NASA’s GRAIL twin robotic lunar probes are set for launch tomorrow morning and the weather is looking a little better.

The launch was scrubbed on Thursday because of upper level winds. NASA was going to try to launch today, but wanted to look at propulsion system data from the detanking operation on Thursday. They concluded everything is OK.

The forecast is for 60 percent favorable weather at launch time. Two “instantaneous” launch windows are available: 8:29:45 and 9:08:52.

SpacePolicyOnline.com has obtained a copy of the NASA charts that apparently are the source of data for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article that has everyone in space policy circles abuzz.

In a story on Wednesday, the WSJ asserted that the White House has “sticker shock” over the potential cost of NASA’s exploration program to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. The newspaper said it was based on NASA charts showing NASA’s current cost estimate for the program versus higher projected costs if the program is accelerated to achieve earlier results. The story prompted a scathing statement by Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) calling the figures cited by the WSJ “contrived numbers” that are part of a “campaign to undermine America’s manned space program.”

The charts— labeled “ESD Integration, Budget Availability Scenarios” — do not reveal the motivation for their existence or who created them, other than the NASA logo on each of the 26 pages. They map out the budget and schedule details of five different scenarios. All assume the first flight of a 70 metric ton (mT) version of the Space Launch System (SLS) in 2017, but milestone dates for the 70mT SLS with a crew and for the 130 mT version of the SLS and flight rates differ in the various scenarios. In short they are:

• Case 1: the President’s budget (one flight every two years, 70 mT SLS in 2017, 70 mT SLS with crew in 2021, 130 mT SLS no earlier than 2030)
• Case 2: the President’s budget with an escalation after FY2017 (same as Case 1, but with one flight every year beginning in 2023);
• Case 3: the “Senate Authorization Act,” a reference to the 2010 NASA Authorization Act that originated in the Senate (one flight per year, 70mT SLS in 2017, 70 mT SLS with crew in 2018, and 130 mT SLS in 2021)
• Case 4a: the Senate Authorization Act plus escalation after FY2017 (same as Case 3, but two flights per year beginning in 2022 and a $2.1 billion wedge for in-space elements); and
• Case 4b: the Senate Authorization Act plus escalation after FY2017 (same as Case 4a, but one flight per year and a $4.5 billion wedge for in-space elements).

The cost through 2025 for each of those scenarios, in “real year dollars” (i.e. escalated for inflation), is shown both for “full cost” and for “procurements only” as follows:

• $41.4 billion full cost, $35.2 billion procurement only (based on a preliminary NASA cost estimate from June 27, 2011)
• $44.7 billion full cost, $37.3 billion procurement only
• $57.9 billion full cost, $50.9 billion procurement only
• $62.5 biliion full cost, $55.4 billion procurement only
• $62.5 billion full cost, $55.4 billion procurement only

“Full cost” generally means that it includes agency costs such as salaries for civil servants that are not included in procurements from outside contractors.

During a luncheon speech to the Space Transportation Association (STA) yesterday, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said that the space program is one of limitless possibilities and, for example, there were “a thousand or so” permutations of possibilities for a heavy lift launch vehicle that the agency has studied over the years. In a speech about “decision fatigue,” he asked rhetorically whether having so many options is such a good thing.

Why these particular scenarios were chosen for this budget analysis and shared with the WSJ and how many similar analyses exist comparing other possibilities remain unclear.

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations (HEO), said today that he is “very confident” that Russia’s Soyuz rocket will be cleared for launching crews into space before the International Space Station (ISS) would have to be destaffed.

Speaking at a Space Transportation Association (STA) luncheon today, Gerstenmaier steered clear of the topics most people in attendance probably wanted to hear about – the Space Launch System, the new HEO Mission Directorate, commercial crew. Instead, he presented a very interesting and sometimes humorous discussion of “decision fatigue” both in the context of one’s own life and in the lives of organizations. Later, however, he answered a few questions about the human spaceflight program.

With regard to staffing the ISS and getting the Soyuz rocket recertified for launching crews, he pointed out that if the Soyuz rocket had failed at the same point in its trajectory with a Soyuz spacecraft aboard, instead of the robotic Progress cargo spacecraft, the crew could have made a safe ballistic return to Earth. If the launch vehicle had failed a few seconds later, they could have aborted to orbit. While they would not have been able to reach the ISS, they could have made a “more normal” landing from orbit. Thus, for a crewed mission, such a launch failure would be more important from a mission success standpoint than safety.

Indeed, a Soyuz spacecraft did fail to attain orbit in 1975. Called the “April 5^th Anomaly” or “Soyuz 18A,” a two-man Soviet crew intended to dock with the Salyut 4 space station landed in Siberia instead because of a third-stage failure. They were safely recovered. The Soyuz spacecraft has encountered a number of anomalies over the more than 40 years it has been in use, including two that ended in fatalities – Soyuz 1 in 1967 and Soyuz 11 in 1971. There was another close call in 1983 when the Soyuz launch vehicle caught fire on the launch pad and the crew was pulled away by the emergency abort tower, landing 3 kilometers away. The two-man “Soyuz T-10A” crew survived and each flew on subsequent missions.

Gerstenmaier’s point was that from a safety standpoint, if the type of failure that doomed Progress M-12M occurred on a crewed flight, the crew would have been OK. But it would have mission failure because the crew would not have reached the ISS.

He also stressed that the ISS program would be in the same predicament even if the space shuttle was still available. The Soyuz spacecraft not only takes crews to and from the ISS, but they remain docked at the ISS as lifeboats. Without Soyuz spacecraft, there would be no lifeboats, so crews could not remain for long duration missions anyway.

It should be noted, however, that if the shuttle were still flying, short missions could be flown while the shuttle remained docked with the ISS, even if the long duration missions had to be put on hold.

Gerstenmaier said that the Russians had “outbriefs” today on their current understanding of what went wrong on Progress M-12M, but he offered no details. A Babel Fish translation of a statement from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, today refers to a blockage that caused the gas generator of the third stage engine to fail, attributing it to a “manufacturing defect” that is “random.”

Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) issued a scathing statement today on what they call the “Campaign to Undermine America’s Manned Space Program.”

Referring to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story yesterday, the Senators complained that the Obama Administration’s “budget office” — the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — continues to keep the independent cost assessment of the Space Launch System (SLS) and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle by Booz Allen “under wraps” while a “wildly inflated set of NASA cost numbers was invented, based on an imaginary ‘acceleration’ of SLS development.” Those “contrived numbers” were “leaked” to the WSJ they assert.

They stress that “No one has proposed to accelerate development,” calling it a “convenient myth.” What they want is only to follow what was agreed upon in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, an approach they say has been “validated repeatedly.”

The delay of the GRAIL launch to tomorrow morning means that NASA is cancelling a scheduled briefing on the Internatiional Space Station (ISS) National Lab award.

The ISS National Lab award press conference had been scheduled for 9:30 am EDT tomorrow from Kennedy Space Center, right around the time for the next attempt to launch GRAIL. NASA encourages those who are interested to visit the national lab’s website at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/nlab/index.html or follow it on Twitter @ISS_NatLab.

UPDATE 2: The launch has been scrubbed for 9:16 today as well due to upper level winds. They will try again tomorrow morning. The launch windows open 4 minutes earlier each day. First opportunity tomorrow is 8:33:25 am and second is 9:12:31.

UPDATE: The 8:37 launch opportunity has been scrubbed because of upper level winds. They will try for the 9:16 am window today. Stay tuned. Follow us on Twitter: @SpcPlcyOnline

ORIGINAL STORY: NASA is on track to launch the GRAIL spacecraft at 8:37 this morning.

At 7:44 am, NASA reported that clouds in the area had not thickened, giving them cautious optimism that the launch can proceed. Watch live on NASA TV.

The GRAIL mission is a pair of spacecraft that will make a detailed map of the Moon’s gravity field, providing clues as to the Moon’s interior.

The National Research Council (NRC) today released a study assessing how large the NASA astronaut corps should be now that the space shuttle program has ended. It concluded that NASA may be cutting the size of the corps too deeply and supports retaining the T-38 training aircraft used by the astronauts.

Noting that the size of the astronaut corps has diminished from almost 150 people in 2000 to 61 in May 2011, the report cites the many uncertainties that must be taken into account when rightsizing the corps: “Viewed as a supply chain, astronaut selection and training are very sensitive to critical shortfalls because of the long lead times and long recovery time between missions, and because astronauts, trained for specific roles and missions, cannot be easily interchanged.”

Thus, it concluded that “the currently projected minimum target size for the active Astronaut Corps poses a risk to the U.S. investment in human spaceflight capabilities” because it does not take into account “unexpected increases in attrition, or commercial, exploration, and new mission development tasks.”

The NRC specifically recommended that NASA factor in a higher “reserve” when determining the number of NASA astronauts that are needed.

NASA uses a theoretical model to determine the “minimum manifest requirements,” or how many astronauts it needs. The model is based on the number of astronauts who are in a post-flight reconditioning period, plus the number on-orbit, plus program spaceflight opportunities with a 5-year rotation. It then adds a reserve factor, which in the past was 50 percent, but recently was lowered to 25 percent for budgetary reasons, according to the report.

That model does not include “real-world constraints,” however, such as needed skill mix, medical disqualification, or the desired pairing of inexperienced and experienced astronauts, the NRC concluded. Nor does it take into account “new sources of uncertainty” such as a “relatively new medical condition” — papilledema, a swelling of the optic disk – afflicting astronauts returning from long duration missions. Thus, the NRC recommends that NASA return to a higher reserve factor when calculating the number of astronauts needed, though it did not specify what level should be used.

The committee also reviewed the need for NASA to retain astronaut training and simulation facilities and aircraft. One particularly controversial topic is whether the fleet of T-38N aircraft in which the astronauts train is still needed for what NASA calls spaceflight readiness training (SFRT). The NRC concluded that the aircraft should be retained because they teach critical decision-making skills in an operational environment:

“High-performance aircraft provide conditions including crew disorientation and rapid fluctuation in G-forces, under which the flight crew must carry out complex tasks in a stressful and potentially life-threatening environment. This combination of unique environments, demand for rapid, critical decision making, and historical evidence convinced the committee that SFRT provides experienced-based training that cannot be duplicated by current, or to the best of the committee’s knowledge, projected alternative techniques or technologies.”

The NRC committee was co-chaired by Fred Gregory and Joe Rothenberg. Gregory is a former astronaut and former NASA Deputy Administrator. Rothenberg is a former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight and former Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.