Does NASA pay more for longer CCP missions?

[DanClemmensen]

The nominal CCP mission is 180 days. Crew-8 is already at 204 days and will likely exceed 210 days. The spacecraft is not available for SpaceX to use for a private mission for an extra 30 or more days. Does NASA pay extra "rent" for this?

[TheRadicalModerate]

I'd assume that NASA is paying SpaceX something to outfit Crew-8 with the two extra "seats" if it needs to carry both its own crew and Wilmore/Williams back in an emergency.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were also fees for:

1) Processing the waiver to extend the mission past its nominal 210-day maximum.
2) Extending the on-orbit ops costs.

I'd think that item #2 might implicitly include the extra "rent" you're talking about.

However, the 3 CCP D2 contracts ($2.6B for the 3 demo/abort missions plus the first 6 ops missions in Sep-2014, ~$0.9B for 3 extra missions in Feb-2022, and $1.4B for 5 extra missions in Sep-2022) are all FFP, so they'd have to be re-negotiated to include the overage.  It's a lot easier to tack it onto whatever task order is dealing with the quasi-seats.

[DanClemmensen]

I'd assume that NASA is paying SpaceX something to outfit Crew-8 with the two extra "seats" if it needs to carry both its own crew and Wilmore/Williams back in an emergency.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were also fees for:

1) Processing the waiver to extend the mission past its nominal 210-day maximum.
2) Extending the on-orbit ops costs.

I'd think that item #2 might implicitly include the extra "rent" you're talking about.

However, the 3 CCP D2 contracts ($2.6B for the 3 demo/abort missions plus the first 6 ops missions in Sep-2014, ~$0.9B for 3 extra missions in Feb-2022, and $1.4B for 5 extra missions in Sep-2022) are all FFP, so they'd have to be re-negotiated to include the overage.  It's a lot easier to tack it onto whatever task order is dealing with the quasi-seats.

Clearly(?) there is no need to renegotiate the original CCtCap. It covered the development and Crew1 through Crew-6, and they are in the past. The ones that exceeded 180 days have already happened and NASA has presumably already paid whatever they were supposed to pay. The two contract extensions (for Crew-7 through 9 and Crew-10 through 14) could I suppose be modified. I don't know how to access those contracts.

The mods to Crew-8 to add the two seats are a separate problem. The task order for that was not very big, probably just enough to cover the work done by SpaceX on the ground to analyze and specify the modification, which was done by the ISS crews who are presumably already being paid by NASA.

I had not considered the extra ops costs on incurred by SpaceX on the ground, but I guess it's another factor. I was asking about the opportunity cost to SpaceX  due to the spacecraft being in use by NASA and therefore not available for a non-NASA flight.

[TheRadicalModerate]

I had not considered the extra ops costs on incurred by SpaceX on the ground, but I guess it's another factor. I was asking about the opportunity cost to SpaceX  due to the spacecraft being in use by NASA and therefore not available for a non-NASA flight.

I would assume that they bid the CCP contracts with a certain mission length in mind, plus some extra for contingencies.  What's happening now would seem to be the contingency, and they'll find out whether or not they bid conservatively enough.  If not... well, that's the beauty of FFP...

[DanClemmensen]

I had not considered the extra ops costs on incurred by SpaceX on the ground, but I guess it's another factor. I was asking about the opportunity cost to SpaceX  due to the spacecraft being in use by NASA and therefore not available for a non-NASA flight.

I would assume that they bid the CCP contracts with a certain mission length in mind, plus some extra for contingencies.  What's happening now would seem to be the contingency, and they'll find out whether or not they bid conservatively enough.  If not... well, that's the beauty of FFP...

Sorry, but this makes no sense. If SpaceX is not getting paid  extra, they could simply declare that they cannot support a mission of more than 210 days. That's what the contract specifies. Realistically SpaceX would not do that, but realistically, NASA and SpaceX must have some agreement in place.

[AmigaClone]

I had not considered the extra ops costs on incurred by SpaceX on the ground, but I guess it's another factor. I was asking about the opportunity cost to SpaceX  due to the spacecraft being in use by NASA and therefore not available for a non-NASA flight.

I would assume that they bid the CCP contracts with a certain mission length in mind, plus some extra for contingencies.  What's happening now would seem to be the contingency, and they'll find out whether or not they bid conservatively enough.  If not... well, that's the beauty of FFP...

Sorry, but this makes no sense. If SpaceX is not getting paid extra, they could simply declare that they cannot support a mission of more than 210 days. That's what the contract specifies. Realistically SpaceX would not do that, but realistically, NASA and SpaceX must have some agreement in place.

I suspect the actual contracts specify something along the lines of 'average mission length' of 180 days. In other words, since Crew-7 and Crew-8 spent so much time in space, Crew-9 will be spending less time in orbit (only about 5 months according one source).

[TheRadicalModerate]

Sorry, but this makes no sense. If SpaceX is not getting paid  extra, they could simply declare that they cannot support a mission of more than 210 days. That's what the contract specifies. Realistically SpaceX would not do that, but realistically, NASA and SpaceX must have some agreement in place.

I think you're probably right that additional money is changing hands.  But I suspect it's much more likely that it's happening through a separate task order / contract than through a CCtCap/CCP contract modification.  And I further suspect that the CLIN will look a lot more like "add additional ops costs" than "defray opportunity cost lost because a D2 is out of service a bit longer."