Draft and Final RFP for Gateway logistics/cargo services

[tbellman]

Cygnus (or Exploration Cygnus as they called it) does have a hardware problem, but we don't know what it is since it's all redacted, but it sounds serious:

This is a significant concern that could ultimately lead to significant degradation (or even total failure) of the Exploration Cygnus, the launch vehicle, or both.

Seems launch related, maybe vibration?

Page 17, last sentence of the second paragraph, says:

However, these two weaknesses are of lesser importance to me than the fairing impingement issue with NGIS' approach.

(My emphasis; also my transcription, so spelling errors are mine.)  I can't find any other mention of fairing impingement, so that's likely what has been redacted from the paragraph before, and there were probably a little bit more details there.  And I suspect this mention of it was left there inadvertently...

[woods170]

SpaceX' vertically integrated business model, as well as doing all DDT&E in-house were mentioned as potential advantages but ultimately were not a discriminator in the selection decision:

In the management subfactor, SpaceX garnered a Good rating and was assigned one strength from the SEB for its vertically integrated business model, consisting of all major aspects of their cargo delivery capability. I acknowledge this potential advantage in maintaining commonality across systems, subsystems, and components can provide technical synergy. Additionally, since SpaceX performs virtually all of its Design Development Test and Evaluation (DDT&E) inhouse, it controls the schedule associated with those efforts, without having to account for subcontracted effort. Overall, SpaceX’s approach in in this subfactor was not a discriminator in my selection decision.

But, indirectly they ARE in fact a discriminator. The vertically integrated business model, as well as doing all DDT&E in-house, makes it possible for SpaceX to very strongly compete on price as well as mission suitability. And that is exactly what happened here.

[armchairfan]

Summarizing (my bold):

The RFP defined three evaluation factors, Price, Mission Suitability, and Past Performance, and provided the relative importance of each factor. The Price factor is more important than the Mission Suitability factor, which is more important than the Past Performance factor. When the Mission Suitability and Past Performance factors are combined, they are approximately equal to the Price factor.

Space X has the clear price advantage

Elsewhere it states that the Space X price was significantly lower than SNC which in turn was significantly lower than NGIS. Boeing's price was the highest and assumed problematic conditions as well that, combined with its lowest-ranking "Fair" Mission Suitability, eliminated it from further consideration.

Space X scored "Very Good" Mission Suitability, SNC and NGIS scored "Good". Three sub-factors were assessed. I've included the weights in the quote below.

Space X has the superior Technical Approach [55%], a slightly superior Management Plan [40%], [SNC has best Small Business Utilization (5%)] among the other offerors.

[Space X] has, by a small margin the best Past Performance

I [Ken Bowersox, Deputy Associate Administrator HEOMD], note that the RFP allows me to award GLS contracts to more than one offeror; however, given the evaluation results and my assessment of those results, I have determined awarding more than one GLS contract at this time is not in the Government's best interest.

So pretty much a slam dunk for Space X. So much so that the government decided not to award a contract at this time to anyone else. IMO, the other offerors need to up their game if they want a future piece of the pie:

the on-ramp clause in the RFP will allow these offerors to submit GLS proposals in the future.

Edit: Fix mission suitability weights and misplaced past-performance and small business utilization quotes.

[yg1968]

NASA hasn't used the on-ramp clause for commercial crew and cargo. So I don't think that it will be used for this contract either.

It's hard to say if any of these proposals involved Blue Origin.

[Coastal Ron]

I [Ken Bowersox, Deputy Associate Administrator HEOMD], note that the RFP allows me to award GLS contracts to more than one offeror; however, given the evaluation results and my assessment of those results, I have determined awarding more than one GLS contract at this time is not in the Government's best interest.

So pretty much a slam dunk for Space X. So much so that the government decided not to award a contract at this time to anyone else. IMO, the other offerors need to up their game if they want a future piece of the pie:

I would have been surprised if they awarded more than one contract for this no matter who won, since the flight rate for Artemis is so low that having two providers would have been very expensive, and the flight rate would have been so low as to cancel out any redundancy advantages.

[gongora]

The Inactive Date was just updated to Apr. 9, 2020, which I guess just means they don't intend to make any more awards under this solicitation? https://beta.sam.gov/opp/8235ee76c9524f9c8e9f1e17b522c46e/view

[yg1968]

It's hard to say, the status of the HLS is currently inactive, even though it might be awarded as early as next week.

In any event, it seems fairly clear, from reading the selection statement, that a second award was not being contemplated. The fact that Bowersox mentionned the on-ramp clause makes me believe that NASA is not currently contemplating a second award any time soon and that a new proposal would have to be submitted in order for them to consider a second award. He seems to be hinting that any future proposal would have to be much better and cheaper for NASA to trigger the on-ramp clause. 

[baldusi]

I've googled the Gateway Logistics Services - Source Selection Statement, it is attached. Very interesting data.

*FAR 15 rules with "best value"

*SpaceX (DragonXL), Northrop Grumman (Exploration Cygnus), Sierra Nevada and Boeing (CT-250) presented offers.

*SpaceX was best technical and cheapest by far. Thus, there was no point in selecting a secondary provider.

*Boeing's offer was the worst technically, was significantly more expensive than the rest and even had made assumptions and caveats to their firm-price offer that made it be discarded from the competitive tranch.

*NGIS had the second best technical offer and the third highest price. The significant weaknesses are redacted, but then a "fairing impingement" issue was refered.

*SNC had the third best technical offer and the second best price (still, significantly more expensive than SpaceX). But they had very optimistic assumptions to reach the minimum payload requirement. Negative margin on the LV was noted and apparently (it's redacted) they couldn't reach the unpressurized requirements.

*SpaceX offer was significantly better than the rest, and their price was significantly cheaper than the rest. Almost everything was priced. They were noted to be a bit late wrt schedule, and the only weaknesses mentioned was unclear interface to the LV and unclear performance of Falcon Heavy. Yet, significantly higher payload (both pressurized and unpressurized) capabilities where mentioned, and they even offered much lower density of cargo than the ISS nominal (290kg/m³).

[Tommyboy]

So what does this mean? I've read in multiple articles on the internet that a second provider will be chosen.
1. Will there be a second round, only open to Boeing, NGIS, and SNC giving them the opportunity to come up with better bids?
2. A second round open to everybody?
3. Or is NASA backtracking on their wish for redundant providers (like they have for Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew), and going solely with SpaceX?

As I understand the contract correctly, they're going with 3 right now, with a improbable probability of 1.

Edit: Anybody with more experience in reading between the lines care to elaborate?

[webdan]

Some pages are "images" and thus not searchable.

And the huge typo in a header, that stuff just irks me. Too many years writing software and proofreading.

Page 4, "PAST PERFORMACE FACTOR". Just quickly perused the rest after.

[Tommyboy]

Some pages are "images" and thus not searchable.

And the huge typo in a header, that stuff just irks me. Too many years writing software and proofreading.

Page 4, "PAST PERFORMACE FACTOR". Just quickly perused the rest after.

They also spelled NGIS as NGIT at least once... (bottom of page 23) No idea how you manage that; the letters are next to each other in the alphabet, but nowhere near on my (QWERTY) keyboard.

[Coastal Ron]

So what does this mean? I've read in multiple articles on the internet that a second provider will be chosen.

Could be chosen. Not will be. They have sole-sourced the contract to SpaceX for now.

1. Will there be a second round, only open to Boeing, NGIS, and SNC giving them the opportunity to come up with better bids?

Boeings bid was NOT deemed "fair and reasonable", and so Boeing was not part of the final consideration. And no, this was the final award, but NASA retains the right to select a second provider in the future if they want.

3. Or is NASA backtracking on their wish for redundant providers (like they have for Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew), and going solely with SpaceX?

NASA has not stated that they want redundant providers for the Artemis program, and NASA itself would be violating that by building payloads that can only be launched on the SLS. Redundancy was something NASA wanted for cargo & crew support for the ISS, but not for the Artemis program.

As I understand the contract correctly, they're going with 3 right now, with a improbable probability of 1.

Four companies submitted bids. See page 14 of 24, where it says:

As a result, the total evaluated price for NGIS, SNC, and SpaceX was determined fair and reasonable based on adequate price competition. Specifically, three out of four priced offers were received from responsive and responsible offerors, competing independently, to satisfy the Government’s expressed requirements, and there was no finding that any of the prices were unreasonable or unbalanced. The SEB was unable to determine whether Boeing’s proposed price was reasonable given its inaccurate conditional assumption and exceptions to the contract terms.

Pretty damning for Boeing - their bid was essentially rejected - but in a nice way.

Edit: Anybody with more experience in reading between the lines care to elaborate?

No need to read between the lines, on page 24 of the statement Ken Bowersox says:

I note the RFP allows me to award GLS contracts to more than one offeror; however, given the evaluation results and my assessment of those results, I have determined awarding more than one GLS contract at this time is not in the Government's best interest. Furthermore, the on-ramp clause in the RFP will allow these offeror to submit GLS proposals in the future.

[baldusi]

So what does this mean? I've read in multiple articles on the internet that a second provider will be chosen.
1. Will there be a second round, only open to Boeing, NGIS, and SNC giving them the opportunity to come up with better bids?
2. A second round open to everybody?
3. Or is NASA backtracking on their wish for redundant providers (like they have for Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew), and going solely with SpaceX?

As I understand the contract correctly, they're going with 3 right now, with a improbable probability of 1.

Edit: Anybody with more experience in reading between the lines care to elaborate?

The last paragraphs of the document address those questions.
1. For now it's only SPX, but the system allows a second round of offers under the on-ramp clause. I assume they would be offered to improve their offerings. But that options is not currently planned to be used.
2. I don't know the details of the on ramp, but the three losers for sure.
3. They wanted redundant providers for the ISS, Gateway was something under study. Don't forget that JAXA might send an HTV. And they don't plan for permanent habitation. So a failure is only a schedule risk, not a mission (much less crew) risk.

[Tommyboy]

Four companies submitted bids. See page 14 of 24, where it says:

I meant options 3 and 1, but rereading my post I can understand the confusion. Thanks for answering anyways

And regarding the last paragraph; the language seems very clear, but this would probably be the fist time in the entire Artemis Program that a decision has been made in the government's best interest (e.q. value for money spent), so my gut tells me there's a "but" hidden somewhere in between the lines.
But I could very well be too suspicious.

[yg1968]

There was already a discussion about the selection statement in the main thread:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48353.msg2066940#msg2066940

[GWH]

Basically it says none of them are even close to SpaceX for this proposal - but if they want to come back and try again with some better proposals than they are welcome to try.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Summary of Mission Suitability bid evaluations attached for convenience.

The 2 non-redacted significant weaknesses in Boeing’s technical approach are listed as:

A second significant weakness was assigned for Boeing’s approach to NASA insight. The proposed approach does not meet the NASA insight notification, accommodations, or compliance requirements and it does not provide adequate methods for flow-down of insight and approval requirements to ensure all reasonable steps are taken to affect the highest probability of mission success.

A third significant weakness was assigned for an exception taken to providing source code as required under DRD GLS-108, Launch Vehicle Flight Software Input for Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V), and DRD GLS-220, Mission Specific Software.

Given what’s happened with Starliner on commercial crew, the opaqueness in these weaknesses really aren’t good enough. I hope this acts as another wake-up call for Boeing to change how it operates.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1248375403019821056

Boeing's statement on NASA eliminating the company from further GLS awards, which it says was "in part because of our commitment to protecting our intellectual property." $BA

Classic spin through omission. Yes, ‘protecting IP’, for example not being willing to share source code, did lower Boeing’s score. But even if they hadn’t done that they still would have been last in the assessment by some margin. (And of course it’s perfectly possible to share source code etc in ways that protect IP - companies do it all the time.)

[Coastal Ron]

And regarding the last paragraph; the language seems very clear, but this would probably be the fist time in the entire Artemis Program that a decision has been made in the government's best interest (e.q. value for money spent), so my gut tells me there's a "but" hidden somewhere in between the lines.
But I could very well be too suspicious.

This selection process is an example of the norm, not the exception.

For instance, the SLS and Orion programs were mandated by Congress, and the wording of the legislation pretty much mandated that NASA use the same contractors as were already under contract on the Constellation program. THAT was the exception to normal government contracting.

[GWH]

Lol I see Boeing is taking the Robert Bigelow approach to losing a contract.