WASHINGTON, April 8 - NASA has been put in charge of a new interagency review of U.S. space transportation policy set in motion by the Senior Interagency Group, Spacelift Washington has learned. The review will consider both the status of space transportation projects in the executive branch and possible new policy prescriptions. It will be overseen by the National Security Council. NASA's Office of Policy and Plans is helping the effort. The effort is more an attempt to determine "who is doing what" rather than a full-blown policy review. That, we're told, will come later in 2001-or 2002 at the rate things are going.

While the space agency looks at launch policy, the NASA Space Shuttle heads into its 21st year since the pioneering STS-1 launch of April 12, 1981. President George W. Bush's FY2002 budget is to contain yet renewed shuttle privatization efforts, hinted at in his 3-page NASA budget summary released in February. An ‘acceleration' of moving more jobs from civil service to contractors was stated in the document, but NASA sources at KSC were tight-lipped last week in discussion of any details.

Whatever the path chosen, elements are likely to be added that will bolster USA's Shuttle contract. But other Shuttle-related budget items may be on the list for increases. If it is indeed U.S. policy to continue flying the Shuttle for another 20 years, then the administration may have to face the issue of so-called Phase Three and Four upgrades.

Currently, the Space Shuttle Program are implementing Phase One and Two level upgrades, which address improved vehicle safety and system obsolescence. Phase Three improvements would include such changes as new Auxiliary Power Units, Avionics, a new channel-wall nozzle for the orbiter's main engines, an extended length nose landing gear, longer-life fuel cell, and a new water membrane evaporator for the vehicle's flash evaporator system.

A Phase Four series would be fundamental enhancements to the basic Shuttle. Of these, new liquid flyback boosters and a five-segment Solid Rocket Motor are the largest projects thus far listed. In its 1999 study on Shuttle upgrades, the National Research Council suggested a business case be made for Space Shuttle missions and uses beyond the assembly of ISS. Such a review would determine, it was believed, whether how many of these upgrades could be justified.

Now, with a quick path to an operational, commercial RLV unlikely given the X-33 cancellation, and with SLI looking more like a technology demonstration program, will the nation be more dependent upon the fleet of Shuttles as a result? And if so, what will be the best path to maximize the investment made in their operations that began 20 years ago with John Young and Bob Crippen's brief STS-1 ride? Stay tuned.

Speaking of SLIP, NASA MSFC chief Art Stephenson said recently at an STA breakfast that NASA had omitted satellite servicing and repair from its listed of desired SLI-generated vehicle capabilities. What would be its focus now in the post-X-33/34 world? Crew and cargo to orbit, Stephenson said. "We're going to concentrate on what we know" in choosing SLI paths. And what is it that NASA knows best? "Shuttle. ..that's where we are going to start with and that's what we know the best." Not SSTO, but TSTO. And servicing spacecraft onorbit? That's for either third generation reusable space transportation-or the existing ‘1st generation' still in operations today, according to Stephenson.

RS-68 ready for Delta IV 1st mission-almost

The full-up test firing of the RS-68 booster engine that simulates a full Delta IV ascent to orbit is set for this summer, according to Dan Collins, Delta IV V.P. for Boeing. The rocket common core test article that has been the project's test firing tool at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi will be the first rocket passenger aboard Boeing's transfer ship this summer, too, leading to a stacking of a facility test vehicle at the new Delta IV launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Collins says. And Boeing set March 2002 as the date for the first Delta IV blast-off. The era of the EELV, delays not withstanding, would appear to be on the horizon at last.

In our next issue: Status of Starsem's Soyuz and the inside story behind the new Aurora project in Australia. One clue-a Soyuz its not-well, almost. ..

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