House Hearing on Commercial Space Providers
Keith’s note: Have a look at tomorrow’s House Science Committee Hearing. Specifically, have a look at the charter for tomorrow’s hearing “NASA’s Commercial Cargo Providers: Are They Ready to Supply the Space Station in the Post-Shuttle Era?”
Curiously, after watching NASA spend more than $12 billion on Constellation with only the semi-dummy Ares 1-X rocket to show for it in terms of flight hardware, the committee never planned any oversight hearings on the cost overruns and lack of progress. Now NASA changes the name of Constellation’s Orion to “MPCV” – but still hasn’t a clue what its new (old) mission will now cost. And Congress still doesn’t convene a hearing? Instead they go after the private sector which has made far more progress – at far less cost – toward meeting the same capabilities as NASA has been stumbling to do.
Live webcast starting at 10:00 am EDT
Commercial Launch Vehicles: NASA Taking Measures to Manage Delays and Risks, GAO
“SpaceX and Orbital continue to make progress completing milestones under their COTS agreements with NASA, but both partners are working under aggressive schedules and have experienced delays in completing demonstration missions. SpaceX successfully flew its first demonstration mission in December 2010, but the mission was 18 months late and the company’s second and third demonstration missions have been delayed by almost 2 years due to design, development, and production challenges with the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 launch vehicle.”