Jeremy Pittari
PICAYUNE — With the death of the Constellation program, Stennis still plans to continue engine testing, no matter who makes them.
John C. Stennis Director Gene Goldman said the new budget set forth by president Barrack Obama will provide NASA with an additional $6 billion, $3 billion of which will be used to develop a new propulsion technology.
Goldman expects that new technology, while developed commercially, to be tested at Stennis. For the past 14 years the site has been testing small commercial engines at the B-1 test stand. Stennis is also getting ready to test other commercial equipment.
“I feel like we have a good start on commercial testing,” Goldman said.
While engine testing is all but guaranteed to continue at Stennis, the size of the workforce behind it is still up in the air. Goldman said the size of that employee base will depend on how fast the new programs flow. He expects to see most of those new programs begin in 2011 and Sfor tennis to get some of that work.
Some of those programs will be to help commercial companies to develop the next generation of propulsion engines and space vehicles to go beyond high Earth orbit, outside of the outer Earth’s atmosphere to the moon and beyond. Goldman said NASA will help the commercial sector to develop technology that will be used to develop those vehicles. Naturally, the large rocket engines behind those vehicles will need testing, and Stennis is pretty much the only place to do that, Goldman said.
NASA has indicated to Goldman that Stennis will continue to get work, either with testing and possibly for the site’s science teams.
The engine that was developed to take the Constellation program into space, the J2X, is still planned for future use in other programs. With that in mind, Goldman expects there to be a need to test that engine at Stennis. The facility was working on building a test stand to simulate high altitude conditions, but Goldman said he is unsure if construction on that stand, the A-3, will be completed. It will be several months before the fate of A-3 is known.
“I would love to see A-3 finished because I’d like us to have that capability,” Goldman said.
Either way Goldman said there are other test stands capable of testing the engine at sea level conditions.
Scientists at the facility also may be able to continue finding work by conducting climate studies. Goldman expects that work to retain current staff members, if not increase it.
“So it’s not all bad, we’ll figure it out,” Goldman said.
Overall, the move will also transfer the responsibility of supplying the space station from NASA to the commercial sector. Commercial vehicles are currently being used to send numerous satellites into orbit, Goldman said.
