Can NASA keep its side of the trans-Potomac bargain?

There are some disturbing signs out there indicating that NASA may not be ready to keep to the spirit, rather than the letter, of the Griffin-Sega agreement (see “A tentative ceasefire in the trans-Potomac launcher wars”, The Space Review, August 1, 2005). This deal promised that the space agency would use the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs) as much as it can. The sentence in the agreement reads, “Both DoD and NASA will utilize the EELV for all intermediate and larger payload for national security, civil, science and International Space Station re-supply missions in the 5–20 ton class to the maximum extent possible.” This last expression contains a loophole big enough to launch a shuttle through, but it does at least imply that NASA will make a good faith effort to use the EELVs and to thus help bring the cost per launch of these vehicles down to a reasonable level.

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