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NASA Awards New Commercial Crew Contracts
FleaPlus writes "Continuing last year's successful CCDev (Commercial Crew Development) program, NASA has selected four companies to receive 'CCDev2' seed funding for commercial crew systems. The companies will only receive money if they meet development and testing milestones in the next year, with $75M going to SpaceX for developing their sidemount escape system and testing their Dragon capsule, $92M to Boeing for developing their CST-100 capsule, $80M to Sierra Nevada Corp.'s DreamChaser top-mounted spaceplane, and $22M for Blue Origin's capsule and pusher escape system."
To say that design is not actual work is ludicrous.
I assume you are the type of coder that proceeds straight from requirements to hacking something together?
It's not the design that is required, it's the design review process.
I've heard it described thus: justifying your design to supposed experts who quibble about the most inane parts of the design and ignore the most important. You could submit the most stupid stuff you can think of and they will debate you on the color of the paint you used.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's also quite interesting to note who -didn't- get funding in this round (but are of course contenders for future funding rounds):
ULA: This was the most surprising one, since basically all of the accepted non-SpaceX spacecraft proposals have ULA's Atlas V rocket as their baseline and would require upgrades to their emergency detection system. My thinking is that getting spacecraft development up and running was more urgent than making the necessary low-risk changes to existing rockets. If the spacecraft which baseline the Atlas V continue to develop smoothly, I strongly suspect ULA will get funding for CCDev3.
Paragon: They got funding in CCDev1 to develop their turnkey life support system. I get the impression that it's pretty much ready to use in other spacecraft designs now, so I guess from this point on most of their commercial crew income will come from selling their system to the spacecraft manufacturers.
ATK: One of the most anti-commercial companies in aerospace with quite a few politicians in their pockets, they created a bit of a stir when they announced their "Liberty" rocket. The Liberty was basically a rehash of their cancelled Ares I rocket with an Ariane upper stage. The stated reason for why they weren't chosen is because there's already enough potential rockets to launch on, although I expect to see a senator or two to raise a ruckus about this in the coming days. Apparently none of the spacecraft designers planned to use the ATK rocket as a baseline launcher, either.
United Space Alliance (USA): These are the folks who manage the soon-to-be retired Shuttle program. Their proposal was basically to commercialize the Shuttles and keep them operating. This wasn't considered to fit into the scope of CCDev though (and presumably would have cost an absurd amount of money), so USA ended up withdrawing their proposal.
Orbital Sciences: They proposed a lifting-body spaceplane kind of similar to Sierra Nevada's, but much more heavyweight.
Excalibur Almaz: A really interesting company which purchased and was working to upgrade some flight-proven reusable space capsules from the former Soviet Union's 70s-era military space station program.
There's a really fascinating selection statement from NASA which explains the rationale for which companies were and weren't chosen.
(From a post I made over on the nasaspaceflight forums)
From the Space Act Agreements, here's a quick summary of the payment milestones each company has set for each sub-project going up to a year from now:
http://procurement.ksc.nasa.gov/
Sierra Nevada:
system requirements review
canted airfoil fin selection
cockpit based flight simulator
vehicle avionics integration laboratory
system defniition review
flight control integration laboratory
ETA structure delivery (does this mean "Engineering Test Article"?)
separation system test
preliminary design review for Dream Chaser
optional milestones: materials testing captive carry and ETA landing gear drop tests, ETA captive carry flight test, wind tunnel testing, dream chaser handling qualities evaluation, main RCS test, two hybrid rocket motor test firing, thrust vector control test, ETA captive carry flight test readiness review, ETA free flight test
Blue Origin (only listing final milestones for each sub-project):
* Space Vehicle Design: space vehicle system requirements review
* Pusher escape Risk Reduction: pusher escape ground firing, pusher escape pad escape test (optional milestones: pusher escape max-Q sled test calibration run, pusher escape max-Q sled test egress run)
* RBS (reusable booster system) engine risk reduction: engine thrust chamber assembly test at Stennis (optional: engine pump cold gas drive test, engine pump hot gas drive test) [as an aside, apparently the RBF is a 100klbf restartable hydrolox engine)
Boeing:
launch abort engine fabrication & hot fire test demonstration
landing air bag drop demonstration #1
phase I wind tunnel tests
interim design review - 4
parachute drop tests demonstration
SM propellant tank development test
LV EDS/ASIF interface simulation test
preliminary design review
optional milestones 12-25 all redacted
SpaceX:
launch abort system propulsion conceptual design review
design status review 1 (for Falcon 9/Dragon crew transportation system)
LAS propulsion components PDR
crew accommodation concept prototype and in situ trial (internally-funded by SpaceX, NASA astronauts invited to try crew accomodations and give feedback)
DSR 2
crew accommodation concept delta-prototype and in-situ trial 2
LAS propulsion component test articles complete
LAS propulsion component initial test cycle
concept baseline review
(SpaceX seems to be the only one without "optional" milestones)
I work with NASA so let me explain how we do things. I'm not saying it's the best way, just our way. Of course here is a good wiki that explains the government design review process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_review_(US_Government).
The design reviews are there to ... review the design. The milestones are just places to mark how far along the design is. They are there to provide a stopping point to work towards so that everyone involved can review what is being done to make sure you are on track and you are actually doing the work. It can provide an opportunity for grey beards to chime in with some things you may have forgot to check before you do a lot of detailed design. Also sometimes payments are made at those points. So 99.99% of the work is in the design leading up to those reviews and the review itself gives the contract officers a place to review the work and make changes if necessary. It also helps to make sure the project is on schedule and budget.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.