Aviation Week & Space Technology, 02/27/2006, page 41

Craig Covault, Cape Canaveral

Launch site would be assembly, integration hub under Lockheed Martin proposal

In a key decision that would boost the NASA Kennedy Space Center role for spacecraft development and integration beyond what it was for the Apollo Moon program, Lockheed Martin has chosen KSC for Crew Exploration Vehicle assembly and integration should it win NASA's CEV contract.

The contractor's decision also would make direct use of KSC's existing shuttle workforce.

A Lockheed Martin team is competing against a Northrop Grumman/Boeing team for the CEV contract which could be worth $104 billion over the next 15 years (AW&ST Jan. 2, p. 79). NASA plans to announce the winner in July. Northrop Grumman says its work site locations will be submitted with its CEV proposal.

An incentives package from the state of Florida worth $45 million was a key factor in the decision, says John Karas, vice president of space operations for Lockheed Martin.

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Lockheed Martin-designed CEV flies in lunar orbit in this concept. If its CEV is selected by NASA, the company would turn KSC into a development center as well as launch site.Credit: LOCKHEED MARTIN

Florida Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings says the same incentives have been offered to the Northrop Grumman/Boeing team. The state-funded Florida Space Authority played a key role in luring Lockheed Martin.

For Kennedy and its workforce, "it is more than Apollo was from a total end-to-end assembly test and checkout standpoint," Karas says. CEV manned and related unmanned systems and future CEV versions bound for the Moon would be built at KSC should Lockheed Martin win, he adds. "We will rely on the extensive, highly skilled workforce available to us in Florida."

Lockheed Martin's plan would be to consolidate, under launch site contractor employees, key assembly, integration and tests, which during the Apollo and space shuttle developments were done instead at contractor plants throughout the U.S.

Significant CEV design work will be done at Lockheed Martin's Denver facility and structural fabrications at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. But the high-tech subsystem assembly outfitting and integration that turns those basic structures into CEV spacecraft would be at Kennedy, along with key software development, overall testing and post-flight refurbishment.

In contrast, during the Apollo program, the command/service module assembly, integration and major tests were done at what was then North American Rockwell in Downey, Calif., while the lunar modules were assembled and integrated at Grumman's Bethpage, N.Y., plant. They were reassembled and tested at Kennedy, but not built from the ground up as is planned under Lockheed Martin's CEV proposal.

During the shuttle program, all of the orbiters were assembled and integrated at Rockwell's Palmdale, Calif., facility, which also continued to perform major depot-level maintenance and overhaul for the first 20 years of the program, until that was moved to Kennedy.

The shift of major shuttle depot-level refurbishment capability to the United Space Alliance launch site workforce was one reason Lockheed Martin decided as it did. United Space Alliance is on the team, as is Honeywell, Hamilton Sundstrand and Orbital Sciences.