Littleton – When astronauts last returned to Earth from the moon more than 30 years ago, they splashed into the ocean in a small capsule.
When people next travel beyond Earth and back, it could be in an airplane-shaped spaceship, tiny but functional and, above all, safer than its predecessors.
Monday, Lockheed Martin engineers unveiled their plan for the next vehicle to carry people into space, to the moon and possibly to Mars. Thus begins what could become a multibillion-dollar competition to build the next conduit to space.
“If we’re going to carry out the president’s vision (for space exploration), we have to have a vehicle that can do it, and right now, we don’t,” NASA spokesman Michael Braukus said. “We only have the space shuttle, which can’t go beyond low Earth orbit.”
Braukus declined to discuss the two main proposals from teams led by Lockheed and Northrup Grumman, or to say whether other teams had submitted designs. Lockheed spokeswoman Joan Underwood said she had not heard of any others.
Originally, NASA planned to select two teams by August and give them three years – and up to $1 billion each – to build a prototype. Manned flights were to begin in 2014.
NASA’s new administrator recently said he wants the new vehicle – the Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV – to blast astronauts into space sooner than that. And with as few as two proposals in the running, the schedule is likely to accelerate.
At its peak, the CEV project could generate between 400 to 600 jobs in the Denver area, Underwood estimates. Those highly skilled jobs would include engineering positions, software system design and technical services located at the company’s facilities in Jefferson County.
“For the kind of jobs they are taking about, you are in the $60,000-to-$80,000 salary range,” said Preston Gibson, president and chief executive of the Jefferson Economic Council.
Typically, high-tech jobs create two to three “spinoff” jobs, he said. Five hundred new jobs at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, for example, could translate into 1,000 to 2,000 jobs with vendors and suppliers.
Lockheed’s craft would be a small shuttle-shaped capsule, big enough for six astronauts and their gear. Its airplane- shaped design makes it far easier to navigate during high- speed returns to Earth than the capsule-shaped vehicles of the past, said Lockheed vice president Cleon Lacefield.
His team’s craft is smaller and stronger and can travel much father than space shuttles, he said. It’s also safer. Should an errant piece of foam smash into the side of this spaceship, a second layer of insulation would protect the crew. The 2003 Columbia tragedy, in which a shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry, might not have been deadly had the shuttle been designed this way, Lacefield said.
If a booster rocket exploded after liftoff, as with Challenger in 1986, astronauts would be cocooned in a fireproof titanium shell. A nose rocket would pull them away from the blast.
Because designs are preliminary, Lockheed cannot yet estimate the cost of its proposed space vehicle, Underwood said.
Northrup declined to reveal details about its proposal.
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
