Under an agreement hammered out with the White House, NASA announced today on Capitol Hill that it will provide the COTS program with $150 million of the $400 million for human exploration given to NASA under President Barack Obama's stimulus plan.
It looks like only 80 Million at most would be available to be bid out to COTS D bidders. If that is the case then SpaceX would get 40 and (Hopefully) Orbital would get the other 40 million. Is that enough money to design, test, and manufacture a new LAS?
CBM won't be viable for COTS-D, at least not as a lifeboat option. There are other viable COTS-D proposals out there, but its hard to imagine anyone else wanting to take a bid at it for 80 mil.
Quote from: bad_astra on 04/29/2009 07:57 pmCBM won't be viable for COTS-D, at least not as a lifeboat option. There are other viable COTS-D proposals out there, but its hard to imagine anyone else wanting to take a bid at it for 80 mil.$80m could pay for yet another study from one of the big boys.
T/space if they are still around probably would.But really this does show COTS-D needs extra funding and COTS it'sself so far has been a pretty good deal.I mentioned the CBM and LIDS but it occurred to me the Russian docking system might be more desirable from a mass standpoint.I know it's narrow and is not androgynous but it's tested, light weight and probably very cheap to manufacture. Soyuz is a very lightweight vehicle when you really think about it esp considering it's ancient underpinnings.
SCHIFF: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Administrator, Dr. Weiler, great to see you both. Thank you for the outstanding work that you do, and all of your team. I wanted to ask you about the COTS program. Over the last three years, NASA has developed the Commercial Orbital Transportation System to provide commercial cargo and crew flights to international space station. In December, NASA awarded contracts to two companies, Orbital Sciences and Space X, for ISS re-supply missions. The first flights are expected in late 2010 or early 2011. Before those flights, it's hard to declare the program a success. But at this point, it's hard to see how it could be going any better. I want to congratulate NASA for having the foresight to launch the COTS program. I've been out to Space X and I was incredibly impressed with what they're doing. And I was there after their second unsuccessful launch, where they were quite confident they diagnosed the correctly. And, sure enough, on the third launch, they showed that they had, and it's very exciting. There's another stage of the COTS program -- Capability D -- which involves developing commercial crew delivery. As we approach shuttle retirement, Capability D could offer our only domestic method of delivering astronauts to the ISS. This subcommittee has consistently supported that capability, as has the authorizing committee. My understanding is that the crew capability could be demonstrated two years after approval. In the stimulus bill, Congress provided an additional $150 million for commercial crew and cargo. So I'm interested to know if NASA has taken any steps toward activating the Capability D option, or if there are any impediments to that. And does NASA believe that exercising the option would allow for cheaper ISS crew flights during the 2010 to 2015 window? SCOLESE: The Capability D, we certainly -- in the budget, we did provide $150 million of stimulus funds for looking at the crew and enhancing cargo. About 70 million of that funding is to go off and address issues that are broadly related to crew capability, for anybody that would be providing a crew capability. It's looking at the -- what we need to do for attaching a vehicle and detaching a vehicle from the station, we need to provide some interfaces for that. So we're looking at that. We have activities to work with people and to better define human rating requirements that would be needed to put crew into space. The <Aerospace> Safety Advisory Panel had some concerns about our human rating requirements as currently written, so this is to go off and clarify those and make them clear to anybody that wants to fly a crew. And then we have about $80 million. (CROSSTALK) SCHIFF: It sounds like bongos in here. Is that the sound system or do you have a musical accompaniment at NASA now? SCOLESE: I don't think I have musical accompaniment, sir. SCHIFF: Is that in the room? I'm sorry. I don't know how to follow that up. CULBERSON (?): This is NASA. (LAUGHTER) SCOLESE: And then we have additional resources, the balance of it, to accelerate cargo flights and to go off and solicit initially as a request for information -- information on how commercial crew could be done. Fundamentally, the plan that we see going forward is to logically proceed from cargo, which will be difficult in and of itself to achieve, to a crew escape capability to ultimately bringing crew up to the space station. So that's basically our plan in overview, and that's what the $150 million in the funding that you saw and in the operating plan yesterday that it will initiate. And that's in addition to, as you pointed out already, the commercial cargo portion of it.
MOLLOHAN: Just clarification of the question that Mr. Schiff asked on the COTS-D. You've got -- your spending plan is $150 million for commercial crew and cargo. Our information -- it was $80 million that'd be available for commercial development of crew concepts and technology demonstrations and investigations. And all that sure sounds like COTS-D, and what you described sounded like COTS-D. But in the conversations with our staff, your staff assured us, the representative -- that wasn't COTS-D. So how -- could you clarify that? SCOLESE: I think we used -- unfortunately, we used COTS-D as a shorthand for commercial crew. COTS-D really is an option that was out there in the early Space Act Agreement to talk about human space flight. And there's only one organization that bid to that. So shorthand, we call it COTS-D but it really is not COTS-D. And if I misspoke, I'm sorry. MOLLOHAN: No, no, you didn't misspeak. It just sounded like COTS-D. OK. What's the difference? SCOLESE: The difference is we're not going off doing what we originally described as COTS-D. And when I get done here, maybe Doug can add a little more...
You really want two or three providers to keep each other honest.
