Plans for commercial shuttle program at Test Site on hold

Monday, Feb. 3, 2003 | 10:07 a.m.

Plans to develop a space shuttle program at the Nevada Test Site have been grounded after the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas on Saturday.

In 1998 the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was named as an operations base for a 21st-century space shuttle program, along with several other sites around the nation.

Plans called for a commercial shuttle program that would allow communications companies to put satellites into orbit from a craft that would take off from and land at the Test Site.

"That will change after (Saturday)," said Troy Wade, executive director of the Nevada Test Site Development Corp.

The commercial shuttle program involved NASA contractors, but not the space agency.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had said that the program could have brought 2,000 new jobs and $3 billion a year to the aging Test Site, which stopped nuclear weapons experiments in 1992.

NASA officials put the manned space flight program on hold immediately after the Columbia ripped apart over Texas with seven astronauts aboard -- six Americans and one Israeli. Investigations into the cause of the crash are ongoing.

The Nevada Test Site Development Corp. is part of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Research Foundation. Wade, a former Test Site official and a supporter of diversifying operations at the remote desert site, said he believes manned space flights will continue despite the tragedy.

"I think the greatest single disservice this country could do in memory of the seven astronauts is to cut the program back," Wade said, adding that he believes a thorough investigation of the tragedy is vital.

But Congress could cut the space flight budget. And another type of shuttle might be more realistic, said Darrell Pepper, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

While working in California's aerospace industry in the 1980s, Pepper said he was part of Lockheed Martin's program to develop a smaller version of the shuttle, known as X-33.

"We were pushing it because shuttles are so very, very expensive," Pepper said.

In the 1990s officials in charge of two space shuttle projects had eyed the Test Site.

NASA had already selected the VentureStar launch vehicle, developed by Lockheed Martin. It had been scheduled to make its first full-scale flight in 2004.

The other company, Kistler Aerospace of Washington state, passed a milestone in May 2002 when the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation administrator declared there were no environmental impacts related to the project.

Jack Gregory, vice president of operations for Kistler, said the environmental clearance "closes out a process." But the company had not completed financing to build an experimental craft for launching, he said.

A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, manager of the Test Site, said there had been funding problems.

"The funding beyond the initial investors had fallen through," spokesman Kevin Rohrer said.

Nuclear spacecraft testing in Nevada has been done off and on since the 1950s.

The United States initiated a nuclear rocket program called "Project Rover" based at the Test Site in the mid-1950s.

The Test Site was selected to test nuclear reactors and engines and perform ground tests in the southwest corner of the site, known as Area 25.

More than $100 million was spent on building, and on equipment for, the Nuclear Rocket Development Station.