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

Just to the curb?

[MarkusQ]

NASA has kicked their previous space partner, Rocketplane Kistler, to the curb

They just kicked them to the curb? In my day they would have kicked them to the moon. Yes, Alice, to the moooooon.

--MarkusQ

P.S. And yes, statistically speaking, I probably am older than you.

Re:Just to the curb?

[tomhudson]

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.

Well, I've got this patent pending on this REALLY BIG sling-shot, if NASA is interested ...

After all, the USPTO will approve anything nowadays ...

Rocketplane?

[jpedlow]

So what is it that the company who got kicked out did? The link didnt work for me:( It seems though that if they just burned through $30M, maybe they should be held accountable for paying some of it back... I'm not 100% sure how things work in the states (I'm Canadian Eh), but shouldnt there be some form of performance rendered from this "partner", or is it just NASA sending money in this company's direction hoping from some sort of result? Maybe there should be more nerds doing open-source aerospace....or it could be a new field for google to go into ;)

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.

this needs an edit

[Anonymous Coward]

Statements like "kicked to the curb" are not factual and just inflamatory. The editors should prevent slashdot from becoming a tabloid and adding the writers comments to the news. This doesnt say what Kistler did wrong, if anything, and why. It just presents kistler in a bad light.... we dont know why the person who submitted the article doesnt like Kistler?

A/S/L

[Hojima]

What a coincidence, I'm in search of a new "Space partner" as well. 399/Protoss Templar/Aiur here. I know it's cheesy but I can't wait for starcraft 2

Why contract it out?

[daveodukeo]

Why in the world does NASA contract out the construction of its vehicles to begin with??!

When there is a world where there is a fluid market of space agencies and vehicle makers, then yeah, let the free market decide. Until then though, let's let the governments "waste" their money by developing them themselves, ok?

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:Why contract it out?

[Tmack]

There is a free market of vehicle builders - and has been since the dawn of the space age. Boeing, etc have extensive and current experience in developing and operating launchers.

NASA's only significant "living" experience is the Space Shuttle.

Which, actually, Rockwell International (now Boeing, Orbiter) designed and built under contract and in joint partnership with Lockheed (Martin Marietta, the ET) and Thiokol/Boeing (SRBs), which form the United Space Aliance (USA). Its what happens when anything is done by a government agency: contract out to the lowest bidder while packing the project full of pork to spread about and make politicians and their affiliates happy.

Tm

Re:no link, no FA

[hedwards]

It's to free us of the trouble of ignoring TFA before posting. This way we don't need the discipline to just skip to the random accusations, trolling and arguing that are at the heart of the /. community.

New low for /.?

[jlarocco]

I'm trying to decide which is worse. The "article" is a page complaining "We were unable to forward you to the advertisement you clicked on.", or the fact that most of the people posting comments seem blissfully unaware of that fact.

Re:New low for /.?

[TubeSteak]

It'd be easier if they just linked to Google News from the beginning
http://news.google.com/news?q=nasa+Rocketplane+Kistler

Re:New low for /.?

[florescent_beige]

Google's first link is to this Slashdot article which brings me to you post which brings me to Google which brings me to Slashdot whichbringsmetoGooglewhichbrings metoSlashdotwhchbrngsmtGglwbmtSwxwxzzwxzzzwzzzzzzzzzztttt *pop*

Proper Linkage

[doomy]

RocketPlane : http://www.rocketplane.com/

News Worthy : http://www.rocketplane.com/press/070329%20-%20PRESS%20RELEASE%20-%20RpK%20&%20MSFC%20Sign%20SAA%20070329.pdf

http://www.rocketplane.com/press/070213%20-%20PRESS%20RELEASE%20-%20RpK%20Meets%20NASA%20Milestone%20Ahead%20of%20Schedule%200207.pdf

And /. worthy : http://www.rocketplane.com/20070108_01.htm

Re:New Shuttle?

[FleaPlus]

What did Rocketplane Kistler come up with before this breakup?

Here's Kistler's design:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/kislerk1.htm

Basically, they were started up back in the late 90s, but went into bankruptcy when the economy tanked. Rocketplane bought them and attempted to resuscitate them for COTS, but they were unable to get the sufficient private funds that NASA's milestone required. They attempted to sue NASA to get more money despite not meeting the milestone, but weren't successful.

types of failure

[Gary W. Longsine]

This seems to me to be a failure of NASA as much as Rocketplane Kistler. The objectives appear to be entirely unrealistic. 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. This is an agency with experience spanning decades, working with several companies to design DOZENS of rockets. None of them cost any less than "many billions of dollars". I'm not saying that it won't be possible to develop a new rocket on the very limited budget and very limited timetable, but NASA would never be willing to do it on these terms. Private investors looked at that and saw what we are starting now to see: a project which is conceptually flawed, and which will almost certainly unravel before a rocket flies, and which will almost certainly not result in a profit on the investment.

Re:types of failure

[Nyeerrmm]

Umm, SpaceX seems do be doing just fine (yes, I know they haven't had a completely successful launch yet). They have designed and built a $6 million rocket capable of getting to LEO with a reasonable load, as well as have the tooling and parts for a much larger version. Granted they have an advantage over Rocketplane Kistler because Musk has a rather large piggy bank, but its still very minimal compared to what NASA, Boeing, Lockheed and Rocketdyne are doing.

There are a number of reasons for why they can do this while the big names fail, but among them are a small dedicated workforce in a Silicon Valley-like atmosphere, lack of reliance on public opinion, and a focus on the most cost-effective design rather than the most efficient. The whole point is to develop it in a way that NASA would never do under a traditional contract.

While its fair to withold judgment until the next launch (May I believe), I see no reason why the next Falcon 1 won't complete its mission, and neither does DARPA, besides plain old dumb luck which tends to affect all launch vehicles, even the Soyuz. Given a success, and more to follow, I don't think the concept is flawed; of course I don't know much about Rocketplane Kistler besides their suborbital design, and there approach may very well have been flawed.

Re:types of failure

[Teancum]

In spite of what you are suggesting here, I do think the COTS program is a poorly designed government program on many levels. There certainly is room to criticize NASA on the approach, and there are some additional methods/objectives that could have been done to help improve the whole program.

Even so, your comments about SpaceX being successful with COTS money are valid. Rocketplane Kistler and their financial model seemed to have been built around the idea that the NASA money would have been the payoff, and not simply some extra money to be earned along the way to a much larger goal. That is precisely what Elon Musk has been doing with SpaceX, as he looked at the NASA money earned this way as "free money" to help make his company even more profitable rather than the end goal of trying to make some money from the program. Rocket science is just too difficult to cut corners like Kistler was doing, and their financial resources simply weren't up to the task.

BTW, I'm curious about where you got the May date for the lanuch of the next Falcon 1? From what I understood, they were technically aiming for last December, but decided to give their engineers a much deserved and needed Christmas break, with the idea to pick up the pace in January for a 1st Quarter 2008 launch. I guess I missed the announcement that pushed this date back, unless you have some "inside" knowledge about SpaceX.

The "failed" launch they did earlier certainly got into space and even into orbit... much higher and faster than Scaled Composites' spacecraft and far and away much more reliable and better results than most of the early Redstone tests NASA did back in the 1950's. And Redstone eventually was a manned vehicle as well, I should add (look up Alan Sheppard and see what he flew in). I mention Scaled Composites simply because a valid criticism of Burton Rutan's spacecraft is that his technology in its current form is incapable of making a genuine leap into LEO due to raw energy requirement.

The earlier problems with the Falcon 1 were genuine engineering mistakes (forgetting some basic chemistry in regards to bolts/nuts on the first flight, and the problem with fuel sloshing in the tanks on the second flight), but those are also problems that can be refined and help to improve the manufacturing process. They are also engineering changes that can be adapted to Falcon 9, which also gives me some genuine hope. I have high confidence that if they can pull off a lanuch of the Falcon 1 successfully, that the Falcon 9 is also going to go up successfully as well. And it is the Falcon 9 that is going to have a much larger impact on the space launch business anyway, not to mention what will be the ultimate validation of the COTS program.

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