Northrop Grumman/Boeing Ready CEV Bid with Alenia

Aviation Week & Space Technology 02/07/05
author: Craig Covault

Alenia, to the Moon

Northrop Grumman/Boeing's proprietary plan to integrate Italy's Alenia into its Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) proposal to NASA will give Northrop Grumman and Boeing a European partner to counterbalance EADS teaming with Lockheed Martin to create a shuttle replacement that can also return astronauts to the Moon.

This second European participant beyond EADS could also force NASA to face different international cooperative options for exploration, as opposed to the blanket approach the agency used to secure European, Canadian and Japanese cooperation for the International Space Station.

The stakes, quite literally, are high--extending all the way to the Moon.

Northrop Grumman and Boeing are declining comment about their new European partner, but details about Alenia Spazio's role in the Northrop Grumman/Boeing proposal emerged at the First Annual Exploration Conference here. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)/Lockheed Martin forum drew 1,000 top aerospace managers to begin coordination of the massive new exploration program (AW&ST Jan. 31, p. 20). Aviation Week & Space Technology cosponsored the event.

Northrop Grumman and Boeing believe Alenia's leading role as contractor on the ISS Node and Columbus pressurized structures and on the Automated Transfer Vehicle to service the ISS--as well as its role as co-developer of Europe's earlier Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator--will make the Italian company a valuable partner in competing against the Lockheed Martin/EADS/Honeywell/Orbital Sciences/ United Space Alliance team.

International managers told AW&ST that while EADS status as a pan-European company would allow Lockheed Martin to pursue CEV cooperation on an "industry-to-industry" basis, the Alenia arrangement could require a new bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Italy.

The single-country nature of Alenia will invariably bring the EU and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) into the mix, should the Northrop Grumman/Boeing team win, managers said. This is because in the eyes of the EU and European Space Agency, Alenia does not have the broad European industrial reach in-house that EADS has by its very nature.

THIS SHOULD NOT affect the team's chances because NASA and ASI routinely forge agreements and already have some of the best working arrangements on the international scene, but it does illustrate at least two of potentially several routes for cooperation NASA will have to accommodate to achieve foreign industry and government participation in the exploration program. EADS participation would be industry-to-industry, while Alenia could involve the U.S. and Italy.