Paper Session I-A - Space Shuttle, Human Space Transportation for the Next Thirty Years

NASA’s Integrated Space Transportation Plan (ISTP) is focused on increasing safety and reliability, reducing cost, and meeting NASA’s mission requirements while making maximum use of the aerospace industry capabilities and commercial market leverage. In addition, the ISTP will ensure continued safe access to space through Space Shuttle safety and supportability upgrades until a replacement alternative has been demonstrated. To implement the ISTP, Congress has funded the Space Launch Initiative (SLI). The goal of the SLI is for NASA to meet its future space flight needs, including human access to space, using commercial launch vehicles that reduce cost and improve safety and reliability. The premise of the SLI is that the private sector can define a business environment, including a sufficiently large commercial launch market, to close the business case and justify the corporate investment required by building and operating a commercial replacement for the Shuttle. Significant changes in the launch market have reduced the opportunity to leverage off the commercial market. NASA’s SLI is funding technology maturation projects to drive down the technical risk but the launch market growth projections remain elusive. If the full convergence between government and commercial mission needs can not be achieved and the market analysis and business modeling will not predict business case closure for a commercial RLV development start, a Shuttle Evolved Vehicle (SEV), supported by the ELV fleet, will use the mature technologies from the SLI to ensure that our national launch and spaceflight requirements are met. Boeing is defining an SEV architecture that will maintain the Space Shuttle System viable through 2030; provide safe, reliable, robust transportation to and from earth orbit; and meet the emerging needs of expanded missions and customers