The Pentagon is participating in an interagency integrated team convened to explore how best to sustain the rocket motor industrial base — a mandate made all the more urgent given NASA’s planned cancellation of the Constellation program, according to Brett Lambert, the Defense Dept.’s industrial policy director.

Each of NASA’s Ares V launchers would have required six RS-68 engines, which are common to the U.S. Air Force’s Delta IV Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). Already, Air Force officials are seeing an uptick in the per-unit price of each EELV because procurement has slowed to keep pace with delayed satellite programs.

This trend is only getting worse with the NASA decision, according to Gary Payton, deputy under secretary of the Air Force for space. “We share an industrial base with NASA — on solids, liquids, range infrastructure and a workforce. So, with the cancellation of the Constellation program… we have got a lot of work to do with NASA to figure out how to maintain a minimum industrial base on liquid rocket engines and solid rocket motors,” Payton told reporters Feb. 4 during a luncheon roundtable.

Lambert says the Pentagon is preparing a report on this issue that will go to Congress in June. The Constellation departure “changes everything. That is a game changer,” he says.

Included in the team are representatives from the Defense Dept., the White House Office of the Science and Technology Policy and NASA, he adds.

While the report to Congress will lay out a strategy for sustaining the industrial base, largely occupied by Alliant Techsystems, a potential cost increase in the Delta IV is an ancillary possibility. Even before the effect of the Constellation decision is felt, cost pressure is already evident in EELV program despite the Boeing/Lockheed joint venture, United Launch Alliance, which was formed in 2006 to reduce overhead and streamline operations. The promise was cost savings. Payton says that piece parts — avionics, nozzles, engines — all are costing more because of the Air Force’s reduced buy rate.

“The cost savings of combining the two companies into one are there, but it is being swamped by an increase in the cost of the piece part costs,” Payton says.

Photo: USAF