General GLASSER. Still available for the communications satellite? Mr. ROBACK. In other words, how many development boosters are you going to use? This may be in the record but I am not clear about it. General GLASSER. For the presently defined IDCSP program, four. Mr. ROBACK. Four development boosters? General GLASSER. Yes, sir. Mr. HORTON. Pardon me, does that include the one that already has been used? General GLASSER. Correct. TITAN TRANSSTAGE PROBLEMS Mr. ROBACK. What were the operational problems you ran into in the development of the Titan III? General GLASSER. Are you speaking specifically of the one recent problem? Mr. ROBACK. Well, the problem with the transstage. General GLASSER. There was a transstage valve problem that caused concern. Mr. ROBACK. How serious was this problem? General GLASSER. It was potentially quite serious. Mr. ROBACK. What was the problem? General GLASSER. The problem was a sticking fuel control valve in the altitude control system. It was apparently caused by small amounts of foreign matter inside the valve. Mr. ROBACK. It is a quality control proposition? General GLASSER. Yes, it was a quality control problem and not unusual in this sort of business. Mr. ROBACK. What did you have to do? General GLASSER. We ran a rather elaborate investigation into the manufacturing program, made some changes in the malfunction detection system and conducted extensive operational tests on the valves. Mr. ROBACK. Did you have to strip down the satellite, I mean the booster? General GLASSER. We removed the valves in the transstage. General GLASSER. Yes. Mr. ROBACK. And put new ones in? General GLASSER. No, they were returned after testing. Mr. ROBACK. They were washed down, so to speak? General GLASSER. I am not completely familiar with the details of the process. Mr. ROBACK. The imperfections were burnished off them? General GLASSER. The manufacturer was satisfied and the Air Force witness was satisfied that the remedial processes justified returning the valves to the booster. Mr. ROBACK. And you consider that that problem now is behind you? General GLASSER. Well, I can defer to Colonel Diehl. I have been assured by the Air Force Systems Command's Space Systems Division, who has this responsibility, that they are satisfied. Mr. ROBACK. Colonel Diehl ? Colonel DIEHL. General Glasser has stated the situation correctly, Mr. Roback. We feel that we have done everything we possibly can to minimize any potential failure. We have recycled the valves through a mission lifetime cycle requirement, flushed the valves with phosphoric acid and are now quite confident. Mr. ROBACK. Was the valve a vendor item for the Martin Co. not in house? Colonel DIEHL. It is a subcontract item for the Martin Co. Mr. ROBACK. Is all this refurbishing and flushing and whatever you have to do with valves, is that, all that done at the expense of the subcontractor? General GLASSER. I am not familiar with the details of the contract. Colonel DIEHL. I would have to defer to the specific contractual language. I am not familiar with it. Mr. ROBACK. Did you pay any bonus payments under any contract for the Titan? General GLASSER. I would have to determine that and submit it for the record. (The following information was furnished for the record:) BONUS PAYMENTS UNDER CONTRACT FOR TITAN The Titan III program is being conducted under cost plus incentive fee (CPIF) contracts, however there are special bonus features included. The special bonus features are limited specifically to the first Titan III-A and first Titan III-C flights. All Titan III contractors, except the solid rocket motor contractor, were provided the opportunity to get a bonus. Under the terms and conditions of the bonus feature, the Air Force determined that the first Titan III-A flight results did not qualify the eligible contractors for a bonus. On the first Titan III-C flight, the Air Force found the contractors eligible for the bonus and so advised them. Although no incentive fees have been paid to date, the contractors involved, under the terms of the incentive contract features, have earned some additional fee points and have also lost some fee points. During the course of the program a record is kept of the contractor's performance on those areas covered by incentive fee considerations. Under the incentive features of the contract, the contractor may be rewarded with additional fee for good performance or penalized for bad performance. The plus and minus scores are compiled at the conclusion of the contract and fee is adjusted accordingly. The contractor does, however, receive his baseline fee during the program as he receives funds from the Air Force. Mr. ROBACK. Find out who is paying for the refurbishing and the person who was responsible for the sticky valves. Find out what happened to "Blackie Carbon," in other words. [Laughter.] (The following information was furnished for the record :) WHO PAYS FOR TITAN III VALVE TESTING? Under the cost reimbursement type contract we have with the Martin Marietta Corp., the Air Force is paying the allowable costs. Martin, in turn, pays the valve subcontractor, NAA Rocketdyne, for their effort from the Air Force provided funds. Since June 16, 1966, the date of the last successful flight, the additional effort on the valve problem has cost the Air Force $685,000. Mr. ROBACK. In other words, what is the Air Force doing to-I mean who is bearing the cost of all this effort that has to be put in it? It this what you call, I mean is this part of a process in man-rating the Titan? You don't fly any men in it, but you have to man-rate it, it seems. General GLASSER. It certainly would be a portion of a man-rating process; yes, sir. Mr. ROBACK. Have you been man-rating the Titan? General GLASSER. The Titan III-C is not a man-rated vehicle. Mr. ROBACK. There has been reference to the Titan III as being manrated. We have seen references to it. Enlighten us, give us some idea. There has been a lot of talk about man-rating the Titan and I never saw any men in it except on the ground. General GLASSER. These vestigial remains of the Dyna-Soar program. Originally Titan III was to have carried the Dyna-Soar which would have carried men. Under those circumstances man-rating was a requirement. (The following additional information was supplied for the record:) Certain subsystem designs have been directed toward this end. For example, the malfunction detection system, which is required for manned flight, would enable an astronaut to monitor launch vehicle performance. The sensing information provided is a major factor in abort decisions and astronaut survivability. Mr. ROBACK. The word is a carryover. General GLASSER. Yes, sir. Mr. ROBACK. What you are doing, you have to because the satellite is a relatively fragile instrument and it goes in this great big machine that shudders and roars and you have got to be sure it won't shake it to pieces and also you have got to be sure it is going to work because it is very expensive so you go over it with a very fine-tooth comb, is that what the man-rating proposition is? General GLASSER. That is essentially correct. (The following additional information was submitted for the record:) Another part of man-rating of a launch vehicle involves the incorporation of redundancy in certain systems to minimize failure modes. Specifically, those failure modes where the astronaut's reaction times are not quick enough to allow a successful abort and subsequent survival. General GLASSER. I think in this context whether it is man-rated or Comsat rated it is almost the same thing. Good and prudent engineering practice demands that the basic booster have this kind of reliability, otherwise you are not running a good test program. TRADE-OFF OF R. & D. AND OPERATIONAL NEEDS Mr. ROBACK. We talked a little bit with Mr. Rogers about the problem of putting-even though you call these communications satellite phase that you are engaged in a research and development program you want to get operational traffic out of it. In other words, you have got a fairly specific mission, whereas in the boosters you want to try out all possibilities, I mean all techniques, to see that the different components and different functioning parts are going to be sure of this part of the basic building block approach that you basically refer to as the Titan so the question was, To what extent do you compromise objectives in both programs? You take risks when you want to put up a satellite with a Titan III, you take risks because it is a development vehicle, but on the other hand you want to be sure you get the satellites up so you don't take all the risks that you could in trying out, let's say, the transstage and whatever. Give us a measure of the compromise in each case. General GLASSER. You are speaking about a characteristic of research and development programs? Mr. ROBACK. No. Because one characteristic of research and development programs that is unique, that is not here, well, let me restate it. Research and development programs don't have to put up operational missions. They just have to test things out for the future. What you have done is to try to save some money you have hooked a research and development booster to an operational satellite program. This is not the usual case. So I am not talking about the general problems of trade-off. I am talking about the trade-off between a communications mission, and an R. & D. building block booster. I am not-this is not a matter of criticism or anything. I am just trying to find out how many compromises, if any, were made, and there must have been some. General GLASSER. There are, obviously, some compromises. What I am trying to say is that this is, in our best judgment, the appropriate set of compromises. It might be looked at, in this particular case, as sort of a three-legged stool in that we have the R. & D. requirements for development of the Titan III booster. We have the R. & D. requirements for the on-orbit satellite system, and we hope to get out of that as a bonus-if you will, an operational capability. Good prudent engineering management requires that you weigh each of these considerations in deciding whether you can afford to degrade one test in order to optimize another. Overriding these considerations are cost considerations. These are very, very expensive programs. Mr. HORTON. In that connection, General, who makes this decision on the compromise? General GLASSER. The ultimate decision rests with D.D.R. & E., but all of us participate through our recommendations. Mr. HORTON. Mr. Roback asked for any specific compromises that were made in this specific program. Can you give us any? General GLASSER. I would be hard pressed to put my finger on a specific compromise as such. Mr. ROBACK. These R. & D. boosters obviously have to carry a lot of instrumentation. General GLASSER. That is correct. We could put up more satellites if we were to eliminate the instrumentation. We would then require fewer launches in order to get a reasonable number of operational satellites. Is this a compromise? I don't know quite how to describe compromise. Mr. HORTON. Let me question you in this light. Was there an actual compromise with regard to the number of satellites that were put up on it; what about the June launch? Colonel DIEHL. There was no compromise with respect to the Titan III payload capability. The payload people are utilizing what we refer to as an R. & D. payload capability which was available for the communications satellite. General GLASSER. That is true. But I think we would have to agree in some measure there is a compromise even in that, because countdowns and everything else are at least conditioned by the knowledge that you have an R. & D. payload that has to go along. I would find it very difficult to describe the degree of this compromise without going back through rather detailed analysis. The reason being that this is a characteristic of the R. & D. business. You do this on a daily basis. Everything, every decision that you make, every consideration is in the nature of some sort of an engineering compromise. Mr. HORTON. You were not here at our hearings during the earlier part of the week. General GLASSER. No, sir. Mr. HORTON. And you were not here when I questioned Mr. Rogers. I said that from my viewpoint there was not the sense of urgency in putting up this operational system and what you have defined as an R. & D., or experimental system. The system was discussed some 2 or 3 years ago and was scheduled. It was announced that it could be put up, and then the Department of Defense began negotiations with Comsat which slowed down the operational system. So there was some slippage, and then there was a decision that the Department of Defense would go ahead on its own, and then it was announced they would pick up the program and it would move ahead. Now, it seems to me there have been not months but years of slippage and the system is not up yet. The question that I have been concerned about is the sense of urgency. There are so many people here that one can't put a finger on who is responsible, but I want to know whether or not there is a sense of urgency with regard to putting up this operational system. General GLASSER. I suspect, sir, that you are speaking of the communications satellite program in its broad context, and I was restricting myself to the IDCSP program. Mr. HORTON. Well, let's restrict it to that, because that is the first one that has to go up. General GLASSER. There has been no delay in the IDCSP program based on any lack of a sense of urgency. Within the Air Force we are doing everything that we can to achieve an operational capability as soon as possible. Mr. HORTON. You could have put more satellites on that first launch, could you not? General GLASSER. But it would not have been a prudent decision to have done so. Mr. HORTON. Why not? General GLASSER. Because there is no sense in sending up two booster loads of satellites until you find out if the first one is going to work as your program had imagined it. Mr. HORTON. Are you talking now about the satellite working or are you talking about the booster working? Our committee took into consideration earlier the fact that there was a tested vehicle which could have been utilized to put this system up. General GLASSER. Yes, sir. Mr. HORTON. And the decision was made to go with the Titan. |