NASA to Announce New Commercial Space Partner

NewScientist is reporting that NASA has kicked their previous space partner, Rocketplane Kistler, to the curb and is in search of a new commercial space partner. The new partnership will try to develop a new shuttle to service the International Space Station. "The GAO's decision clears the way for NASA to select a new COTS partner in addition to SpaceX, whose partnership with NASA continues. Only $32 million was paid to Rocketplane Kistler, leaving $175 million for new partnerships."

Comments

Re:Rocketplane?

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2006, NASA signed agreements earmarking $485 million to be split between two companies trying to develop vehicles to service the orbital outpost. As part of its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme, it set aside $278 million for SpaceX, based in El Segundo, California, and $207 million for Rocketplane Kistler of Oklahoma City, both in the US.

The money was to be gradually doled out between 2006 and 2010 - as long as the two companies kept meeting performance milestones along the way. But after Rocketplane Kistler failed to raise a required $500 million in private financing, NASA cancelled its agreement with the company in October 2007.

Re:Why contract it out?

[O2H2]

The reason NASA was essentially forced to proceed with the COTS program was based on their stubborn refusal to permit anything else to deliver payloads to the International Space Station that was made in the USA. They adamantly defended their turf and refused to even consider expendable solutions even though they are far cheaper and even more reliable than Shuttle. Then Columbia was destroyed on reentry. This, and the desire to go back to the moon drove retirement of the Shuttle by 2010. But there was nothing in the pipeline that THEY were designing that was going to get to flight before 2014 at the earliest. Only Russian and European systems that are both lame as hell. Combine this with pressure from Elon Musk and you get the half-assed COTS1 competition. NASA chose just about the weakest, least likely to succeed options and Kistler was one of those. They died because they didn't have a billionaire to act as their sugar daddy. The also owed tens of millions of dollars their subcontractors from the LAST time they went out of business. THere are many who suspect NASA chose these two to guarantee that they would fail and hence assure that there is no competition with and greater motivation for the pathetic ARES 1 vehicle. But I suppose that is a conspiracy theory.

The latest competition has some far more viable companies such as Spacehab, United Launch Alliance, Boeing and Lockheed Martin as team leaders. They have the flight-demonstrated capability to actually deliver many tons of pressurized and unpressurized cargo to ISS at a cost that is a bargain compared any other options. The award is not until 15 February. Let us hope that NASA finally makes one right decision and picks a viable contender. If they pick one of the lamers then the signal is sent that NASA is afraid of competition from other teams and is giving commercial industry no chance to participate in crewed logistics operations. This is sad since they have demonstrated repeatedly that they lack the know-how to deliver cargos to anywhere on a schedule within cost boundaries. This is very bad for ISS as well as any future lunar operations.

To answer your question about subcontracting every single piece of operational launcher hardware was developed by subcontractors and they have the vast background to actually make flight hardware in a real factory. NASA has none of this experience. They were always systems integrators and operators- not detail designers They are trying to force themselves into this role on ARES even thought they never had it in the glory days of Apollo. This is the result of their administrator Griffin who has also never built anything significant but is a wanna be. This approach will be one of the first things killed by the next administration since it will cost NASA ten to twenty times what it would using more traditional subcontracting methods.

Re:types of failure; 4 contestants

[FleaPlus]

NASA wants two separate companies to develop two separate vehicles capable of unmanned resupply of the ISS in a very short time frame. Now, this is an agency that has access to literally DOZENS of off the shelf rockets. None of them will do.

Actually, two of the four finalists are proposing to use those already-existing off-the-shelf rockets you mention. If I understand correctly, both Spacehab and PlanetSpace have partnered with Lockheed Martin in order to use their currently-existing rockets.

For future reference, since it wasn't mentioned in the original submission, here are the four finalists (info from rlvnews.com:

- Spacehab
- Andrews Space
- Orbital Sciences
- PlanetSpace