NASA Releases Next Commercial Crew Draft RFP
NASA Commercial Crew Transportation Capability Contract CCTCAP Draft RFP, NASA
“The CCtCap contract is the second phase of a two-phased procurement strategy to develop a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability to achieve safe, reliable and cost effective access to and from the International Space Station (ISS) with a goal of no later than 2017.
The Government does not intend to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part 12. This procurement is a full and open competition. The NAICS Code and Size Standard are 336414 and 1000 employees, respectively.”
So FAR Part 15 and fixed price contracts are to be used to get the test pilots to the ISS.
Four NASA Docking Systems are being given out.
From NASA’s perspective, having the answers to any questions about the dRFP answered publicly is good, but if you happen to be a potential bidder with a novel approach, it’s not so good; you either don’t ask any clarifying questions with respect to your approach or you give away your advantage by making the other bidders aware of it. If I understand it correctly, with FAR 15 (the bad old way), both written questions and bids are “sealed” (not public) prior to contract award.
What I’m not clear on is who can dispute whether a given “item” is in fact “commercial” and who resolves any such challenges. The definition of commercial, as it applies to FAR, is given at: FAR — Part 2 Definitions of Words and Terms, and I found it to be open to interpretation and debate.
If there are no delays because of definition debates, and if Congress doesn’t challenge NASA’s use of FAR 12 for this, then I think this is another great step in the right direction from NASA. They seem to be inserting more and more of these logical and sensible moves in between the nonsense programs and processes that have been forced upon them by pork-generation-related mandates. Let’s hope it goes through without being kicked to death in committee meetings.
Also, however you want to label it, I highly approve of this concept of doing a small “program” for the purpose of better defining a large program. It’s time and money well spent. Too many past programs have started by sitting down the day after contract award and saying, OK, now let’s figure out what it is we have to do for this program. I think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
The docking systems aren’t free. I think they’re going to cost something on the order of $16 million each.
According to clause G.6
It sounds like the Government pays for the NASA Docking ports separately and supplies them to the capsule builders.
The prototype and mass production prices may be different.
The docking ports are free, but will not be available until 2016. So SpaceX needs them in 2015. However, plans will be available in 2014 if anyone wants to build one. Things are moving along.