HEAVY LIFT LAUNCH VEHICLE (HLLV) SCHEDULE REQUIREMENT Mr. McDADE. What role do you envision for the heavy lift launch vehicle other than the SDI program? Secretary ALDRIDGE. Well, sir, when we look into the Department of Defense needs for the heavy lifter outside of SDI, our requirements seem to come up around the late 1990s when one can begin to think about large satellites beyond the 10,000 pounds we currently get to geosynchronous orbit. It will be up in the 15,000 to 20,000 pound class and possibly launching more than one at a time for economical reasons. It looks like, for the DoD, minus SDI, it is in the 1990's when we will use such a capability and it runs into the 100,000 to 150,000 pounds to low earth orbit capability. SDI basically drives the requirement for a heavy lifter in terms of the time. If we start beginning deployment in the mid-nineties, the rate at which we must deploy will be the driving requirement for a heavy lifter for the DoD. Those requirements have been integrated into our Space Transportation Architecture Studies that we did with NASA. We show various scenarios of DoD plus NASA with and without SDI. Of course, the slope on the "need" curve gets steeper earlier in time. As I understand it, there is no basic disagreement that the country needs a heavy lifter of some type. There is an issue as to when we need it and what is the technology to be pursued for getting to that capability. Whether one uses a Shuttle-derived capability or we start with a clean sheet of paper heading for a new technology that gives us low-cost orbit and try to move it up earlier in time remains to be determined. The latter is the approach taken by DOD. The Supplemental asked for in fiscal year 1987 included some funds in SDI to accelerate a heavy lift technology program to provide that capability earlier for SDI. If it hadn't been for SDI, we would have moved at a slower pace more in tune with the DoD requirement minus SDI. Mr. McDADE. How much money do you have in for the five-year plan in DoD? Secretary ALDRIDGE. When you add SDI, the number is approximately $4 billion. Mr. McDADE. How much of it is SDI related? Secretary ALDRIDGE. Most of that is SDI related. HLLV DEVELOPMENT Mr. McDADE. The Committee is advised that the development of the heavy lift launch vehicle would involve two stages: The first generation vehicle would have a payload launch capacity of up to 150,000 pounds; and the second generation vehicle would have a payload launch capacity of up to 300,000 pounds. One candidate for the first generation HLLV is a NASA proposal for a Shuttle-derived vehicle. What are the strengths and/or weaknesses of the Shuttle-derived vehicle as opposed to any other potential candidates? Secretary ALDRIDGE. The strengths would be that you could probably get a Shuttle-derived vehicle earlier in time with lower risk. It would take, by necessity, the same operational concept that we are currently manning the Shuttle with and we all recognize it takes a significant number of people and processes to do that. The weakness of that approach is that it doesn't provide the opportunity to develop a low-cost to orbit system that we would really be looking for in the outyears by taking a different approach to launch systems and development and launch operations concepts. I think what we were looking for, and what the staff study provided, was that there are technologies out there on automatic checkout procedures and processes, as well as technology in boosters, that would permit us to get launch costs down by a factor of ten. Of course, those are contractor brochures at this time, but at least it looks like the opportunity is there and by heading off in that direction, we felt this is a better long-term solution to get costs down than using existing technology, even though a Shuttle-derived could be done earlier. Mr. McDADE. Mr. Secretary, how many of the present generations of satellites such as NAVSTAR Global Positioning System; Defense Satellite Communications System; or Defense Support Program could be launched on a heavy lift launch vehicle? Secretary ALDRIDGE. Since the heavy lift vehicle is really a piece of paper now, we could design the system to launch all of those from the heavy lifter. I think that is probably what we would do, make them all compatible with new designs. They could be launched off a Shuttle or Aerospace Plane or anything else. Mr. McDADE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. DOD-NASA DEVELOPMENT ROLE Mr. CHAPPELL. Mr. Secretary, the addresses roles and responsibilities of NASA and DoD in the development of future launch vehicles. I wonder if you could describe the basic agreement and the costsharing delineated in that directive. Secretary ALDRIDGE. If I can remember Mr. CHAPPELL. Just give us a general idea, but you can do it for the record. [The information to be furnished follows:] It is titled "United States Space Launch Strategy" and directs a balanced mix of launchers, consisting of the Space Transportation System (STS) and Expendable Launch Vehicles (ELVs). In addition, it specifies that NASA will not maintain an ELV adjunct to the STS. Secretary ALDRIDGE. Is 216 the one recently signed? Mr. CHAPPELL. That is correct. Secretary ALDRIDGE. I am searching for the words. The cost sharing, if I am not mistaken, is that-I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, I will have to provide that for the record. I can't remember. Mr. CHAPPELL. Do you know whether it is 50-50, 20-80, the cost sharing- Secretary ALDRIDGE. On the heavy lifter? Mr. CHAPPELL. On the future launch vehicles. Secretary ALDRIDGE. That is yet to be determined. We have not identified the sharing relationship. Mr. CHAPPELL. Do you have it on the heavy lift? Secretary ALDRIDGE. No sir. We had it on the National Aero Space Plane. We had an 80-20 sharing relationship on the National Aero Space Plane which was 20 percent NASA, 80 percent Defense. The reason was because Defense Advanced Research Projects money was brought to bear as well as Air Force and Navy. There has been some criticism in Congress that the ratio is too strong for defense and there has been some legislation suggested that would increase the NASA percentage of that, in fact, I think there was a directive to NASA to increase the percentage in their budget submission. HLLV COST-TO-ORBIT GOALS Mr. CHAPPELL. Mr. Dicks. Mr. DICKS. Mr. Secretary, I want to welcome you here. This is obviously a very important subject. You talked about the Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle and the idea that we are going to try to reduce the cost by a factor of ten. Is there any other example of where we have been able to achieve that kind of a cost reduction in this area? Secretary ALDRIDGE. No, sir. I think the problem has been that our launch rates are so small that the cost savings tend to be eaten up by the overhead. What you have to do is find some way to reduce what we call the standing armies or to allocate that standing army over a larger number of flights to get the launch costs down. I can give you examples where the booster-for example, the Delta II that we just signed the agreement for-has gotten our launch costs down to $35 million a flight. It is hard to determine how much a Shuttle flight costs, but it is something on the order of $200 million a flight if you add all the overhead. Of course, the Delta only launches a small fraction of what the Shuttle can launch. But I think the process is we think that there are technologiesand that was the result of our joint effort,-that give us the opportunity to reduce costs. I am not so optimistic that we are going to get it down by a factor of ten, but I think it is a good goal to try. Mr. DICKS. What gains were made by the Shuttle and what were the original projections on cost reduction there? Secretary ALDRIDGE. The original projections—and I remember this well because I was doing the analysis-it was costing us $30 million a flight to fly a Titan III and the Shuttle projections were $10 million a flight. Mr. DICKS. What are they now? Secretary ALDRIDGE. $200 million. Mr. DICKS. So in our brief history, the projections have been lower, but the reality has been higher. General Abrahamson comes before this Committee saying we have to go from $3,000 a pound now down to $300 a pound. He says we have to come down by a factor of 10, whatever that is. That seems to me, as a layman, to be highly questionable, I wonder whether we can, in fact, do that. It is an absolute limiter, I would think, in what we can do in the President's Strategic Defense Initiative. As I read your document, you said the initial launch capability, on a very optimistic schedule, is around 1996. Secretary ALDRIDGE. Depending on the concept. SDI REQUIREMENT FOR HLLV Mr. Dicks. I know it depends on what we decide to deploy, but how much additional lift capability are we going to need just for the SDI part of this program? Secretary ALDRIDGE. General Abrahamson has a very specific number and he says he needs-if there is a decision to begin the deployment-he needs an additional 400,000 pounds per year by 1993, 1994, depending on the initial deployment. It could get up to as high as 4 million pounds a year when we start into the actual full-scale deployment. That is about four times what we are currently capable of launching. Mr. DICKS. So 400,000 pounds is 4 times or 4 million pounds- Mr. Dicks. That is four times as much total capability as we have now? Secretary ALDRIDGE. That is right. Mr. DICKS. So this would mean an enormous number of new boosters? Secretary ALDRIDGE. Right. Mr. Dicks. I think you are one of the most credible people to testify before this committee. How long would it take us to ramp up, say if the initial launch capabilities in 1996, to have that kind of an ability to add that kind of an increment, four million pounds per year? Secretary ALDRIDGE. It would take several years to build up to that rate. The reason I hesitate is we are just in the process of working the concept of operations from what this heavy lifter would do, what would it look like, how would it operate. The launch rates, if it has the capability for several hundred thousands pounds in the lower earth orbit you are talking in the 20 to 30 to 50 satellite launches per year. That is not an unreasonable number, but what is the problem here is that it is, say, 50 launches a year with a booster that is capable of lifting-the Shuttle is on the order of 65,000 pounds lower earth orbit or 30,000 pounds into polar orbit. Most of the SDI would have to be a polar orbit configuration or high inclinations. So we would be talking a fairly substantial launch rate, but the Shuttle basically puts up almost 200,000 pounds into orbit every time. It brings back 140,000 of that. That is called the orbiter. You could quickly think about saying it is not a problem with the booster technology to build a booster that does that by putting a payload canister on the side and replacing the orbiter and have it unmanned. However, you could not sustain a launch rate that high with the technology that exists in the current Shuttle with the turnaround times and processes that go on. We think there is a possibility in the future that we could sustain those kinds of launch rates. HLLV DEVELOPMENT Mr. Dicks. It would also be expensive, wouldn't it? Secretary ALDRIDGE. The development would be expensive, but we would want to get the development money put in so we could get the launch cost down. For example, it takes 6,000 people to launch an orbiter. It takes 600 to launch an expendable. How could we get to fewer people? Through automatic checkout procedures and various kinds of technologies that eliminate the need for large numbers of people and, therefore, will accelerate the turnaround times for these things. We are doing things, like we have enormously complicated avionics on board the spacecraft and boosters. Why not use the satellite avionics which is sitting there for the five minutes of launch and not being used at all, yet it is highly redundant and designed to last 10 years in orbit? These kinds of concepts are the kind of things being worked on that say we think we have an approach to a new booster that will not make the booster the limiting factor on SDI. I think that is a true statement. Mr. Dicks. If you go to a bigger lifter, obviously that is going to increase the size of the payload, isn't that correct? Secretary ALDRIDGE. It could-but no, it doesn't have to increase the size of the payload. You could think of launching multiple small payloads off the same booster. Mr. DICKS. But there is this one idea that the cost per shot will go up dramatically if you are adding more lift capability. Secretary ALDRIDGE. That is the technology we are trying to pursue that says no, that will not be the case. We are trying to get the cost per pound down. Mr. Dicks. The value of what you are putting up for each launch would be dramatically increased if you are going to a bigger lifter. Secretary ALDRIDGE. Yes. Mr. Dicks. Then if you lose one, you are losing a much bigger investment. Secretary ALDRIDGE. Reliability is a very important factor. IMPACT OF ACCELERATED SDI Mr. CHAPPELL. Mr. Hefner. Mr. HEFNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, if you accelerate SDI, is that going to take over all the capability of the Shuttle for anything else other than SDI for the next seven or eight years? Secretary ALDRIDGE. No, sir. The plan would be that SDI would be added into what we would have to launch for our normal missions. There would be some missions that we would not have to deploy if SDI was deployed. One would be the boost phase surveil |