What is their milestone payment for a successful conclusion of COTS demo 3?cheers, Martin
Seems like I heard at one conference that they were planning to carry cargo on that flight. When the CRS contract was announced, the 12 missions seemed to be separate from whichever Demo makes it to Station. It's unclear how NASA would pay for that delivery unless they use the per kilo pricing in the CRS RFP.
Quote from: Antares on 09/21/2010 03:42 pmSeems like I heard at one conference that they were planning to carry cargo on that flight. When the CRS contract was announced, the 12 missions seemed to be separate from whichever Demo makes it to Station. It's unclear how NASA would pay for that delivery unless they use the per kilo pricing in the CRS RFP.Since this is a test flight you have to assume a high probability of failure. Any cargo should therefore be easy to replace. Water and clothing fit this category.
They should just make sure to avoid including live animals in the cargo manifest for the first docking attempt (or two). In the court of public opinion, that's the only type of cargo that would really increase the level of controversy in the event of failure. If they lose some fancy gadgets, whatever. If they lose those poor butterflies...
Quote from: MP99 on 09/21/2010 05:47 pmWhat is their milestone payment for a successful conclusion of COTS demo 3?cheers, MartinThese are all the milestone payments directly associated with COTS Demo 3:Milestone 7 : Demo 3 System Requirements Review $22.3mMilestone 11 : Demo 3 Preliminary Design Review $22.0mMilestone 13 : Demo 2/3 System Critical Design Review $25.0mMilestone 21 : Demo 3 Readiness Review $5.0mMilestone 22 : Demo 3 Mission $5.0mThe first three milestones (in italics) should have been completed before the imminent COTS Demo 1 flight - according to SpaceX's original timetable of events. That nominally leaves $10m still to be paid.(source: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/216459main_spacex_amend_2.pdf - signed Feb 28, 2008)
I just saw the news about the delay of the COTS demo flight. What was its originally targeted launch date? If we extrapolate into the future, I think the manned Dragon is likely to arrive much later than SpaceX claims it will.