The 7% socioeconomic subcontracting requirement does seem low (I seem to remember ~20% or higher from other FAR contracts). Do you think this is based on experience with COTS and the earlier CCDev rounds?
Quote from: peter-b on 09/20/2011 06:55 amThe 7% socioeconomic subcontracting requirement does seem low (I seem to remember ~20% or higher from other FAR contracts). Do you think this is based on experience with COTS and the earlier CCDev rounds?7.5% is the contribution of the subcontracting plan to the proposal evaluation (75 out of 1000 points), not a percentage of contract value.
Ah, okay, I misunderstood. Do you have any idea what the required subcontracted value is?
So, is this a reaction to the House's 350 million or the Senate's 500 million? Also, standard DFTT disclaimer, guys.
I don't understand why people think a 350 million dollar budget will cause a down-select to a single vendor. The current CCDev-2 awards were for roughly 75 million each, right ? Continuing at the same funding level, that's 75 mil * 4 = 300 million, plus another 50 million for NASA to administer the program. The current year commerical development budget might have been larger, but NASA was also funding COTS at the same time. The COTS milestones should be complete by March / April, although I don't know if that funding is rolling over from the prior year, since those goals were to be accomplished in the prior fiscal year.If any vendor has an issue with the FAR contract, I'm sure NASA would be willing to place them on an unfunded SAA instead. That's something each vendor will have to weigh. Can they meet the requirements in NASA's RFP for a lower overall development cost and bring their product to market faster if they aren't burdened by NASA oversight ?
I have not seen that Spacex is willing to fly the CST-100 (if you have a citation, please re-post). If this is true then a Dragon and CST-100 capability would provide remarkable redundancy - two unique space craft and two unique LV's. Although a lifting body spacecraft (Dream Chaser) would offer unique capability but appears to have the longest path to go to IOC.
Is launch vehicle redundancy required for Commercial Crew? I have seen the power point slide of CST-100 on the Falcon but no official description of an interface for the SpaceX avionics environment or vehicle.
If CST-100 flies on an Atlas V and Dragon only flies on Falcon then these really aren't redundant as they are separate complete non-interacting systems.
Quote from: BrightLight on 09/21/2011 02:28 amIs launch vehicle redundancy required for Commercial Crew? I have seen the power point slide of CST-100 on the Falcon but no official description of an interface for the SpaceX avionics environment or vehicle.Launch vehicle redundancy is not a requirement.QuoteIf CST-100 flies on an Atlas V and Dragon only flies on Falcon then these really aren't redundant as they are separate complete non-interacting systems.If both are available they would provide redundant crew transportation capabilities and presumably competitive services, which are the most important attributes.
If SpaceX does indeed intend to launch other vendors orbital systems such as the Boeing CST-100 then there would be clear redundancy but SpaceX has not made it obvious they will do this. I an not privy to the SpaceX market strategy and the lack of public discussion on alternative payloads for the Falcon give the impression that SpaceX is not interested (if their are contradictory info, please post). I agree that from here it looks like a great idea to be able to launch the CST-100 on Falcon and even Dragon on Atlas V, but this is assuming a great deal about desire and capability.
...5) Mechanical ....5) Although unique to each spacecraft it is rather simple using modern CAD systems to design this LV portion adapter for the spacecraft. This is done for a lot of regular satellites as well so the LV provider is used to doing this work as part of normal LV services.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 09/21/2011 07:50 pm...5) Mechanical ....5) Although unique to each spacecraft it is rather simple using modern CAD systems to design this LV portion adapter for the spacecraft. This is done for a lot of regular satellites as well so the LV provider is used to doing this work as part of normal LV services.What I've deducted from looking into the Dragon's Trunk, is that is so optimized to the F9 US, that it respect the curvature of the US top tank. It would seem to be an extremely optimized design. It might be very expensive to adapt.
There are five items for interfacing to a LV:1) Acoustic2) Acceleration3) Electrical4) Software5) Mechanical 1) This one is nearly identical for both F9 and Atlas V so it’s not a concern to designers.
A manned spacecraft requires “tight” software integration with the LV for information flow from the LV and commands to the LV.
Software interfaces on both the LV and spacecraft would be needed for each pairing that would be unique to the pair of LV and spacecraft.
In addition, when talking to Florida Today reporter James Dean yesterday for an article he wrote about CCDev, he shared with me a clarification he received from NASA on that issue. It turns out that the clause in question is a standard one in FAR-based contracts, and that the Commercial Crew Program was “investigating getting a waiver or deviation from this standard clause language for the final RFP.”
