Reinventing History

Redesign Is Seen for Next Craft, NASA Aides Say, NY Times

“By drawing on existing technology, the plan is meant to speed President Bush’s goal of revitalizing human space exploration. At the same time, it would upend the strategy of NASA’s previous administrator, Sean O’Keefe, who wanted to discard the shuttle in favor of military rockets, which would have required costly upgrades to make them safe for humans. And their payloads would have been relatively small, requiring strings of multiple rocket launchings.”

Editor’s note: There are some serious errors in this paragraph in Bill Broad’s article: Mike Griffin is far more eager to get rid of the space shuttle than Sean O’Keefe ever was; no decision to use EELVs was ever made by O’Keefe; and Shuttle derived launch systems, such as are now being proposed, have been under study since the moment the VSE was announced. Indeed, if you go to this 17 Feb 2004 presentation, made by Mike Kostelnick just one month after the President’s VSE speech, you will see SRB/CEV and ET/Cargo launch systems pictured on slides 11 and 13.

Shuttle replacement to have familiar look, New Scientist

“The shuttle-derived launcher (SDL) is another break with the decisions of Griffin’s predecessor, Sean O’Keefe, who had favoured replacing the shuttle with bigger versions of existing “evolved expendable launch vehicles”.

Editor’s note: 6 Aug: It would seem that Jeff Hecht at New Scientist is under the same missimpression as to what happened before Mike Griffin arrived on the scene.

NASA’s New CEV Launcher to Maximize Use of Space Shuttle Components, SpaceRef

“Throughout most of 2004 and into the spring of 2005, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) conducted a detailed series of trade analyses of launch vehicle options for both manned CEV spacecraft and cargo requirements.”