Court Declines SNC's Motion to Overrule NASA on CCtCAP Authorization to Proceed

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued a verbal decision today declining to overrule NASA on its decision to allow SpaceX and Boeing to proceed in executing the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCAP) contracts.  Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is suing the government over NASA’s October 9 decision to rescind a previously issued stop-work order while SNC’s protest of the contract awards is under consideration by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

In a terse statement, Judge Marilyn Blank Horn said:

“On October 21, 2014, the court held a hearing in the above captioned protest.  Given the urgency to resolve the override issue, the court provided the parties with a verbal decision declining to overrule the override.”

“Override” refers to NASA overriding a provision of the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) under which work on a contract ordinarily would cease while a protest of the contract award is pending.   NASA initially issued a stop-work order to Boeing and SpaceX in compliance with CICA after SNC filed its protest with GAO.   On October 9, however, it rescinded that order, overriding the CICA requirement, on the basis that its statutory authority allowed it to avoid serious adverse consequences.

SNC’s suit before this court is that NASA did not demonstrate those serious adverse consequences in overriding the CICA requirements and the override was “illegal and void.”

GAO has until January 5, 2015 to rule on SNC’s underlying protest of the contract awards.  At the time it filed the protest, SNC said it found “serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process.”

Boeing, SpaceX and SNC are all being funded under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCAP) phase of the commercial crew program.  On September 16,  NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX to continue on to the next phase, CCtCAP, under which each company is expected to complete work on new commercial crew space transportation systems to take NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station by the end of 2017.  Both designs are capsules: Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon V2.  SNC’s design is a winged vehicle, Dream Chaser, that resembles a small space shuttle.