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OIG: Challenges for Orbital's Antares Recovery Plans

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
September 17, 2015
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OIG: Challenges for Orbital's Antares Recovery Plans

NASA’s Response to Orbital’s October 2014 Launch Failure: Impacts on Commercial Resupply of the ISS, NASA OIG
“Orbital’s Return to Flight Plan contains technical and operational risks and may be difficult to execute as designed and on the timetable proposed. … This tight schedule does not include a test flight for the modified system and provides limited opportunities for qualification and certification testing. … when calculating the cost to NASA for the remaining four flights, Orbital did not use the per-kilogram pricing in the original contract and instead divided the price for the cancelled eighth mission by its contractual upmass requirement to arrive at a revised price per-kilogram. By accepting this pricing structure, NASA committed to paying $65 million more for these missions than the Agency would have paid if the original pricing had been used.”
NASA could have cut costs after botched Orbital launch – watchdog, Reuters
“NASA missed opportunities to save millions of dollars following Orbital ATK’s failed cargo run to the International Space Station last year, the agency’s top watchdog said on Thursday. The NASA Office of Inspector General also questioned Orbital’s plan to resume deliveries to the space station, a permanently staffed, $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.”

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5 responses to “OIG: Challenges for Orbital's Antares Recovery Plans”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    So . . . Orbital tried to squeeze them for the extra flight’s money even though it failed?

    • Vladislaw says:
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      If you click the link and read the article at SpaceRef, you will see that Orbital didn’t try .. NASA let them..

  2. numbers_guy101 says:
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    From the IG report – “In our judgment, the requirements were clear – NASA was not financially responsible for damage to Agency property or the property of VCSFA. Nevertheless, after the Orb-3 failure, the Virginia congressional delegation took steps to make $20 million of NASA’s budget available to help fund Wallops repairs – funds that we believe could be put to better use.”

    Ahh, even when we in NASA think we have a clear partnership arrangement, life and politicos intervene. Writing rules along the way, or even worse, unwritten rules, is always a bad thing.

  3. numbers_guy101 says:
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    I’m glad to see the IG use the word “investment” at the end of the report. While there will always be a need for an engineering mindset, and a contracting mindset, and a smart-buyer mindset, the investment mindset in NASA has got to grow more.

  4. Saturn1300 says:
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    NASA paid for the mission in advance with milestones. The mission complete,20%, they did not pay. But seem to be paying anyway through changes. No test flight or full mission run of the Antares-230. NASA says there will not be anything critical in the cargo. NASA has not done a CDR. MARS was suppose to get insurance. Instead they got insurance for aviation. NASA paid 5 million anyway. NASA did not have to pay for repairs.