Sierra Nevada Corp. Files Legal Challenge Against NASA Commercial Contracts

New submitter Raymondware sends an update to last week's news that NASA had awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to provide rockets for future manned spaceflight. Now, one of their competitors, Sierra Nevada Corp, has announced it will launch a legal challenge to the contracts. The company claims the government is spending $900 million more than it needs to for equivalent fulfillment, and they're demanding a review. They add, Importantly, the official NASA solicitation for the CCtCap contract prioritized price as the primary evaluation criteria for the proposals, setting it equal to the combined value of the other two primary evaluation criteria: mission suitability and past performance. SNC’s Dream Chaser proposal was the second lowest priced proposal in the CCtCap competition. SNC’s proposal also achieved mission suitability scores comparable to the other two proposals. In fact, out of a possible 1,000 total points, the highest ranked and lowest ranked offerors were separated by a minor amount of total points and other factors were equally comparable.

Comments

Re:Boeing bought more politicians.

[demachina]

This contact is for carrying people in to LEO, not satellites or cargo. Your argument doesn't work for human rated launchers.

First, it is difficult and expensive to human rate a launch vehicle so not very many companies are going to do it without a reasonable chance of getting business.

It is also probably not a place you want a company cutting corners to low ball a contract bid. The first priority is keeping the cargo alive, not saving a few dollars by going with launch-by-night Rockets-R-US.

Re:Another Factor?

[harperska]

Maybe, probably not. All of the problems with the shuttle were not due to it being a spaceplane per se, but due to it being a sideways stack rather than a vertical one. Dream Chaser is designed instead to be on top of a rocket, either an Atlas V or Falcon 9.

Challenger failed because the failed o-ring between the segments of an SRB caused a jet of flame that impinged on the external tank. Falcon 9 doesn't use any SRBs. Atlas V doesn't use multi-segment shuttle style SRBs, and may not use SRBs at all for manned launches. Either way, that particular failure mode would be the fault of the booster and not the vehicle. In addition, by being on the top of the stack, if there is any sort of catastrophic failure of the booster, the vehicle is equipped with a launch escape system that was impossible on the shuttle.

The Columbia accident, as well as countless near-misses that could have resulted in a Columbia style accident, was due to debris detaching from the external tank and striking the orbiter. If the vehicle is on top of the stack, nothing that breaks off of the rocket can physically come into contact with the vehicle.

Therefore Dream Chaser isn't vulnerable to either of the causes of loss of a shuttle orbiter, and being a spaceplane has nothing to do with it.

Re:Past performance?

[ihtoit]

Boeing and SpaceX have BOTH demonstrated technological ability in space, SN have not.

Are you going to buy an untested car from an unknown manufacturer, load your kids in it and drive it cross country?
Or are you going to buy a Ford?

Re:Boeing bought more politicians.

[ihtoit]

I don't think low-bidding should ever be a consideration. That's how Thiokol got in to the STS and boardroom creep killed Challenger. The bottom line overrode safety considerations - the engineers said "You launch, the vehicle will explode", the board disagreed. They wanted to save however many thousands of Dollars on yet another launch hold and just fucking light that thing off. The ultimate price in human life was collected.