NASA Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities

[joek]

From NASA Announces Effort to Form New Collaborative Partnerships with Private Space Industry , July 17, 2013, RELEASE 13-200

WASHINGTON -- NASA officials Wednesday released a synopsis requesting information from U.S. private enterprises interested in pursuing unfunded partnerships. The aim is to advance the development of commercial space products and services.

The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities synopsis describes a potential opportunity for existing and new companies and non-profit organizations to access NASA's spaceflight expertise for mutually beneficial space exploration goals.

These new partnerships are intended to help companies accelerate their development efforts while enabling the nation to reap economic benefits from previous NASA work. NASA benefits by advancing the commercial space industry. This is a primary goal of the National Space Policy and NASA Strategic Plan, which enhance the U.S. aerospace industrial base and could lead to the availability of cost-effective commercial products and services to support human space exploration.

"As we have seen with NASA's previous agreements with the private sector, U.S. companies could significantly benefit from the agency's extensive experience and knowledge in spaceflight development and operations," said Phil McAlister, NASA’s director for Commercial Spaceflight Development. "For new entrepreneurial efforts in space, NASA’s archive of lessons learned, technical expertise and spaceflight data is an invaluable national resource and engine for new economic growth."

While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop and advance new commercial space capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration in the solar system, including to an asteroid and Mars.

The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities synopsis is available at:

http://go.nasa.gov/16Jex3j

 For more information about NASA initiatives and commercial space, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/commercial

-end-

[joek]

The site for this initiative is Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities (CCSC).  So far there is not much there except the pre-solicitation synopsis:

NASA encourages innovative and entrepreneurial efforts within the private sector to develop new space-related capabilities. These new capabilities may result in opportunities for industry to provide cost-effective commercial products and services to low Earth orbit and beyond for the Government and other customers. In pursuit of the goals of the National Space Policy and NASA’s strategic plan, NASA is continuing its efforts to foster the development of new industrial space-related capabilities that will lead to education and job growth in science and engineering and spur economic growth as capabilities for new space markets are created.

Based on the responses to this synopsis, NASA may solicit proposals from all interested U.S. private enterprises that wish to enter into Space Act Agreements (SAA) for collaboration on emerging commercial space capabilities. The purpose of the agreements would be to advance entrepreneurial space-related efforts by facilitating access to NASA’s vast spaceflight resources including technical expertise, assessments, lessons learned, technologies, and data. Additional Government provided resources such as access to facilities and services will be evaluated on a case by case basis depending on the degree of benefit to both parties. With this activity, NASA intends to focus on facilitating the development of integrated space capabilities, not individual technologies or subsystem development efforts. Should a solicitation go forward, NASA would use its other transactions authority within the National Aeronautics and Space Act, 51 U.S.C. § 20113(e), to enter into multiple SAAs where each party bears the cost of its participation, and there is no exchange of funds between the parties.

The SAAs resulting from any potential solicitation will serve as an agency-level mechanism for NASA and its partners to agree to a series of mutually beneficial activities that are expected to be consistent with NASA’s 2011 Strategic Plan. There must be specific, identifiable benefits to one or more elements of Strategic Goal 1 to extend and sustain human activities across the solar system. The goal of the SAAs would be to advance private sector development of integrated space capabilities so that the emerging products or services are commercially available to government and non-government customers within approximately the next five years.

This activity would be an additional opportunity to partner with NASA and is not intended to preclude ongoing or future partnership discussions directly with the NASA centers. NASA will only consider proposals from U.S. private enterprises (including non-profit organizations) or commercial providers as defined by the Commercial Space Act of 1998. There may be future opportunities for the private sector to submit proposals to NASA for these types of agreements after the initial selections are made.

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[joek]

Beyond the recurring theme of NASA attempting to increase collaboration with commercial of late, a few items caught my attention that differentiate this from previous solicitations requests:
- "... integrated space capabilities, not individual technologies or subsystem development efforts."
- "... to extend and sustain human activities across the solar system."
- "... available to government and non-government customers within approximately the next five years"
Also of note, all would be unfunded SAA's.