GAO Releases Text of Its Denial of Sierra Nevada's CCtCAP Protest

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released the text of its decision denying Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC’s) protest of NASA’s decision to award the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCAP) awards to SpaceX and Boeing.  The public release of the redacted document follows NASA’s release of its Source Selection Statement late last Friday.

GAO denied SNC’s protest on January 5, but the text of its decision had to be reviewed and some information redacted because it was subject to a GAO Protective Order.  The public version released today is 21 pages long and has a fair number of [DELETED] notations including detailed price information for all three bidders although the total price bid by each is presented:  Boeing, $3,099,016,464; SpaceX, $1,753,698,691; and SNC, $2,552,271,681.

Price was not the only factor in NASA’s decision, as evidenced by
NASA’s Source Selection Statement, signed by Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations.  The other two were Mission Suitability and Past Performance.  Price was more important than Mission Suitability, which was more important than Past Performance.   The combination of Mission Suitability and Past Performance was approximately equal to Price.  NASA determined that SpaceX “had the best price and also Very Good mission suitability and a High level of confidence in past performance.”  Boeing “is the strongest of all three proposals in both Mission Suitability and Past Performance” even though it is higher in price.  SNC “has a strong management approach” and its “performance on other very relevant work has been very good,” but Gerstenmaier said he agreed with the Source Evaluation Board’s “evaluation that SNC has the lowest rating for the technical subfactor” and SNC’s design is “at the lowest level of maturity.”

GAO agreed with NASA’s determinations.  It denied SNC’s four protests —

• that NASA improperly elevated the importance of a solicitation goal to a de facto requirement;
• that NASA’s determination that the awardee’s fixed price was realistic;
• of NASA’s technical evaluation; and
• of NASA’s past performance evaluation.

CCtCAP is the final phase of NASA’s efforts to facilitate commercial development of crew space transportation systems to service the International Space Station (ISS) through what are essentially public-private partnerships.  NASA supported all three companies in the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCAP) phase, but had to choose only two of the three to proceed to this phase, which is intended to result in systems capable of entering service by the end of 2017. 

SNC has vowed to continue with its vehicle, Dream Chaser, despite losing the protest.  Dream Chaser is a winged vehicle that resembles a small space shuttle.  The Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Dragon vehicles are capsules reminiscent of an Apollo spacecraft.   SpaceX is already launching an uncrewed version of Dragon as a cargo carrying spacecraft.  SpaceX’s most recent “commercial cargo” launch to the ISS was on January 10.  That Dragon spacecraft is still attached to the ISS and expected to return to Earth in February.