Less than a month after taking the job, NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin is pushing an ambitious but risky plan to shave four years off the timetable for building a next-generation spaceship to replace the space shuttle, and wants to launch it with a crew by the end of 2010.
The shuttle has not flown since the Columbia tragedy in February 2003, and even after safety modifications are completed and flights resume, the orbiter will not be able to get beyond "low Earth orbit" and will become obsolete as soon as construction of the international space station is completed in 2010.
NASA has planned for more than a year to build a new workhorse spacecraft to carry out President Bush's long-term vision for space exploration, aimed at returning humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually sending them to Mars, but the initial strategy called for completion of the new spaceship by 2014. That would leave the United States without its own access to space for four years.
Meanwhile, a bilateral arrangement allowing the United States to use the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for transportation to the space station expires next year. Russians and their guests will continue to operate the space station.
Griffin has frequently criticized, as have many members of Congress, a strategy that would cede U.S. preeminence in human space travel, and at his confirmation hearing last month he advocated building the new spacecraft faster to shrink the four-year gap or eliminate it altogether.
He has moved quickly since his April 13 confirmation. Internal NASA documents and interviews with a number of NASA officials, industry contractors and other space experts show that an alternative plan to build the crew exploration vehicle is evolving rapidly.
The new strategy has virtually halted the original program NASA put in place 16 months ago to develop the spaceship and could cause additional upheaval as the agency struggles to ready the shuttle for its scheduled return to flight in July.
To execute the new strategy, sources said, Griffin intends to assemble a small, Apollo-style team of NASA experts and scrap the current plan to have two civilian contractors compete for several years for the right to direct development of the exploration vehicle.
Several sources said Griffin's initiative has put him at odds with retired Navy Rear Adm. Craig E. Steidle, the principal architect of the original plan, but Steidle said in a telephone interview that he sees "no change in the way the program is going to be managed" and denied that disagreements with Griffin might prompt him to resign.
"We're on the same path," said Steidle, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems. "If there are rumors out there that we are differing on this, that is not true." He said he plans to leave NASA "some day," but "not in the short term."
Many sources interviewed for this story declined to be identified, either because they were in sensitive positions as prospective NASA contractors, feared retribution as NASA employees or did not wish to take sides in an internal dispute.
Griffin could not be reached for comment, but NASA spokesman Dean Acosta denied that the agency has any internal conflict. He said the agency leadership is working together to "find a way to close the gap."
