LIVE: CCDev-2 Awards and Decision Discussion - April 18

[Antares]

SpaceX seem to be pretty fired up:

Are they ever not? 

[yg1968]

Audio of the announcement, plus a few questions

Thanks, do you have the rest of it?

Negative, I cut is off at that point since the questions seemed to degrade in quality (reporters should do their homework, not rely on live telecon)

Thanks.

[Oberon_Command]

From the Blue Origin doc:

Building on TVC ground testing completed under CCDev 1, Blue Origin proposes to exercise the corners of the escape flight envelope by conducting a Pad Escape abort test and, optionally, a high dynamic pressure (Max-Q) abort test.

Interesting stuff. Wonder if Blue Origin will "come out of their shell" enough to release footage of the tests to the public.

[Chris Bergin]

CSF are full of the joys of commericalness

Commercial Spaceflight Federation Applauds Winners of Round Two of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development Program




The Federation Congratulates NASA’s Efforts to Restore US Crew Transportation Capability Following Retirement of the Space Shuttle and Decrease Reliance on Russian Soyuz


Washington, D.C., Monday, April 18, 2011 – The Commercial Spaceflight Federation congratulates NASA’s announcement today to award a total of $269 million through NASA’s Commercial Crew Development Round Two (“CCDev2”) Program.  The winners include CSF members Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and SpaceX.  The Commercial Spaceflight Federation would also like to congratulate the Boeing team that includes CSF Member Bigelow Aerospace.  The awards will allow US commercial companies to achieve critical milestones on the path to achieving commercial human spaceflight capabilities, thereby enabling America to end America’s reliance on Russian vehicles to send humans to space, lower costs to the U.S. taxpayer, replace some of the capabilities of the Space Shuttle when it retires later this year, and help spur new technology innovation and job growth in the U.S. space industry.

The CCDev2 program represents the continuation of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (“COTS”) Cargo and CCDev programs, under which companies have been developing various commercial launch vehicles and spacecraft. Awards will take the form of milestone-based, fixed-price, pay-for-performance NASA investment using Space Act Agreements instead of traditional government contracts.  The program will culminate in a Commercial Crew Program in which companies will demonstrate the capability of taking NASA crews to and from the International Space Station.

“Today is a landmark day for commercial spaceflight.  This is a big step towards opening up the space frontier,” said John Gedmark, Executive Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.  “Leveraging private investment is the only way NASA can make its dollars go farther in these times of belt tightening.  And by investing in commercial spaceflight rather than continuing to sending billions of dollars to Russia, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is creating American jobs instead of sending them abroad.”

“Today’s announcement marks a critical milestone on the path to a commercial human spaceflight sector that will lower the cost of space access and open new markets,” said Eric Anderson, Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.  “To have a large and diverse group of U.S. companies among today’s winners, including both established contractors and newer entrants, emphasizes that American industry is ready to handle the task of commercial human spaceflight—safely, affordably, and rapidly. We expect immediate job creation across the United States, including in Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, and Washington state.”

Anderson added, “A major advantage of commercial spaceflight programs over traditional NASA procurements is that the CCDev program is commercially structured so that NASA pays only when performance milestones are met.  These agreements are fixed-price, milestone-based, and leverage private investment.  These companies are investing their own money alongside NASA’s money adding even more investment in the final system.  Each taxpayer dollar goes farther.”

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to congratulate:

• Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, which will receive $22 million for orbital commercial spaceflight vehicle design and development, including testing of its pusher escape system and engine testing.

• Sierra Nevada Corporation of Louisville, Colorado, which will receive $80 million to mature the Dream Chaser human spaceflight system, focusing on multiple spacecraft items.

• SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, which flew its Dragon capsule to orbit and recovered it successfully last year, which will receive $75 million for items including launch escape system engine maturation and crew accommodation prototype development.

• The Boeing Company of Houston, Texas, whose team includes CSF member Bigelow Aerospace, which will receive $92.3 million for CST-100 crew spacecraft maturation and launch vehicle integration, focusing on multiple items including launch escape system propulsion.

[sdsds]

BO is interesting.  Either my sources suck, they're engaging in disinformation or the evaluators didn't dig deep enough.

It's not the first time secretive stuff on the West coast has been blue!



(The Blue Cube, also known as "Silicon Valley’s most likely target in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack.")

[robertross]

From the Blue Origin doc:

Building on TVC ground testing completed under CCDev 1, Blue Origin proposes to exercise the corners of the escape flight envelope by conducting a Pad Escape abort test and, optionally, a high dynamic pressure (Max-Q) abort test.

Interesting stuff. Wonder if Blue Origin will "come out of their shell" enough to show us footage of the tests.

Well their website has a 'fairly' large number of job postings. I don't know how long they've been there though...

[rcoppola]

By next year, after a year without shuttle, there will be a huge clamor to get the show on the road. I suspect there will be huge pressure for CCDev 3 to push towards final end-to end launch systems.

So their comment about not whittling down from CCDev2 selections doesn't feel right. Except for EELV human-rating and some infrastructural elements to accommodate new Crew Launch facilities..I just don't see the need to bring anybody back into the fold currently left out except for ULA for Atlas V. So, it looks like CST, DreamChaser and Dragon are our future commercial crafts. And possibly only 2 of those will survive.



 

[ugordan]

There is logic in this continuity. SpaceX had been dismissed in CCDev-1 because they were asking for too much money and the funding for CCDev-1 was limited.

Page 29 of their agreement seems to suggest they asked for $75M in the first place this time.

[Norm Hartnett]

312-269=43

43 million to administer the program?

[Hauerg]

There is logic in this continuity. SpaceX had been dismissed in CCDev-1 because they were asking for too much money and the funding for CCDev-1 was limited.

Page 29 of their agreement seems to suggest they asked for $75M in the first place this time.

Just added their milestones and they added up to $75M.

[Hauerg]

312-269=43

43 million to administer the program?

Of course, what did you expect?
Many hundreds are needed to oversee all that. Aren't they?

[tobi453]

Boeings SAA is a disappointment compared to SpaceX. Nearly everything is redacted.

[Joris]

Question about Blue Origin, and why they're so secretive.

The Spacex document also censored some bits.

Most notably their partners, but also how much internal funding is allocated for developing their LAS.

[Political Hack Wannabe]

By next year, after a year without shuttle, there will be a huge clamor to get the show on the road. I suspect there will be huge pressure for CCDev 3 to push towards final end-to end launch systems.

So their comment about not whittling down from CCDev2 selections doesn't feel right. Except for EELV human-rating and some infrastructural elements to accommodate new Crew Launch facilities..I just don't see the need to bring anybody back into the fold currently left out except for ULA for Atlas V. So, it looks like CST, DreamChaser and Dragon are our future commercial crafts. And possibly only 2 of those will survive.

3 quick points

1.  I wouldn't rule out BO's biconic - true they are the furthest behind, but we ignore them at our peril (or at least, at the peril of looking stupid )

2.  I think there is a more interesting/relevant point - it isn't that only 2 will survive, but rather who will become primaries, and who will be backups?

3.  I think we all hope for something new and radical (and yes, we like looking at cool ideas) but realistically, I thought the inclusion of someone new was unlikely, even at this stage (even going back to last year, the big surprise was Boeing & blue origin) - if its costing XXX million dollars to bring something to market, and the value of the market can only be agreed to be a positive, non-zero number, the proposed choices are going to be limited

[Rocket Science]

Here is an update for SNC DreamChaser I posted last week. Nice video of the scale glide tests. They appear to be all a bit slow to reveal info, but I guess this is the "new age" of spaceflight competition!

http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/The-Dream-Chaser-Shuttle-from-S;National-Space-Symposium-2011-V

[yg1968]

Space Act Agreements now posted

http://procurement.ksc.nasa.gov/

Pages 14 and 15 of the Selection Statement are worth reading. Boeing and SpaceX proposals were much better than anybody else's. NASA wanted at least one lifting body. So Dream Chaser got the nod over Orbital's proposal for different reasons. NASA has some serious concerns over SNC's abort system. But they think that it can be addressed during the development phase.

[simonbp]

The SpaceX crewed Dragon schedule.

[neilh]

From the Space Act Agreements, here's a quick summary of the milestones each company has set for each sub-project for a year from now:

http://procurement.ksc.nasa.gov/

Sierra Nevada:
system requirements review
canted airfoil fin selection
cockpit based flight simulator
vehicle avionics integration laboratory
system defniition review
flight control integration laboratory
ETA structure delivery (does this mean "Engineering Test Article"?)
separation system test
preliminary design review for Dream Chaser
optional milestones: materials testing captive carry and ETA landing gear drop tests, ETA captive carry flight test, wind tunnel testing, dream chaser handling qualities evaluation, main RCS test, two hybrid rocket motor test firing, thrust vector control test, ETA captive carry flight test readiness review, ETA free flight test

Blue Origin (only listing final milestones for each sub-project):
* Space Vehicle Design: space vehicle system requirements review
* Pusher escape Risk Reduction: pusher escape ground firing, pusher escape pad escape test (optional milestones: pusher escape max-Q sled test calibration run, pusher escape mas-Q sled test egress run)
* RBS (reusable booster system) engine risk reduction: engine thrust chamber assembly test at Stennis (optional: engine pump cold gas drive test, engine pump hot gas drive test) [as an aside, apparently the RBF is a 100klbf restartable hydrolox engine)

Boeing:
launch abort engine fabrication & hot fire test demonstration
landing air bag drop demonstration #1
phase I wind tunnel tests
interim design review - 4
parachute drop tests demonstration
SM propellant tank development test
LV EDS/ASIF interface simulation test
preliminary design review
optional milestones 12-25 all redacted

SpaceX:
launch abort system propulsion conceptual design review
design status review 1 (for Falcon 9/Dragon crew transportation system)
LAS propulsion components PDR
crew accommodation concept prototype and in situ trial (internally-funded by SpaceX, NASA astronauts invited to try crew accomodations and give feedback)
DSR 2
crew accommodation concept delta-prototype and in-situ trial 2
LAS propulsion component test articles complete
LAS propulsion component initial test cycle
concept baseline review
(SpaceX seems to be the only one without "optional" milestones)

[spacetraveler]

SpaceX seem to be pretty fired up:

With NASA’s support, SpaceX will be ready to fly first manned mission three years after receiving these funds.

http://twitter.com/#!/SpaceXer

This statement is rather confusing. It makes it sound like $75 million and 3 years is all they will need to get to a manned system. I assume that is not what was intended to be communicated since they have previously stated cost estimates to a manned system of $600-$800 million.

[Nate_Trost]

My Blue Origin tea-leaf reading has been that Bezos has always had a long-term goal of developing an orbital SSTO or TSTO RLV. While he has very deep pockets, and is willing to fund it, it's with a slow and steady approach with an eye towards constraining cost. He has no need for outside investment, or publicity, and Blue Origin is like his own private hobby, so the secrecy is understandable.

However, he is a businessman and a major potential user of anything BO develops is going to be the US government. My speculation would be that Blue Origin would take advantage of being able to work out its spacecraft design and systems with a ELV launched capsule if it had a major customer (the US government). If they don't, they'll probably just continue the slow and steady approach up through suborbital vehicles. Even if Blue Origin doesn't provide any actual crew services initially, participating in the CCDev program still makes them more of a known quantity with elements of NASA that they might be trying to sell services to further down the road. That, I think is why they are opening the kimono just a bit.

So I don't think Blue Origin really expects NASA to pick them for actual crew services, but it would be strategically useful for them if it did happen. But again, just participating in the early CCDev rounds is still strategic. Getting some development money from NASA is nice, but isn't the most important part (or even necessary to accomplish their ultimate goals).