Orion Contractors To Get Major Funding Boost
Frank Morring, Jr. 
Contractors working on NASA's Orion crew exploration vehicle and its Ares I launcher will get more money this spring -- about $1.8 billion for Lockheed Martin's work on Orion alone -- to account for schedule and design changes since the human-rated spacecraft developments started in 2006.
"We've matured the design substantially, so there will be new costs because we made it harder to build," Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley says, characterizing the Orion contract modification only as "substantial."
Pending changes in the Ares I contracts to ATK, Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne will reflect schedule slips forced by inadequate funding in fiscal 2009-10, as well as "some minor design improvements or tweaks that we've discovered along the way on the engine and on the solids," Hanley said April 2.
The contractors have been working to a September 2013 initial operational capability (IOC) for the vehicles that will take the place of the space shuttle fleet in delivering U.S. astronauts to orbit. But Hanley said there has "always been a funding challenge in '09 and '10" to keep that original IOC on track, and the money isn't there as a result of past congressional continuing resolutions, which kept spending relatively flat.
Even $400 million in FY '09 stimulus package money for exploration hasn't officially been allocated to the Constellation Program, which is developing all of the post-shuttle human-spaceflight vehicles on NASA's plate. Hanley said once the money is allocated, his program will use it to buy long-lead items and engineering development hardware to keep as close as possible to the schedule.
Right now Constellation is holding a March 2015 "commitment date" IOC for Orion/Ares I, but an internal target that was a year earlier now matches the external commitment.
Although the agency is still considering an extra prototype flight-test -- dubbed Ares I-X prime -- as a way to advance IOC by retiring some development risk a little earlier, Hanley said it isn't likely to happen because of the cost of the one-time test.
"We want to devote the lion's share of our resources after [the Ares I-X test at the end of August] to the main-line system," he said.
Photo: Jefferson Morris
