Today’s Tidbits: April 29, 2018

Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for April 29, 2018:  Blue Origin reaches new heights; NASA’s Inspector General cites commercial cargo cost increases; John Elbon’s new job.  Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.

Blue Origin Reaches New Heights

Blue Origin conducted its eighth flight of a reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket on April 29.  This was the second flight of the New Shepard 3 rocket that made its debut launch on December 12, 2017.  This time it reached an altitude of 351,000 feet, which is 66 miles or 107 kilometers.   “Space” is generally considered to be an altitude of 100 kilometers or higher.

The company’s New Shepard 2 rocket made 5 flights between 2015 and 2016 before it was retired.  New Shepard 1 made one flight in 2015, but the rocket crashed on landing.

Blue Origin founder (and Amazon.com billionaire) Jeff Bezos tweeted highlights of the mission, which carried experiments for government and commercial customers in its crew capsule, which lands separately from the rocket.  It also again carried the “Mannequin Skywalker” test dummy.  The company launches and lands New Shepard at its facilities in West Texas.  It is named after Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space on a suborbital launch on May 5, 1961.

Highlights from today’s mission. Don’t miss the Nerf ball doing a few backflips in zero gravity. #GradatimFerociter @BlueOrigin pic.twitter.com/YxlJRt0MXc

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 30, 2018

Blue Origin’s goal is to launch passengers on its suborbital spaceflights.  Bezos said that the altitude reached on this flight is “the altitude we’ve been targeting for operations,” but not when those operations would begin.

NASA Inspector General Cites Commercial Cargo Price Increase 

NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently completed an audit of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) or “commercial cargo” program under which SpaceX and Orbital ATK deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).  Those two companies were selected for the first round of services (CRS-1).  A third company, Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC), was added for the second round (CRS-2).

The report found that a total of 31 launches were awarded under CRS-1 for a total cost of $5.9 billion or an average of $191.3 million per flight. The maximum value of the CRS-2 contract is $14 billion, which is “more than double the value of the CRS-1 contracts.”

“Initial 2016 projections showed the CRS-2 contract was approximately $400 million more expensive than CRS-1 while delivering roughly 6,000 kilograms less upmass capability…. The higher costs for CRS-2 are primarily driven by increased prices from SpaceX, the impact of selecting three contractors, and the $700 million in integration costs awarded to date. Of those integration costs, we question as premature $4.4 million paid to Sierra Nevada to begin certifying its second Dream Chaser configuration.”

The report also concluded that the cost of SNC’s flights could be reduced if it used a less expensive launch vehicle than the Atlas V, which it will use for its first two missions.

The OIG made five recommendations and considers NASA’s response to four them as sufficient.  A fifth is unresolved — that NASA should clarify whether SNC will deliver a second Dream Chaser spacecraft “and, if not, incorporates the risk of having only a single vehicle into the ISS Program risk management database.”

Dream Chaser is a small, reusable winged spacecraft that resembles the space shuttle.  SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft also are reusable and there are several of them.  Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft are not designed to survive the heat of reentry and are destroyed as they come back through the atmosphere so a new capsule is launched each time.

John Elbon’s New Job

John Elbon is United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) new Chief Operating Office (COO), succeeding Dan Collins.

Elbon is a Boeing veteran where he most recently was Vice President and General Manager, Space Exploration, a division of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. He was responsible for Boeing’s support of NASA’s International Space Station, commercial crew, and Space Launch System programs.

ULA is a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that builds and launches the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets and is developing the new Vulcan rocket.

ULA announced Elbon’s new job on April 26.  Collins retired earlier this year.  He had been ULA’s COO since the company was founded in 2006.

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