SNC Protest Halts NASA Commercial Crew Efforts
Boeing, SpaceX told to stop work under crew contracts, Spaceflight Now
“NASA has directed Boeing and SpaceX to halt activities under contracts awarded last month to build commercial space taxis to ferry astronauts to the the International Space Station while the U.S. Government Accountability Office reviews a protest of NASA’s contract decision filed by Sierra Nevada Corp.”
Sierra Nevada Protests Commercial Crew Award, earlier post
The reason there are so many protests is that so many of them are successful. Part of the reason for this is that, in my experience, the actual contracting officers often have limited experience with the technical, hands-on aspects of the programs for which they are evaluating proposals, and almost never bear any personal liability if the effort fails. So the loser protests, the decision goes to court, the judge is even less familiar with the technical details, everything gets tossed onto the roulette wheel of legal decision-making, technicalities of language outrank common sense, and the loser may become the winner. The contracting system, like much of politics, is broken because it focuses on technicalities rather than goals.
In this case it seems a bit unlikely the protest will succeed, given Boeing’s political pull, but it will delay the program for months. I find the sleek DC a wonderful concept, but having worked many years with the Shuttle, I do not believe it makes sense to trust human lives to a runway lander with an even lower touchdown L/D. Moreover the DC is heavier and has less payload capacity then the Dragon or CST.
I wonder if the shut down will be a PR nightmare for them … the blame will fall to them now… for better or worse.
V4:
Lower L/D? Lift/drag? Meaning it comes down faster then the Shuttle relative to it’s lower lift? I though it’s lower weight/lift would compensate to give it a lower overall landing speed.
tinker
Both shuttle and DC have nominal touchdown speeds of about 190kt, the X-37 slightly slower at 177. That said, the DC is much smaller and lighter than the shuttle (11mt vs 100mt) and would have a lower touchdown speed if it had the same L/D.
My estimates, based on HL-10: Shuttle- 4.5 DC 3.6
“Officials did not say if the work stoppage prevents activities using internal funds”
That’s my question. I would assume that if allowed to do so SpaceX will continue working even at the risk of not getting paid. Worst case scenario is that their award will be cancelled. However even in that unlikely outcome they haven’t lost anything assuming they are able to complete the project on their own and find customers. Including NASA which would still be a possible customer even if they lose the award.
More likely the Sierra Nevada complaint will either be dismissed or they will be given some amount of money which will somewhat reduce the amounts given to Boeing and SpaceX. Anticipating this as the likely outcome I think SpaceX will continue working because if they stop for several months then start again that will only add to the cost of the project, not to mention putting them behind and delaying the eventual date when they can start collecting revenue for paid launches.
As to what Boeing will do, from a purely business point of view they may decide to just wait it out until they are sure they will get paid and how much.
> I would assume that if allowed to do so SpaceX will continue working even at the risk of not getting paid
Yeah, and I don’t see that NASA has any ability to disallow SpaceX (or Boeing) to spend its own money on whatever it wants. Musk has money and chutzpah, and he may see this stop-work order as giving him a time advantage over competitors who won’t or can’t proceed without NASA funding.
Doubtless Unca Sam’s dollars would be welcome, but proceeding without them might have certain advantages.
I was referring to within the context of the award. Obviously there’s nothing to stop SpaceX or Boeing from continuing work on their vehicles on their own dime even if they are told not to. But with a multi-billion dollar contract at stake I don’t think either company will plow ahead unless they are told that it is okay. That is unless they don’t care about the money. But I think they do care about the money. Boeing, because that’s what a company of that size is generally all about. And SpaceX because they are smaller and they know that this contract will be a big boost for them.
Musk may have chutzpah but he’s also pragmatic and he doesn’t take lightly the opportunities that he has received from NASA.
Interesting point: Since the Sierra Nevada protest is quite specifically about Boeing getting the award over them despite a significantly higher price, might a good lawyer make a case that SpaceX in the meantime should be allowed to proceed (and get paid for it) given that the award to SpaceX is not in question?
Hello, NASA legal department…
Followup thought: Given the obvious national priority involved in getting at least one crew vehicle into service as soon as possible, and given the degree of potential delay implicit in any serious protest (years in the case of a new USAF tanker aircraft), it may well be good national policy to pursue an, ahem, aggressive legal interpretation of the relevant procurement rules.
Practically speaking, what harm is done if the contractor whose award is NOT under protest is paid to proceed expeditiously?
i think SpaceX is going to work on the Dragon V2, since the pad-abort and launch-abort tests are milestones from the previous award. i’d guess they can still legally work on that.
Over the next few months, that’s likely so. But these protests can drag on for years. Best to start putting a plan in place now. Paging NASA Legal!
You can bet Boeing won’t spend their own money until they know the outcome. I would rather see SN get a chance than Boeing. I would like to see a non-capsule alternative.
Yeah. This is a perfect opportunity to have what’s called “dissimilar redundancy”. It gives you more options, plus broadens technology development.
The downside is that it is trading a Boeing ship for a ship that is very much Lockheed under the skin. Oh, well…
The decision was a bad one which I doubt could be honestly justified. Maybe we will see just that. Fact is all have similar capabilities capacity-wise. DC has much more capability from a performance standpoint and is important for maintaining and extending technological capability. Price-wise Boeing was the most expensive and they have along history of getting more expensive over time. And in my view, more significant than anything else, the US does not need three capsule designs. We really do not need two. One affordable design would do it. Technically the NASA decision cannot be justified.
Putting all of the eggs in one vehicle means that if it is delayed or grounded for any length of time then NASA is back to relying on Soyuz. That is what they are trying to avoid by having at least two U.S. crew vehicles, just like they have two U.S. cargo vehicles. Even more so considering that manned vehicles are more susceptible to lengthy grounding than unmanned vehicles, especially in the wake of a fatal accident. NASA seems to be prudently trying to avoid getting caught in a situation like they are in now and have been before of not being able to launch astronauts from U.S. soil. The question is whether congress will have the same foresight.
Your initial statement is incorrect.
No one ever said that all eggs should be placed in one basket.
Fact was that NASA needed a replacement for Shuttle 3-4 years ago. NASA obviously was not too concerned since they gave the job to build Orion to a bunch who needed to learn the job from the ground up, literally, and they meandered around a design that was poorly defined and led to continuing problems, which we still see the result today in the form of outrageous cost and ridiculously long schedules. Yet in less time and with something under 1/5 the money, one company has been flying a vehicle for several years and was the low bidder on commercial crew. They have real experience and proven results. By comparison, while Boeing has been in the space biz for 50 years (if you include their predecessor companies, McDonnell and North American/Rockwell, fact is a lot of their people have not built a manned vehicle, so not a lot more points for experience; their CST vehicle has never been completed or flown; and we now hear that Boeing was the high bidder. Since when does the Fed award to the highest bidder? Sounds shady right off…
SNC has experience; not in exactly the same fields as Boeing, but one of their main points of experience has to be that their vehicle, the DC, has flown. SNC was not the high bidder. Their vehicle, once it enters service, would have provided not only back-upto a capsule, but in many ways would have been preferred because of its dynamics and versatility.
So how did you figure there would be no back up? DC would have been prime and Dragon V2 would have been a backup.
NASA should do everyone a favor: cancel Orion; make the awards to Space X and SNC, and then there is enough money to spend on either a lunarlander or a long duration hab for asteroid or planetary missions.
I think you mean to say that you think NASA should cancel CST-100. Now that they made the award, I don’t see how they can cancel CST-100 without waiting for the outcome of SNC’s protest. Canceling CST-100 right now would only raise more troubling questions about NASA’s decision making process for commercial crew awards. It would certainly trigger a Boeing protest, something with which Boeing does have recent experience.
I agree if Dragon and Dream Chaser were both operational that would take care of redundancy. Sorry I didn’t realize that was what you were saying.
It’s a real uphill battle though for Sierra Nevada. Notwithstanding the points you made, Boeing will still be perceived by NASA managers and lawmakers as having greater experience than Sierra Nevada. One successful aerodynamic test flight of Dream Chaser won’t be enough to convince them. SpaceX has the advantage of many successful commercial launches as well as deliveries to ISS, and they are also starting to demonstrate that they can handle a busy schedule.
I am hoping that Sierra Nevada will at least get some money to help them continue moving forward. But even if they do I suspect it would still be much less than either Boeing and SpaceX. The current award ratio for Boeing and SpaceX is about 5 to 3. If Sierra Nevada’s protest is successful you might see an award for the three companies something like 6:4:1. Converting my WAG to dollars would be 3.7 billion for Boeing, 2.5 billion for SpaceX, and 600 million for Sierra Nevada. Although an amount that small for SNC would mean that NASA would just be paying for some milestones for Dream Chaser and not include any add-on flights.
I imagine that SpaceX can be doing much work. The 2 different abort tests for example, which includes a good workout for the superdracos.. Also, I assume that the Dragon V2.0 version of the grasshopper is on SpaceX’s dime and will move forward.
I don’t understand your last sentence. Are you talking about firefly where they test landing a dragon with dracos? I’m wondering it they have had any firefly tests yet?
DragonFly. Firefly is another company altogether. The answer is no, not yet.
It’s DragonFly. Firefly is another launch company.
Just checked the FAA permits page and while the final EAS is approved for DragonFly tests there’s no FAA permit yet. Posters on NSF say no DragonFly tests until F9R Dev-2 is test hopped (it was on the tripod test stand last week) and shipped to New Mexico. What with all that’s on their table this quarter (Dev-2 test.hop, CRS-5, one more satellite, and the Dragon V2 pad abort test for CCiCap) maybe not this year.
Dragonfly testing, yes. I am not aware of any flights yet. I suspect that a 90 day funding break will not stop dragon v2.0 development. Spacex is investing its own cash on it. It is Boeing that refuses to invest any of its money in cst-100.
the abort tests were part of the milestones for the previous award, so SpaceX should be able to legally proceed with working on the Dragon V2 for those.
SNC deserves to get at least some funding to continue. As I previously posted, an obvious solution would be to re-program some funding from the way too high award to Boeing and send it to SNC. On the other hand, SNC will be viewed as countering US interest by delaying the return of US vehicles to Space. They need to think carefully about this, as does Boeing.
I feel SNC should go on as an R&D effort. But for operational crew and cargo transport it is not as practical as a capsule.
Does John McCain have any interest in this?
Why? McCain wields no magical powers. The last thing that needs to happen is for Congress to begin to think they have a reason to hold funding for NASA and Commercial Crew. There is nothing that McCain can do to make Boeing’s award magically disappear or to make money magically appear on SNC’s doorstep. There is certainly nothing McCain can do to speed up processing SNC’s protest.
I share your frustration, but i don’t think it will help. John McCain (along with Lindsey Graham) have zero influence in congress. They exist only as talking heads on Sunday morning interview shows. They are totally powerless and are ignored by their own party. Anyway, as pointed out, its best not to increase congress’s interference in an already hopelessly flawed process.