive positions as prospective NASA contractors, feared retribution as NASA employees or did not wish to take sides in an internal dispute.
 
 Griffin could not be reached for comment, but NASA spokesman Dean Acosta denied that the agency has any internal conflict. He said the agency leadership is working together to "find a way to close the gap."
 
 Steidle, a retired Navy fighter pilot and Defense Department procurement specialist, was hired by former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe in January 2004 to implement the Bush initiative, with development of the crew exploration vehicle  as the early centerpiece.
 
 On March 1, Steidle's office made a formal "request for proposals" to develop the spacecraft. NASA said it would select two proposals in August, fund their development for three years and have them compete in an unmanned "fly-off" in 2008, with the winning entry expected to be ready for human spaceflight by 2014.
 
 By spreading the costs over a number of years, NASA planned to bring the new spacecraft to the launch pad without ballooning the agency's slow-growth budgets. The president's $16.5 billion request for 2006 asks for $753 million for exploration vehicle development.
 
 The plan's clarity and Steidle's procurement expertise won plaudits from industry, but discontent has grown among some scientists and lawmakers who fret that storied NASA programs -- especially in earth science and aeronautics -- are being cut to fund the new initiative.
 
 Another key sticking point was the gap. When Bush outlined the moon-Mars initiative in a Jan. 14, 2004, speech, he said the shuttle would be retired by 2010 when the space station was finished, while the exploration vehicle would be ready only in 2014.
 
 "We can't allow that kind of hiatus," Senate science and space subcommittee Chairman Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said at a recent hearing, in a sentiment echoed by several lawmakers. "It is a national security threat to our country, and I intend to pursue everything I can to shorten that time frame."
 
 Hutchison and her colleagues found a ready ally in Griffin, who told senators during his confirmation hearing that the gap "seems unacceptable to me. . . . I do not believe that we wish to see a situation where the United States is dependent on any partner" for access to space.
 
 Barely two weeks later, Griffin trumped the Steidle plan with a new formulation. Instead of allowing two contractors to compete until 2008 to win the final contract, an internal NASA memo on April 29 said the two finalists would be named by the end of July and the winner would be chosen early next year. Several sources described Griffin's meetings with Steidle during this period as "stormy," but Steidle characterized them simply as "very professional dialogues."
 
 Also on April 29, Griffin announced in his own memo a broad review of the work done to date on the moon-Mars initiative. This "Exploration System Architecture Study," now underway, was to be directed by a "small number of core team members," the memo said, and would produce a report in mid-July.
 
 Once planners have the report, NASA would issue a "call for improvements" to the two contractors, the first memo said, and the final contract would reflect the changes in the architecture study.
 
 Finally, NASA announced on its procurement Web sites that it was canceling a request for outside proposals to integrate the exploration vehicle into a comprehensive development plan for the moon-Mars project. Instead, the announcement said, this work would be performed in-house. One source said Griffin canceled the proposal because it abdicated NASA's own "core competencies" and obligations as the nation's engine of space policy.
 
 Another source said the moves offered Griffin the opportunity to gather a small, closely focused  team, like the one that put the Apollo astronauts on the moon more than 30 years ago, to  pick a plan for implementing the moon-Mars initiative and "get it done."
 
 Steidle acknowledged that the new plan represents a change but said his personnel were participating fully in the architecture study. Far from excluding him, the study teams have "spent a lot of time in my office," he said. The accelerated plan to select a final contractor by year's end was simply aimed at "saving some time and some dollars," Steidle added.
 
 Several sources agreed that paying one contractor instead of two might help NASA avoid the real danger of coming up short of funding for the project. "If you want to do it faster," one said, "generally you're going to have to throw more money at it."
 
 By a large margin, the shuttle and space station routinely consume the biggest chunk of NASA's budget (39 percent this year and next), and costs have risen as flights were delayed and modifications made to the orbiters. Shuttle Discovery was originally expected to fly last September.
 
 Several sources noted that Griffin enjoys a reservoir of goodwill to help him over the budget hump in Congress but that inevitably the luster will wear off. "He's got some challenges, and he's got to make the budget work," one source said. "In fairness to him, he's a smart guy."
 
 
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