Why NASA Rejected Lockheed Martin's Jupiter For Commercial Resupply Services 2 (fool.com)

MarkWhittington writes: Recently, NASA rejected Lockheed Martin's bid for a contract for the Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) program as being too expensive. CRS-2 is the follow-on to the current CRS program that has SpaceX and Orbital Systems sending supplies to the International Space Station. Motley Fool explained why the aerospace giant was left behind and denied a share of what might be $14 billion between 2018 and 2024. In essence, Lockheed Martin tried to get the space agency to pay for a spacecraft that would do far more than just take cargo to and from the International Space Station.

Comments

Mission Creep

[EnsilZah]

I like the idea of a space tug that can refuel and move satellites in orbit, but this role seems to be at odds with bringing cargo to the ISS which is the goal of the CRS(2) contracts.

From what I understand the plan goes like this: On the first flight Jupiter (the tug) and Exoliner (the cargo vessel) go up together, once they are in orbit Jupiter adjusts the orbit to reach the ISS, after the cargo is offloaded and garbage is loaded Jupiter puts Exoliner on a path to burn up in the atmosphere while it itself stays in orbit to pick up the next Exoliner that's launched alone, as well as other tug duties.

So the problem as I see it is this:
For a tug you'd probably want a much more efficient ion drive to avoid refueling often, fuel boiling off and the like, you probably want the robotic arm that grabs on to wayward satellites.

For supply deliveries you probably want liquid engines because some of the supplies and experiments are perishable and can't afford to wait the weeks or months it would take an ion engine to boost them to ISS orbit.
And the grabby arm is redundant mass because the ISS has its own arm that's quite proficient at berthing other vehicles like the Dragon or Cygnus.

So it looks like a compromise of design that's intended to get NASA to pay with the cargo delivery contract for unrelated functionality.
 

Re:Horrible Article

[Virtucon]

It's funny how government contract awards go. Losers whine and if the RFP hasn't been properly documented, vetted and scored then bidders can and have overturned decisions. It can even wind up in court based on federal procurement laws. In some cases fraud or collusion is involved while in others despite having an open process, a selected bidder can have an easier path through the process. The latter being the collusion part. For example a department writes an RFP and it goes out to bid for a new computer system that must be natively compatible with IBM's iSeries. Let's count how many bidders there may be.

This is how you get overly priced items built for the government. It drowns in paper and bureaucracy including the annual "spend the budget" fun of summer where government agencies spend unused money on anything and everything because they don't want to risk the upcoming fiscal year budget. Rather than waving or giving the budget back to the treasury they'll spend it on anything they can.

In reading the TFA it sounds like Lockheed did indeed come up with an overpriced system that had features that NASA didn't want. In reasonable cases that'd be it but all of the government contractors, not just aerospace, know how to game the system to the determent of all US taxpayers. It'll be fun to see if this gets dragged out. Fortunately there's two years until the next contract period and if Lockheed ultimately wins, the current contract holders will probably get paid at an escalated rate to deliver resupply missions because it'll be in their contracts as well since it's outside the agreed upon contract duration.