The CCiCAP Award (PRE- and Post-AWARD DISCUSSION) Thread

[BrightLight]

Any thoughts or news on when we can expect the selection statement?  It's been four weeks since the CCiCap awards, yet still nothing from the usual suspects, or on the Commercial Crew site.  IIRC, NASA promised the selection statement would be available soon--"within a couple weeks" or some such at the time of the awards 03-Aug.  (I had my money on Fri 31-Aug, but obviously no such luck.)

This was released publicly on Friday

Thank you 51D Mascot for the document.  I didn't find any surprises and I suspect the evaluation was difficult, as I read it;
SNC had high risks but sound technical proposal, Boeing and SpaceX had the best technical proposals and lowest risk, SpaceX put more of its money and resources on the line and ATK tried but could not match the competition.
I have no idea what the political process was but it appears the Mr. Gerstenmaier has quite a bit of integrity. Is ATK still looking into contesting the awards?

[joek]

This was released publicly on Friday

Thanks!
obligatory stoplight chart attached...

[john smith 19]

This was released publicly on Friday

Thanks!
obligatory stoplight chart attached...

Note that was not the initial assessment before they got into the details.

It's interesting that Boeing appear to be the least financially committed and least willing to commit any of their own money while ATK seems to have put more than was expected (by NASA) in but seems to followed that up with some less than detailed answers to their questions. They seemed to have played the "It's legacy hardware, its TRL is already high" card.

It seems NASA did not find their arguments convincing enough.

[Ben the Space Brit]

It's interesting that Boeing appear to be the least financially committed and least willing to commit any of their own money while ATK seems to have put more than was expected (by NASA) in but seems to followed that up with some less than detailed answers to their questions. They seemed to have played the "It's legacy hardware, its TRL is already high" card.

It seems NASA did not find their arguments convincing enough.

I think that it will be very interesting to see how ATK respond to this evaluation.  No doubt their team and their lawyers are looking at the fine print.

[john smith 19]

I think that it will be very interesting to see how ATK respond to this evaluation.  No doubt their team and their lawyers are looking at the fine print.

That would annoying and delaying but I don't think anything would really change.

The 1st stage has *no* flight history (and I'm sure the evaluators are aware of the trouble Ares 1x had when it was flown). The 2nd stage is *not* a stock Ariane 1st stage, Vulcain 2 has *no* record of an air start test programme (which was part of what sank SSME on the Ares 1) and the capsule seems to have been almost an afterthought.

The report seems to be saying that while that makes it a riskier design what really sank them was that they seemed to have no *detailed* plan how to migrate from their *existing* hardware to the Liberty components.

My impression was they ran their attempt like a cost plus exercise where it's a case of "Win the contract, we'll figure out how to build the thing later."

The NASA team seem pretty serious about this not being an option on this project. You need the plan *before* you start the work as, if a winner can't make it work on their budget, they won't be getting any more.

I'd like to think I'm wrong and ATK will carry on and prove their design is viable, but I'm not hopeful.

Bidding for both cargo and crew (and using a common design for both) is starting to look like a *very* good idea on Spacex's part, as was sticking with a storable propellant RCS.

[Jim]

Everybody focuses on the Liberty rocket,. I believe more of the comments were towards the readiness of the spacecraft.  Other than a composite shell, it was not more defined (in publicly available resources).

[Ben the Space Brit]

Everybody focuses on the Liberty rocket,. I believe more of the comments were towards the readiness of the spacecraft.  Other than a composite shell, it was not more defined (in publicly available resources).

Purely IMHO, insisting on their own spacecraft (which is almost non-existant) rather than buying Dreamchaser or CST-100 was the weakest part of the ATK bid and seemed virtually a suicide note.  I'm really not sure what they thought would happen.

[erioladastra]

It's interesting that Boeing appear to be the least financially committed and least willing to commit any of their own money while ATK seems to have put more than was expected (by NASA) in but seems to followed that up with some less than detailed answers to their questions. They seemed to have played the "It's legacy hardware, its TRL is already high" card.

It seems NASA did not find their arguments convincing enough.

I think that it will be very interesting to see how ATK respond to this evaluation.  No doubt their team and their lawyers are looking at the fine print.

First, you don't know the financial comittments of the companies and the statement above is incorrect.  ATK can do whatever they want - for SAA there is nothing they can do except call attention. 

[Prober]

CCiCap Award letter
This was disappointing….

Some Yellow flags popped up in reading the material.  Some are even close to Red flags.

"Weaknesses Included: Business plan provided inadequate information to assess its analysis of the commercial market and likelihood of obtaining their projected market share."

Same general statement can be found in several places in the doc.

NASA is not in the business of picking “Winners and losers”.   Commercial market shouldn’t be a consideration in this process.   The only consideration should be the services of human transport to the ISS.

2) Ability to deliver in a timely manner based on past experience (not considered).

Yet, we get this....SpaceX cargo launches are considered a plus, even if this is an “unknown factor”.

someone along the line said 'train wreck", they might be right.

[Rocket Science]

Any thoughts or news on when we can expect the selection statement?  It's been four weeks since the CCiCap awards, yet still nothing from the usual suspects, or on the Commercial Crew site.  IIRC, NASA promised the selection statement would be available soon--"within a couple weeks" or some such at the time of the awards 03-Aug.  (I had my money on Fri 31-Aug, but obviously no such luck.)

This was released publicly on Friday

I would like to add my thanks as well 51D. Some good labor day reading!

[pathfinder_01]

Everybody focuses on the Liberty rocket,. I believe more of the comments were towards the readiness of the spacecraft.  Other than a composite shell, it was not more defined (in publicly available resources).

Purely IMHO, insisting on their own spacecraft (which is almost non-existant) rather than buying Dreamchaser or CST-100 was the weakest part of the ATK bid and seemed virtually a suicide note.  I'm really not sure what they thought would happen.

Honestly they didn't have a choice. They arrived at the ccdev party too late and their product(a large segmented solid booster) has high prices associated with it.

I mean in theory CST-100 is supposed to be launch vechile agnostic but in reality the intergration of a spacecraft and it's launcher can be rather specific and even if they chose to use it, how would it be any cheaper than Atlas or Falcon 9 for this task? Atlas and Falcon have other customers already to share costs. 

[joek]

CCiCap Award letter
This was disappointing….

To be fair, all the proposals have a long list of weaknesses from the initial evaluation (prior to due dilligence).  All also have a much shorter list of weaknesses from the final evaluation, which are reflected in the changes to the scores (shown below).  I don't see anything particularly disappointing, and nothing which would suggest a "train wreck".

[joek]

Everybody focuses on the Liberty rocket,. I believe more of the comments were towards the readiness of the spacecraft.  Other than a composite shell, it was not more defined (in publicly available resources).

Yes; the following in particular seems to indicate that the spacecraft is an ambiguous work-in-progress, which would seem to be a deal-killer for an integrated CTS proposal (emphasis added)...

However, I had some significant concerns about the lack of detail in some areas of ATK’s technical approach... Specifically, While the proposal described the use of a particular spacecraft design as a point of departure for the Liberty spacecraft and the use of heritage systems, the proposal did not include enough data to understand the spacecraft baseline configuration that would serve as the starting point, the system changes planned to bring this spacecraft to the Liberty baseline, or how heritage systems will be modified and integrated to enable a CTS capability.

[john smith 19]

Everybody focuses on the Liberty rocket,. I believe more of the comments were towards the readiness of the spacecraft.  Other than a composite shell, it was not more defined (in publicly available resources).

I think people have avoided commenting on the Liberty capsule because they did not feel enough was known about it *too* make a comment, beyond it's going to be derived from the Composite Capsule programme and use systems with an extensive heritage.

Not very impressive when Dragon has flown and (presumably) CTS100 is under construction and the RFP was for a complete system rather than an LV.

[sdsds]

obligatory stoplight chart attached...

Nice!

I predict Boeing's will be the only proposal that receives a blue or green (very high or high) effectiveness rating for both technical and business, AND "high" confidence for both.

My prediction was wrong. (Boeing did get blue with high confidence for technical, but not even green for business effectiveness! None of the ratings met the criteria I described. )

[joek]

I think people have avoided commenting on the Liberty capsule because they did not feel enough was known about it *too* make a comment, beyond it's going to be derived from the Composite Capsule programme and use systems with an extensive heritage.

No shortage of comments, speculation and doubt in other threads.  Much of which now appears to be validated: ATK appears to have little more than the prototype composite crew vehicle (CCV) as the basis for a spacecraft, and does not have a credible plan for morphing the CCV into a working CTS crew vehicle.

[oiorionsbelt]

As this is a commercial proposal, the most compelling thing I see is the high level of confidence shown by NASA in the SpaceX business evaluation. Especially
when contrasted with Boeing's. Makes me wonder why SNC didn't get a full share of the funds and Boeing only a partial.

[QuantumG]

NASA is not in the business of picking “Winners and losers”.

You mean they shouldn't be... because they most certainly have been for decades now.

[joek]

Makes me wonder why SNC didn't get a full share of the funds and Boeing only a partial.

Probably because, as stated in the final evaluation...

[SNC] All Weaknesses were fully addressed except as follows: does not adequately address the risk associated with spacecraft Thermal Protection System (TPS) damage.

...and...

In reviewing the remaining three proposals, While all three received a Very High Level of Effectiveness rating for the Technical Approach, it seemed clear to me that SpaceX and Boeing had the stronger technical proposals. This is evidenced by the Medium technical Confidence rating for SNC. Even though SpaceX also received a Medium technical Confidence rating, I do not consider these technical Coniidence ratings of Medium for SNC and SpaceX as equivalent. The SNC Conñdence rating is driven by several factors: complexity of the heat shield design, complexity in abort conditions, controlling weight of the design, and ability to bring green propeilants on line in a cost effective and timely manner.

In short, SNC is higher risk compared to Boeing and SpaceX.

[Prober]

Makes me wonder why SNC didn't get a full share of the funds and Boeing only a partial.

Probably because, as stated in the final evaluation...

[SNC] All Weaknesses were fully addressed except as follows: does not adequately address the risk associated with spacecraft Thermal Protection System (TPS) damage.

...and...

In reviewing the remaining three proposals, While all three received a Very High Level of Effectiveness rating for the Technical Approach, it seemed clear to me that SpaceX and Boeing had the stronger technical proposals. This is evidenced by the Medium technical Confidence rating for SNC. Even though SpaceX also received a Medium technical Confidence rating, I do not consider these technical Coniidence ratings of Medium for SNC and SpaceX as equivalent. The SNC Conñdence rating is driven by several factors: complexity of the heat shield design, complexity in abort conditions, controlling weight of the design, and ability to bring green propeilants on line in a cost effective and timely manner.

In short, SNC is higher risk compared to Boeing and SpaceX.

That’s another point I’d disagree with.   In my evaluation the DC is more proven in some respects than the Boeing and SpaceX designs.  Too much is made of the TPS   

Launch Abort brand new systems untested on the Boeing and SpaceX designs.   The DC we know how it lands. The ATX had a tested design as well for Aborts.