NASA and the Private Sector - Page 46

The internal document, signed by NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier on Sept. 15, the day before the contract awards were announced, says, “I consider SNC’s (Sierra Nevada Corp.) design to be the lowest level of maturity, with significantly more technical work and critical design decisions to accomplish. The proposal did not thoroughly address these design challenges and trades.” Gerstenmaier goes on to say that Sierra’s proposal “has more schedule uncertainty. For example, some of the testing planned after the crewed flight could be required before the crewed flight, and the impact of this movement will greatly stress the schedule.”

A copy of Gerstenmaier’s document was obtained by Aviation Week.

Although the document praises Sierra’s “strong management approach to ensure the technical work and schedule are accomplished,” it cautions that the company’s Dream Chaser had “the longest schedule for completing certification.” The letter also states that “it also has the most work to accomplish which is likely to further extend its schedule beyond 2017, and is most likely to reach certification and begin service missions later than the other ‘Offerors’.”

Discussing costs, Gerstenmaier says that “although SNC’s price is lower than Boeing’s price, its technical and management approaches and its past performance are not as high and I see considerably more schedule risk with its proposal. Both SNC and SpaceX had high past performance, and very good technical and management approaches, but SNC’s price is significantly higher than SpaceX’s price.”

Touching on why Boeing received a $4.2 billion contract, versus $2.6 billion for SpaceX, he adds “I consider Boeing’s superior proposal, with regard to both its technical and management approach and its past performance, to be worth the additional price in comparison to the SNC proposal.”

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Louisville-based Space Systems is asking a federal court in Washington, D.C., to issue an injunction to once again force NASA to stop work on its crewed spacecraft program.

Space Systems filed formal protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office on Sept. 26 after its Dream Chaser bid for NASA's commercial crew contract was rejected. The contract was split between Boeing Co's CST-100 capsule and SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

That filing required NASA to order Boeing and SpaceX to stop work while the bid protest is being investigated.

On Oct. 9, NASA, "under statutory authority available to it," ordered Boeing and SpaceX to resume work as it "best serves the United States," according to an issued statement.

Space Systems is leaving the majority of the case with GAO and only seeking the work stoppage through the federal court.

An innovative partnership between NASA and SpaceX is giving the U.S. space agency an early look at what it would take to land multi-ton habitats and supply caches on Mars for human explorers, while providing sophisticated infrared (IR) imagery to help the spacecraft company develop a reusable launch vehicle.

After multiple attempts, airborne NASA and U.S. Navy IR tracking cameras have captured a SpaceX Falcon 9 in flight as its first stage falls back toward Earth shortly after second-stage ignition and then reignites to lower the stage toward a propulsive “zero-velocity, zero-altitude” touchdown on the sea surface (see images).

Engineers at NASA and SpaceX are now correlating that data with company telemetry from the Sept. 21 Falcon 9 launch of a Dragon cargo carrier to the International Space Station to learn exactly what the vehicle was doing in terms of engine-firing and maneuvering when it generated the signatures collected by the aircraft.

United Launch Alliance is starting to develop a whole new rocket system and will be restructuring its processes and workforce to slash launch costs in half amid smaller military budgets and competition from SpaceX.

The result will be a smaller ULA in the near term, but one able to grow again and win new kinds of business in the long run, said Tory Bruno, new CEO of the Centennial-based rocket maker in his first interview since being appointed Aug. 12.

Bruno, the former president of Lockheed Martin's strategic missiles and missile defense programs, said ULA will have preliminary design ideas by year's end for a new line of rockets blending the best features of ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV rocket families.

The new launch system, its booster stage powered by new engines made by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company, is meant to start flying in 2019 and cap a remaking of ULA as a more efficient organization.

"We are working right now to design what that future will be. And we're going to finish our [preliminary] studies this year, and we're going to announce this is what our next generation launch system will look like," he said. "There will be other technologies that are enabling of that whole system, and they'll be part of what brings the overall cost down .... We're cutting [ launch cost] in half again, we're getting in to the commercial [launch] marketplace. We will also adjust design our teams and our organization to be the most effective at delivering that."

WASHINGTON — A NASA mission aimed at developing a nontoxic propellant for satellite thrusters will host three experimental payloads for the U.S. Defense Department when it launches in 2016.

The Defense Department’s Space Experiments Review board has selected three payloads to be hosted aboard NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM), according to an Oct. 15 press release from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., the program’s prime contractor. Boulder, Colorado-based Ball received a $3.4 million contract from NASA to integrate the payloads with the GPIM space vehicle, the press release said.

The selected payloads are: an Air Force Academy mission to characterize Earth’s ionosphere and thermosphere; a Naval Research Laboratory mission to measure plasma densities and temperatures; and an Air Force Institute of Technology experiment that will test space collision avoidance measures.

Boeing has successfully completed the final milestone of its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreement with NASA. The work and testing completed under the agreement resulted in significant maturation of Boeing’s crew transportation system, including the CST-100 spacecraft and Atlas V rocket. NASA in July approved the Critical Design Review Board milestone for Boeing’s crew transportation system, confirming the detailed designs and plans for test and evaluation form a satisfactory basis to proceed with full-scale fabrication, assembly, integration and testing. It is the culmination of four years of development work by Boeing beginning when the company partnered with NASA during the first round of agreements to develop commercial crew transportation systems. To get to this point, extensive spacecraft subsystem, systems, and integrated vehicle design work has been performed, along with extensive component and wind tunnel testing.

On October 21 2014 12:57 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:


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The program manager of the Skunk Works’ compact fusion reactor experiment is Tom Maguire. Maguire and his team places emphasis on the turn-around time for modifying and testing the compact fusion device. With the confidence they are expressing in their design and the ability to quickly build, test and modify, they are claiming only five years will be needed to reach a prototype.

What exactly the prototype represents was left unexplained, however. Maguire continues by saying that in 10 years, the device will be seen in military applications and in 20 years it will be delivered to the world as a replacement for the dirty energy sources that are in use today. Military apps at 10 years means that the device will be too expensive initially for civilian operations but such military use would improve performance and lower costs which could lead to the 20 year milestone moment if all goes as planned.

Elon Musk, CEO and chief designer for Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, said he wants the company’s new commercial orbital rocket launch site at Boca Chica beach to be operational as soon as possible.

That means the paved launch site near the end of U.S. Highway 4 at Boca Chica should be complete in about nine months, with the first rocket launch taking place as early as late 2016.

The Boca Chica site will be the world’s first commercial orbital space port.

The 100th Merlin 1D engine has come off the assembly at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. According to SpaceX it was less than two years ago that production began on Merlin 1D. Currently SpaceX produces four new Merlin 1D engines per week and they expect production will ramp up to five per week before the year is out.

Hannah Post, a SpaceX spokesperson outlined in a release the production process. "The production process begins with major engine components - injector, turbopump, gas generator, thrust chamber, valves and actuators - integrated with tubing, sensors, and other small components to form the major sub-assemblies of the engine. These sub-assemblies are put together to become the engine's lower and upper assembly. Once the lower and upper assemblies are stacked and mated, the engine undergoes a series of quality checks prior to testing."

PARIS — France’s space minister, seeking to marshal support for a next-generation Ariane rocket that will better compete in the global market, on Oct. 20 said Ariane’s U.S. competitors, enabled by a richly profitable government business, are all but “dumping” their rockets on the commercial market.

Returning to a theme she has regularly used in the past two years, Genevieve Fioraso said the France-backed Ariane 6 rocket being considered by European nations will be Europe’s way of countering the inherent U.S. advantage of a large domestic government market.

“The European launcher faces a very rough international competition, and it’s all the rougher because in the United States, for example, institutional backing and non-European rules allow launchers to be sold to government customers at a price that is twice as high as the vehicles sold at export,” Fioraso said at the 16th Interparliamentary Space Conference.

“This competition, which just about constitutes dumping, is why France, with the coordination of the European Space Agency, has proposed a common Ariane 6 designed by agencies, industrial contractors and satellite operator customers.”

Almost overshadowed by NASA’s long-awaited announcement of its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) awards on Sept. 16 to Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., totaling $6.8 billion, was another significant announcement made the next day. Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, and Tory Bruno, the new president and chief executive of United Launch Alliance, held a joint press conference in Washington. ULA has signed an agreement with Blue Origin for the development of a liquid-oxygen (LOX)/liquefied natural gas (LNG) booster engine with 550,000 pounds of thrust.

This announcement followed months of debate in Washington over the supply vulnerability of the Russian-built RD-180 used on ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket. In the last several months, debate has heightened.

In August, the U.S. Air Force issued a request for information regarding “booster propulsion and/or launch system materiel options that could deliver cost-effective, commercially-viable solutions for current and future National Security Space (NSS) launch requirements.” Air Force Space Command, the document stated, “is considering an acquisition strategy to stimulate the commercial development of booster propulsion systems and/or launch systems for Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV)-class spacelift applications. The Air Force has relied upon foreign sources for the booster propulsion systems in the past.”

The Air Force has stated it is determined to replace the RD-180 “as soon as practicable.” However, that won’t be in the immediate future, considering the multiyear research, development and certification of such an engine.

Congress has expressed its initial support in this effort by allotting funding in the House and Senate versions of a fiscal year 2015 defense appropriations bill.

As soon as December, SpaceX will attempt to land a Falcon 9 rocket booster on a floating ocean platform the size of a football field, CEO Elon Musk said today.

The landing platform is being built at a Louisiana shipyard and measures 300 feet by 170 feet, Musk said during a talk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was streamed online.

The new infrastructure is SpaceX's next step in trying to recover a Falcon 9 booster so it can be flown again, a breakthrough Musk believes is critical to lowering launch costs.

So far, the company has twice flown boosters as tall as 14-story buildings back from space and hypersonic speeds to soft landings in the Atlantic Ocean, where they broke up.

"Unfortunately, it sort of sat there for several seconds, then tipped over and exploded," said Musk. "When a 14-story building falls over, it's quite a belly flop."

Elon Musk says that next year SpaceX should demonstrate the ability to reuse one of the company’s launch vehicles, something that could reduce the cost of getting to space by a factor of about 10.

The idea of reusing spacecraft is not new. But if SpaceX were to land and reuse one of its rockets it would be a first, and it would make the second launch considerably cheaper. The company has struggled to make the landings work in several experiments though, and Musk says the procedure may not work reliably for some time.