A few notes:There is a laser retroreflector on Schiaparelli, the lander of Exomars 2016. MarCO was not launched because it was supposed to go along with InSight. As per the April 2016 von Karman lecture, given by MarCO's builder, it will launch in 2018 with InSight.NASA is willing to take risk especially if it is not mission critical or if the payoff is big. New Horizons and the Europa Mission have quite a bit of risk, in the first case of hibernation and having the primary mission 9 years after launch, in the latter with going to a very radiation intolerant region. In both cases they minimized risk by selecting mature scientific instruments. I do see SMD willing to take on some risk in the form of novel scientific instruments. I do not see them though taking the risk of an unproven satellite maker. So far almost all space probes have been built by Lockheed Martin which purposely bids at slightly above cost because they use the space probes as recruiting tools for aerospace engineering graduates. They make their money mostly off DoD/NRO birds. Orbital was willing to forgo profit to get Dawn and access to its ion engine technology. If one of the other satellite vendors, old and new, can produce a bird with low risk and have a cost structure lower than LM or Orbital ATK, they are free to bid. It is one thing to build an ISS launched microsatellite that will burn up in 7 months anyway and another thing altogether a probe that we want to last 15 years and design in any case for a minimum of 5
"Proposers must meet the following mandatory qualifications by time of award in order to be considered a qualified source and thereby eligible for award.- MQ 1: Within the last 10 years, the proposer shall have successfully developed and flown a spacecraft with a solar power system of at least 10KW at 1 AU.- MQ 2: Within the last 5 years, the proposer shall have successfully developed and flown a spacecraft that operated in deep space (beyond Earth orbit) or geosynchronous orbit (GEO).- MQ 3: The proposer (both the prime contractor and its major lower-tier subcontractors for this effort) shall be a concern incorporated in the United States of America."
...Also the three requirements mean that CommX will not be able to bid, as expected
10kW at 1AU seems like a not-very-fair constraint designed to keep it to the aerospace primes..
Quote from: Robotbeat on 05/06/2016 04:03 am10kW at 1AU seems like a not-very-fair constraint designed to keep it to the aerospace primes..You mean four out of five world leaders of commercial satellite manufacturing industry ? Industry that generates about $16 billion a year in revenues and competes about 25 GSO contracts every year ?Not sure whats so unfair about this.
Quote from: savuporo on 05/06/2016 05:14 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 05/06/2016 04:03 am10kW at 1AU seems like a not-very-fair constraint designed to keep it to the aerospace primes..You mean four out of five world leaders of commercial satellite manufacturing industry ? Industry that generates about $16 billion a year in revenues and competes about 25 GSO contracts every year ?Not sure whats so unfair about this.Smaller sat builders should be allowed to at least be considered.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 05/06/2016 05:58 amQuote from: savuporo on 05/06/2016 05:14 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 05/06/2016 04:03 am10kW at 1AU seems like a not-very-fair constraint designed to keep it to the aerospace primes..You mean four out of five world leaders of commercial satellite manufacturing industry ? Industry that generates about $16 billion a year in revenues and competes about 25 GSO contracts every year ?Not sure whats so unfair about this.Smaller sat builders should be allowed to at least be considered.Why ? All of the major satellite manufacturers have recently started providing electric propulsion platforms for GSO comsats, hybrids with electric stationkeeping only and also full electric ones. This is the technology foundation that JPL aims to utilize here - maybe. The payload power, total mass, lifetime, operating environment, and other requirements are well in line with smaller modernized electric propulsion GSO birds. You could also ask ACME Cubesats & Party Balloons but why would you ask for the extra overhead of not qualified proposals in an already compressed schedule and provided you already have four well qualified commercial, competitive vendors ?That doesnt seem to make much sense
Larger firms can have other risks, too...
Agree with Robotbeat. Just because you have five large conglomerate oldline vendors who are competitive with each other does not mean that there isn't a builder out there that has a radically different approach that would come in for a lot less..
If you had a radically different approach to building GSO comsats or delivering equivalent capability, every satellite operator would be banging on your door and you'd quickly own a good slice of the global $16 billion satellite manufacturing industry revenue. Satellite operators are in this after all to deliver services to their customers and make money, as well. Thats how market works.And it's not like there arent innovative smaller satellite builders out there, like Surrey or Dauria. They all have their niches and they keep building up their capabilities incrementally and prove their products, but they aren't consitently winning hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts for GSO deliveries every year for a good reason.
So if they can't offer anyway then why explicitly exclude them?
Quote from: savuporo on 05/06/2016 06:15 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 05/06/2016 05:58 amQuote from: savuporo on 05/06/2016 05:14 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 05/06/2016 04:03 am10kW at 1AU seems like a not-very-fair constraint designed to keep it to the aerospace primes..You mean four out of five world leaders of commercial satellite manufacturing industry ? Industry that generates about $16 billion a year in revenues and competes about 25 GSO contracts every year ?Not sure whats so unfair about this.Smaller sat builders should be allowed to at least be considered.Why ? All of the major satellite manufacturers have recently started providing electric propulsion platforms for GSO comsats, hybrids with electric stationkeeping only and also full electric ones. This is the technology foundation that JPL aims to utilize here - maybe. The payload power, total mass, lifetime, operating environment, and other requirements are well in line with smaller modernized electric propulsion GSO birds. You could also ask ACME Cubesats & Party Balloons but why would you ask for the extra overhead of not qualified proposals in an already compressed schedule and provided you already have four well qualified commercial, competitive vendors ?That doesnt seem to make much senseAgree with Robotbeat. Just because you have five large conglomerate oldline vendors who are competitive with each other does not mean that there isn't a builder out there that has a radically different approach that would come in for a lot lessThis seems wired to the primes. And that's just wrong, prima facie... (either you get this or you don't, it's philosophy so not really refutable)
And if you're going to drag philosophy into this, just because they are primes does not automatically make them bad choices, they are primes for a reason.
This seems wired to the primes. And that's just wrong, prima facie... (either you get this or you don't, it's philosophy so not really refutable)