In his first speech to Congress, President Donald Trump mentioned the human spaceflight program, though with too little specificity to clarify what he has in mind for the U.S. space program.  Still, the fact that the space program was mentioned at all could be a positive indication that his Administration will support it against the backdrop of expected deep budget cuts for non-defense programs.

Word that Trump would say something about human spaceflight in his speech to a joint session of Congress tonight became public late this afternoon. 

The short sentence appears close to the end of the speech:  “American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.”

The space community is certain to dissect those words and try to divine their meaning — what worlds (is the Moon a “distant world”?), on what timeline, with the government and the private sector playing what roles — but useful analysis will have to await further information. 

A first step will be his FY2018 budget request.  A “budget blueprint” already has been delivered to agencies by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) providing guidance, but a detailed request will not be submitted to Congress for several weeks.  Overall, the Administration plans to request a $54 billion increase for defense programs, coupled with a $54 billion decrease for non-defense agencies like NASA. 

Deep cuts planned for the State Department and foreign aid have already created consternation in Congress, with Sen. Lindsey Graham, a fellow Republican, saying the budget request will be “dead on arrival.” 

The sentence does not resolve any of the issues about the future of the human spaceflight program, but at least signals that the President supports the overall concept.

NASA has named Lesa Roe as Acting Deputy Administrator and Erik Noble as Acting Chief of Staff.  The information appears on NASA’s website, but the agency made no public announcement about either appointment.  In addition, Lester Lyles has been named the new Chair of the NASA Advisory Council, also without public announcement.

Keith Cowing, editor of NASAWatch, first reported the story on February 25 under the title “Did NASA Use Wikipedia to Announce Lesa Roe is Acting Deputy Administrator?”  

The Roe and Noble positions are shown on NASA’s “about” website under “organization” and Lyles’ position is on the NAC website.  If one knows where to look, the information is publicly available, but one might have expected a formal announcement at least of the Acting Deputy Administrator appointment. 

Robert Lightfoot has been NASA’s Acting Administrator since the Trump Administration took office.  The Administrator and Deputy Administrator positions are political appointments, so Charlie Bolden and Dava Newman left on January 20 at noon when President Obama’s term ended.  Lightfoot’s usual job is NASA Associate Administrator, the third highest level position in the agency and the top civil servant.  Typically that person serves as Acting Administrator until a new political appointee is named.  A mechanical engineer, Lightfoot is a former Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and has a long career at the agency working on propulsion, especially for the space shuttle program.

NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot.  Photo credit: NASA

An electrical engineer, Roe’s usual job is Deputy Associate Administrator, teamed with Lightfoot.  Before moving to NASA Headquarters in 2014 to take that job, she was Director of NASA’s Langley Research Center.  Previously she was manager of the International Space Station Research Program at Johnson Space Center and served in several capacities at Kennedy Space Center, including as a manager and systems engineer for 38 space shuttle flights.  The date of her appointment as Acting Deputy Administrator is not posted on the NASA website.

NASA Acting Deputy Administrator Lesa Roe.  Photo credit:  NASA

Erik Noble previously had been identified as White House Senior Advisor at NASA.  It is not clear when he became Acting Chief of Staff.  He is an atmospheric scientist who worked at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York from 2007-2013 and served as a political data analyst for the Trump campaign’s data and voter outreach team according to his LinkedIn page.

NASA Acting Chief of Staff Erik Noble.  Photo credit:  Erik Noble’s LinkedIn page.

NAC provides advice to the NASA Administrator and its members and chair are chosen by the Administrator.  Ken Bowersox served as Acting Chair after Steve Squyres stepped down in April 2016.   It is not clear when Lyles was named to replace Bowersox, who, according to the NAC website, continues to be a member of NAC.

 
NASA Advisory Council Chair Gen. Lester Lyles (USAF, Ret.).  Photo credit:  Air Force website

A retired Air Force General, Lyles had been an ex officio member of NAC because he chaired the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  The chairs of ASEB and the Academies’ Space Studies Board (SSB) historically serve as ex officio members of NAC in a coordination role since ASEB and SSB also provide advice to NASA.  The Academies provide outside, strategic advice to the agency as compared with the internal, tactical advice provided by NAC.

Lyles’s term as chair of ASEB ended on December 31.  He was succeeded by Alan Epstein, vice president of technology and development at Pratt & Whitney.   At the same time, Fiona Harrison succeeded David Spergel as chair of SSB.  Harrison is the Benjamin M. Rosen professor of physics and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics and Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology.   Epstein and Harrison are currently listed as members, not ex officio members, of NAC and their affiliations with ASEB and SSB are omitted, but presumably that is an oversight.

Two top NASA human spaceflight officials explained today that the study they are conducting about whether it would be feasible to put a crew on the first flight of the new Space Launch System (SLS) is just that, a feasibility study.  It will lay out pros and cons, but not make a recommendation. Both said they have no preconceived decision about what the study will say.

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, and Bill Hill, Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development, spoke at a media teleconference this afternoon that had been announced just four hours earlier.

NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot announced last week that he was initiating a study to determine the feasibility of putting a crew on the first launch of the SLS, currently scheduled for late 2018.  The existing plan is for that launch to be an uncrewed systems test of SLS and the Orion spacecraft that is being designed to take crews beyond low Earth orbit to orbit the Moon and someday go to Mars.  That first uncrewed launch is designated Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1).  The second flight, EM-2, scheduled for no earlier than August 2021, would be the first to carry astronauts. 

The U.S. space shuttle is the only human spaceflight system ever launched that carried a crew on its first mission (STS-1 in 1981).  All other human spaceflight systems flown by the United States, Soviet Union/Russia and China have had uncrewed test flights first to obtain data to better understand system performance and thereby reduce risk.  Gerstenmaier spoke at a conference two weeks about the Loss of Crew (LOC) metric it uses to characterize the probability of a failure that could kill a crew.  He said that at the time of the first shuttle mission, models predicted the LOC at 1 in 500 to 1 5,000.  By the end of the program, after 30 years of experience that included two fatal accidents (Challenger and Columbia), they determined the actual risk for STS-1 had been 1 in 12.  The risk overall for the shuttle program was determined to have been 1 in 90.

Needless to say, the decision to assess the feasibility of placing a crew on the first SLS has raised eyebrows.  The media teleconference today appeared aimed at explaining that it is only a study and no decision has been made.  Gerstenmaier and Hill said it would look at the advantages and disadvantages of adding a crew, including the cost and schedule implications.  Gerstenmaier added that he did not know that it even would be a stand-alone study, but instead set in the context of discussions about the FY2018 budget request, a process he said would begin in a couple of weeks. 

The Trump Administration plans to issue an overarching “budget
blueprint” for the government next month, but a detailed budget request
is not expected until April or May.  The White House Office of
Management of Budget (OMB) writes the President’s budget request.  Its
new Director, Mick Mulvaney, was sworn into office only last week.  He
was a  Congressman from South Carolina and a well known budget hawk
committed to reducing federal spending.  

Asked whether the Trump White House asked NASA to put a crew on the first flight, Gerstenmaier replied that “the Administration team in concert with Robert [Lightfoot]” asked for the feasibility study.  The overall goal, he added, was determining if crews could fly earlier than currently planned.  He noted that his office already had been looking at what could be done to “enhance” EM-1 to facilitate getting data that will be needed for EM-2, such as putting crew seats in Orion and placing mannequins there to obtain radiation exposure and reentry loading data.  His office briefed the Trump transition team on its activities and “they may have gotten the idea from us” to do the feasibility study.  Whether or not a decision is made to add crew to the first flight, the study offers an opportunity to step back and look at the program overall and “if we’re testing the right things.”

Gerstenmaier said he feels no political pressure to put crew on EM-1 and wants to “let the data drive us to the answer.”   He and Hill both said they have no preconceived decision one way or the other, but see value in the study regardless of the outcome.  They expect it to be completed in about a month, but there is no set date.

EM-1 and EM-2 will use different upper stages.  EM-1 will fly the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), while EM-2 will use a more capable Exploration Upper Stage (EUS).  The technical differences between ICPS and EUS are one of the reasons there is such a long gap between EM-1 and EM-2.  Gerstenmaier said today that it will take 33 months to reconfigure ground facilities to accommodate the taller EUS.  

ICPS is not designed to the “human-rated” safety standards required for carrying crews, however.   A decision to place crews on EM-1 would require that ICPS be human-rated and a number of other hardware changes would be needed that could be expensive and time consuming.  The Orion spacecraft for EM-1, for example, is not outfitted with life support systems or other hardware needed for a crewed flight.

The study will look at all of those factors and present the advantages and disadvantages, risks and benefits. Gerstenmaier has formed a team to conduct the study that includes one astronaut, although he declined to name who it is or speculate on what the position of the astronaut office as a whole might be to the idea of putting a crew on the first flight.  Hill said the team has been asked to look at what it would take to send a crew of two on an 8-9 day mission around the Moon that would include one day in a high Earth orbit to check out the life support systems. 

In the meantime, NASA is proceeding with its “program of record” with an uncrewed EM-1 in late 2018  and a crewed EM-2 no earlier than August 2021.  EM-1 already appears likely to slip to 2019 due to facility damage from recent tornadoes at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans where SLS is being built plus delays with the Orion Service Module being provided by the European Space Agency.  As for EM-2, NASA’s formal commitment is for launch in 2023, but Congress has been providing additional funding to accelerate it to 2021.