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Commercialization

NASA Seeks Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 13, 2013
Filed under ,

NASA Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle (sRLV) Flight and Payload Integration Services
“NASA/DFRC plans to issue a Competitive Request for Proposal (RFP)/Solicitation for the following Commercial item/services: … The anticipated release date of the Draft RFP/Solicitation NND14480735R is on or about Dec 11, 2013. The final RFP/Solicitation is expected to be released on or about Feb 12, 2014 with an anticipated Proposal due date of on or about 28 March 2014. All responsible sources may submit a proposal which shall be considered by the agency.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

8 responses to “NASA Seeks Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles”

  1. savuporo says:
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    Up Aerospace would be the only one with an available product. Garvey Space has promising tech and team but has not been aiming for these altitudes yet.
    They did throw in a strange requirement for controlled rocket powered vertical landing – is that to “customize” the RFP for Masten ?
    Unclear if the requirements in there are meant to be “all” or “any” ?

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      I think we have to wait and see what the actual delivery dates are in the RPF to answer these questions. If the contract milestone dates are far enough out, then we might see more responses from people willing to gamble a little on what they can create between now and then.

      Also, I suspect that more companies are already doing some work in this area than have already announced it.

      I don’t see anything in the posted synopsis about whether this opportunity is limited to American companies. That’s the first thing I’ll be looking for when the RFP is posted. If it is not restricted to US service suppliers, then there’ll be a lot more potential responders.

  2. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Putting aside the limited responses we can expect, this seem like progress on two fronts:

    1) More “commercial” service is being requested; and

    2) Three whole months from the draft RFP until the RFP due date, with almost an entire month’s notice prior to draft release. This is certainly a big improvement over announcing an RFP on the Friday before a long weekend and a due date one week later!

    This is more in line with aerospace industry typical timing and indicates (to me, anyhow) that they are serious about this RFP, and it’s not just another pre-decided give-away program. Things are looking up.

  3. dogstar29 says:
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    Sessh, why did they cancel the contract with Armadillo? The Stig would be great for this.

    • savuporo says:
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      Armadillo shut down their operations on their own. Someone should do a postmortem interview with Carmack to figure out the primary reasons. I suspect doing space turned out much harder than the team expected and it simply wore them out. They probably didn’t have very ample buffers of operating capital to keep the team most efficient and not get bogged down.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        I feel it is a little simpler than that. Carmack had a small NASA contract (working with JSC on the pixel-derived Morpheus) but NASA cancelled the contract, deciding to eliminate contractors and have civil servants do the hardware development. That cut off his income. At the same time Carmack felt that what NASA really needed was a reusable suborbital, i.e. the Stig. It seems likely he was right, after all the Morpheus is not very impressive compared to the Curiosity lander and the Grasshopper, both built by contractors, but Carmack was unable to persuade NASA. As inexpensive and practical as the Stig was, he could not continue to launch a rocket into space with no government support.

        • savuporo says:
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          NASA contracts never funded Armadillo at that kind of level. In fact, some time ago JC explicitly stated he is done with NASA contracting as it sidetracks and saps their resources and they keep going on their own.

          They went 10 years without getting to space for various reasons and their perceived progress slowed down a lot and costs and complexity kept climbing up without matching increase in team size and funding levels. Plus JC had to spend much of his energy on his primary job over last couple years.

          Any team of that size would finally lose the resolve under these conditions. NASA contracts didnt kill them.

  4. Michael Spencer says:
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    “expose the payload to the low temperature and near-vacuum of space while simultaneously exposing the payload to very low values of gravity under stable gravitational conditions. “

    There’s a new-fangled spaceplane out there in Mojave that could do this, isn’t there?