One factor that led NASA to choose the three companies it did for Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCAP) awards is their diverse design approaches to meeting NASA’s need to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA announced the three winners today:  Boeing, $460 million; SpaceX, $440 million;and Sierra Nevada, $212.5 million.  The awards are milestone-based meaning that each company must meet agreed-upon milestones over the next 21 months to receive payments.  The award amounts are if all the milestones are met, but could be less if they are not met.

Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon are capsule-based systems while Sierra Nevada’s design is a lifting body that resembles a small space shuttle.  Boeing and Sierra Nevada plan to launch using an Atlas V rocket, while SpaceX would use its own Falcon 9.  By funding a diversity of approaches, NASA hopes to end up with at least two viable commercial crew service providers in the 2017 time frame. 

 

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft (cargo version) berthed to the International Space Station, May 2012

Photo credit:  NASA

Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser during full scale captive carry test, May 2012

Photo credit:  Sierra Nevada

 

Artist’s concept of Boeing’s CST-100 spacecraft

Credit:  Boeing 

NASA and key members of Congress had agreed the agency would choose no more than “2.5” winners, creating the impression there would be two full awards and one partial award and the relative amounts suggest that is what NASA did.   NASA Commercial Crew and Cargo program manager Ed Mango, however, dismissed that paradigm during a news conference today.  He said NASA negotiated what each company could accomplish within the 21-month period and that determined the funding amounts.    NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said at a later media teleconference that the selections meet the congressional agreement in the sense that two of the companies — Boeing and SpaceX — are being funded to take their concepts all the way to Critical Design Review (CDR), but not Sierra Nevada. 

Gerstenmaier said four other companies submitted bids:  Space Operations, American Aerospace, Space Design, and ATK.  He said NASA determined early on that the first three companies did not meet the basic requirements of the announcement and discussions continued with the remaining four.  In the end, the three winners were judged to meet the objectives of the announcement “in a much stronger fashion” than ATK, Gerstenmaier said.

Since the space shuttle program ended last year, NASA has been relying on Russia to take astronauts to and from ISS.   NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden focused his remarks on how the CCiCAP awards will lead to systems built in America by American companies that will create American jobs rather than “outsourcing” to Russia.  He and NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Director stressed that some of those jobs will be at KSC or on the “Space Coast” in general, referring to the area of Florida that includes KSC and the adjoining Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.  That section of Florida was hard hit by the layoffs following termination of the space shuttle program.

Boeing’s CST-100  would be launched aboard Atlas V rockets, which are built by the United Launch Alliance, a joint Boeing-Lockheed Martin company.  Boeing already has received awards from NASA’s commercial crew program under two previous “commercial crew development” (CCDev) rounds.  Boeing was the prime contractor for the International Space Station, is part of the United Space Alliance that operated the space shuttle, and over the past decades acquired the companies that built the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules as well as the space shuttle orbiters.

SpaceX is developing the Dragon capsule, which is launched on SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 rocket.   The company successfully launched a cargo-carrying verison of Dragon in May which was developed through NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.  NASA astronauts berthed it to the ISS and after several days it unberthed and returned to Earth, landing in the ocean.  SpaceX is developing a version capable of carrying people through CCDev2 and the new CCiCAP awards.  Elon Musk said today that his company had invested over $1 billion of its own money in Dragon and Falcon 9 on top of the money it has received through the NASA programs.

Sierra Nevada is developing the Dream Chaser spacecraft that, like CST-100, would be launched on an Atlas V.  However, DreamChaser is a “lifting body” with wings rather than a capsule.  The design is based on work done by NASA decades ago under the HL-20 program.   Sierra Nevada received awards under CCDev and CCDev2.  At a press conference, Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada’s Space Systems, said the company had received a total of $125 million from NASA to date and the company had invested “more than half” that much.   He downplayed the significance of the discrepancy between the amount his company will receive under the CCiCAP award versus the others, emphasizing that Dream Chaser will be launched on a proven launch vehicle — the Atlas V has been launched over 30 times already — unlike the Falcon 9, and Dream Chaser is a “mature design” that NASA worked on for 10 years and Sierra Nevada has worked on for another eight.  Thus he believes his company is not lagging behind the others.

The Atlas V needs to be “human-rated” first.   Today it launches only satellites, not people, and additional systems — such as a launch abort system — must be added to make it safer for crews.    The Atlas V is powered by Russian RD-180 engines which may undermine the rationale that these are “American” systems.  Sirangelo dismissed that argument, however, noting that the system NASA currently depends upon — Soyuz — is 100% Russian while the majority of the Atlas V is American.

NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released the results of an investigation into whether Brad Parkinson and others on the government’s GPS advisory board violated conflict of interest rules when reviewing LightSquared’s proposal to build a broadband system that might interfere with GPS.  The OIG found that Parkinson did violate the conflict of interest rules, but did not do so intentionally.  The report faults NASA’s Office of General Counsel and the board’s executive director for not advising Parkinson sooner that it might be a problem.

Parkinson is credited as being “the father” of the GPS navigation satellite system and is Vice Chairman of the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board.  NASA provides administrative support for the interagency board.  Board members are not compensated, but must submit financial disclosure forms that are reviewed by NASA’s Office of General Counsel to ensure members do not have financial conflicts of interest.  Board members also are briefed on their responsibilities to avoid conflicts of interest on “particular matters” while serving.

The OIG found that Parkinson owns “a substantial amount” of stock in Trimble Navigation, a manufacturer of GPS units.  By signing a letter along with the chairman of the advisory board in August 2011 to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging that LightSquared’s application be denied, the OIG found that he violated the conflict of interest rules because Trimble’s business could suffer if the application was granted.  Trimble had warned investors of that potential outcome in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Lightsquared later complained and asked the NASA OIG to investigate if Parkinson or any other Board member violated the conflict of interest rules.  The OIG report says that it presented its preliminary findings to the Department of Justice, but it “declined to open a criminal investigation.”  

The OIG found that Parkinson had properly disclosed his holdings of Trimble stock and did not fault Parkinson “for not immediately recognizing that what he viewed as a general matter of public policy concerning the efficacy of the country’s existing GPS network was a ‘particular matter’ under the statute that he should avoid.”  Instead, the report faults NASA’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) for not overseeing the advisory board’s activities sufficiently to determine the potential for a conflict of interest and warning Parkinson earlier than it did to recuse himself.    It also faults the advisory board’s executive director who it says “could have acted more diligently.”  NASA’s OGC did advise Parkinson and four other board members in November 2011 to recuse themselves with regard to LightSquared matters and they complied.

LightSquared’s proposal to build a hybrid satellite-terrestrial mobile broadband network was attacked from many quarters because it would use frequencies adjacent to those used for, and could interfere with, GPS.   The company countered that the FCC assigned those frequencies and it complied with every FCC requirement; any interference problems were because the GPS receiver manufacturers did not design them correctly.   The FCC ultimately denied the company’s application and LightSquared filed for bankruptcy in May 2012.

 

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee has postponed tomorrow’s scheduled markup of H.R. 4158.

No new date for the markup was set.  The bill would confirm full ownership rights for certain astronauts to items from their spaceflights.

Today’s subcommittee hearing on suborbital launch vehicles remains on schedule for 2:00 pm ET.

NASA will announce the winners of its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCAP) awards on Friday, August 3, 2012.  The much anticipated decision will be released at 9:00 am ET on Friday, with a news conference from Kennedy Space Center at 10:00 am ET.

CCiCAP is the third in a series of NASA Space Act Agreement awards to facilitate the development of space transportation systems by companies instead of the government that can take people to and from low Earth orbit.  NASA’s interest is in transportation to and from the International Space Station (ISS), but some of the companies in the running also anticipate a broader “space tourism” market.

The first two rounds of the competition were under the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.  This round is called CCiCAP to emphasize that NASA now is interested in complete (“integrated”) concepts that include a rocket, spacecraft and associated systems.

NASA’s commercial cargo program received a lot of visibility earlier this year with the launch and reentry of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.  SpaceX plans to develop a version of Dragon to meet the commercial crew requirements.   The competitors for the CCiCAP awards are not known officially since it is still in the competition stage, but industry rumors are that SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Boeing, and ATK are among the bidders.

UPDATE: The Senate Appropriations subcommittee markup of the FY2013 defense funding bill on Tuesday has been added.

The following events may be of interest in the coming week.  The House and Senate both are in session this week.

During the Week

This is the last week of scheduled legislative activity for the next five weeks.  Both chambers are taking their traditional August recess, which is a little longer than usual because of the Republican and Democratic conventions (August 27-30 and September 4-6, respectively).  They will return on September 10 according to their current schedules to face the need to deal with appropriations for the coming fiscal year, FY2013, which begins on October 1.   The Senate has not passed any of the 12 appropriations bills yet.  The House has passed seven of them.  There is no question that a temporary Continuing Resolution (CR) will be needed to keep the government operating; the major issue is whether it will be for a few weeks or months or as long as six months as some Members of Congress are proposing.

 Sunday-Wednesday, July 29-August 1

• AIAA et al Joint Propulsion Conference, Atlanta, GA

Monday-Tuesday, July 30-31

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Astrophysics Subcommittee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC

Tuesday, July 31

• Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee markup FY2013 defense appropriations bill, 192 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 10:30 am ET

Wednesday, August 1

• House Subcommittee Hearing on Emerging Commercial Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle Market, 2318 Rayburn House Office Building, 2:00 pm ET

Thursday, August 2

• House Science, Space and Technology Committee Markup Space Artifacts Bill (H.R. 4158), 2318 Rayburn House Office Building, 9:30 am ET

Friday-Sunday, August 3-5

• Mars Society Annual Convention, Pasadena, CA