Commercial Crew - Discussion Thread 1

[QuantumG]

The mistake, IMO, was selecting 2 vehicles.  The competition should have ended with whoever could get to 2017 for the lowest price.

That would have required real competition. NASA procurement isn't about that.

Hey, they could still save it - they could throw out the Gantt chart and the guaranteed launches and tell the providers they have to race. Whoever finishes their compulsory milestones first gets the contract. Milestone payments will be paid on a first completed basis, with no carry-over year to year - that way the provider will have to decide if they prefer to be paid or to win.

[rcoppola]

The mistake, IMO, was selecting 2 vehicles.  The competition should have ended with whoever could get to 2017 for the lowest price.

That would have required real competition. NASA procurement isn't about that.

Hey, they could still save it - they could throw out the Gantt chart and the guaranteed launches and tell the providers they have to race. Whoever finishes their compulsory milestones first gets the contract. Milestone payments will be paid on a first completed basis, with no carry-over year to year - that way the provider will have to decide if they prefer to be paid or to win.

Yes, I posted that on another thread. I would love to see that. "Hey guys, here's 900Million for 2016. First come first serve."

[Coastal Ron]

The Commercial Crew program budget has ballooned, as all NASA programs seem to do, and now the only argument he can make is nationalism.

To me Commercial Crew has been more about redundancy than anything else.  What's the value of having a backup in case the Soyuz is not available?  Certainly not priceless, but potentially worth a lot - more than what it's costing us to put Commercial Crew in place I'd say.

A secondary goal, although not an explicit one, would be in creating a new industry.  And the economic reason for doing that is to eventually repay the tax money that it took to create Commercial Crew...

[QuantumG]

To me Commercial Crew has been more about redundancy than anything else.  What's the value of having a backup in case the Soyuz is not available?  Certainly not priceless, but potentially worth a lot - more than what it's costing us to put Commercial Crew in place I'd say.

While I expect you could make this argument to some, good luck making it to Congress. In any case, you only need one backup to Soyuz.

A secondary goal, although not an explicit one, would be in creating a new industry.  And the economic reason for doing that is to eventually repay the tax money that it took to create Commercial Crew...

Do ya know what it's called when the government sets about "creating a new industry"? The polite term is economic central planning. Have you seen the kind of industries they make?

[sanman]

Please someone succinctly summarize for me in a nutshell why the US Congress has done what is has done. Why pinch pennies with such a promising program like Commercial Crew, which could add significant capability for reasonable cost? I don't want to get political, but I thought previous testimony and debates by US Congress had expressed a consensus on trying to avoid reliance on Soyuz for future manned flights. The reasoning about Boeing being better as backup seems to be convoluted. Has the US Congress shot US manned spaceflight interests in the foot?

Even if SpaceX seems a little bit slow on the timeline to be astronaut-ready, surely their past track record shows them to be quite credible.

What risk was the US Congress trying to avoid by voting this way? Were they afraid that neither SpaceX nor Boeing would deliver on readiness for manned spaceflight? I don't understand why they went with Soyuz over their own people. Surely there was more to this decision than just a few hundred million dollars.

[QuantumG]

$8B is a lot to ask.. if you can't answer basic questions as to why you need to spend that much money, you really shouldn't be surprised when they don't give it to you.

[Rocket Science]

Please someone succinctly summarize for me in a nutshell why the US Congress has done what is has done. Why pinch pennies with such a promising program like Commercial Crew, which could add significant capability for reasonable cost? I don't want to get political, but I thought previous testimony and debates by US Congress had expressed a consensus on trying to avoid reliance on Soyuz for future manned flights. The reasoning about Boeing being better as backup seems to be convoluted. Has the US Congress shot US manned spaceflight interests in the foot?

Even if SpaceX seems a little bit slow on the timeline to be astronaut-ready, surely their past track record shows them to be quite credible.

What risk was the US Congress trying to avoid by voting this way? Were they afraid that neither SpaceX nor Boeing would deliver on readiness for manned spaceflight? I don't understand why they went with Soyuz over their own people. Surely there was more to this decision than just a few hundred million dollars.

The folly started when they decided to retire the Shuttle without an operational replacement thus shooting themselves in the foot and needing to rely on Russia... Shuttle should have been slowly phased out in a sensible retirement, one Orbiter at a time, while CC proved itself...

[deadman719]

A little crystal-ball gazing, just for discussion purposes:

Baseline response: NASA eats the cut, stretches out Commercial Crew, has to pay another ~$210M to Russia (estimating $70M/seat at three seats/year), which has to come out of CC, which stretches it out even farther. Boeing and/or SpaceX have first flight 2019-2020.

Alternative 1: Bolden says U.S. internal access to space is too important, drops SpaceX and fully funds Boeing. Everyone happy except for Elon and us amazing peoples. (As a NASA guy told me once, "We like working with people we're used to working with.") NASA throws Elon a bone with the next cargo contract.

Alternative 2: Bolden says U.S. internal access to space is too important, drops Boeing and fully funds SpaceX. Hordes of lobbyists make emergency phone calls.
  Outcome 1: Commercial crew funding restored, or
  Outcome 2: Bolden "resigns to spend more time with his family", Alternative 1 enacted.

Cost-optimal solution: Cancel commercial crew altogether, pay Russia ~$250M/year (the price will undoubtedly go up if they can't be threatened with an alternative) through 2024 and then splash ISS. NASA flies crew to DLRO in 2022-2023 and declares victory.

(When did I become this old and cynical?)

Another option: Fund Boeing or SpaceX at their programmed level for the year and the remaining company at partial funding.  This keeps one company on schedule and extends the schedule for the other company.  Although neither funding profile is known, one could extrapolate from awarded contract totals that SpaceX has a smaller yearly profile than Boeing.  Assuming this is true, fully funding SpaceX while partially funding Boeing stretches dollars the furthest. 

The above option also puts dollars on the more mature vehicle (given public information) enabling schedule to be maintained.  Additional funding next year could help reduce the schedule impact for the underfunded company.   

[QuantumG]

The folly started when they decided to retire the Shuttle without an operational replacement thus shooting themselves in the foot and needing to rely on Russia... Shuttle should have been slowly phased out in a sensible retirement, one Orbiter at a time, while CC proved itself...

It was always the intention of the ISS program to rely on Soyuz for rotation of the crew, and they were doing so before the shuttle retirement happened. If ya want to pick a date when the ISS program went pear shaped, it was probably 1998.

[Rocket Science]

The folly started when they decided to retire the Shuttle without an operational replacement thus shooting themselves in the foot and needing to rely on Russia... Shuttle should have been slowly phased out in a sensible retirement, one Orbiter at a time, while CC proved itself...

It was always the intention of the ISS program to rely on Soyuz for rotation of the crew, and they were doing so before the shuttle retirement happened. If ya want to pick a date when the ISS program went pear shaped, it was probably 1998.

Until CxP, Orion and Ares-1 was the goto vehicle in the early 2000's...

[Coastal Ron]

Please someone succinctly summarize for me in a nutshell why the US Congress has done what is has done. Why pinch pennies with such a promising program like Commercial Crew, which could add significant capability for reasonable cost? I don't want to get political...

NASA has always been about politics, just for different goals at different times.

NASA was created in response to a perceived national threat, and the Apollo program was created specifically for political reasons.

The Shuttle followed the Apollo program, and it may have started out with the right idea (i.e. transportation infrastructure), but the Shuttle program was allowed to keep going far beyond when it should have because it had become institutionalized within certain political boundaries.

The ISS was born out of a desire to try and nullify threats from the dismemberment of the USSR, even though it also serves a legitimate science purpose, and our reliance on the Soyuz for being able to continuously staff the ISS with U.S. personnel was a political decision.

Even today all you have to do is look to see what the largest funded development program is (i.e. SLS + Orion), and what it means to all the existing NASA centers (and their employees).

Now look at NASA's budget from the perspective of the Republican controlled Congress, with a lack of any clear future goals being pushed by the Democratic President whom they don't really agree with (to put it nicely).  NASA's budget is pretty much a zero-sum game, meaning there is no support to increase the overall budget amount by very much, BUT there is a large amount of support for the SLS & Orion.

Throw in also that some in Congress have been non-supportive of Commercial Crew since the beginning (like Senator Shelby), regardless how much sense it makes from a international political standpoint or from a NASA standpoint.

One last factor, and I can't quantify it but it exists, is that there are basically two camps within NASA:

1.  BFR's are the only way to go, and they must be NASA owned.

2.  Commercial services are the way to go, and NASA no longer needs to own commodity transportation hardware.

Group #1 sees the success of commercial services like Commercial Crew (#2) as a threat, and it's easy to convince politicians that the end result of such paradigm change would mean an eventual reduction in personnel, and a HUGE reduction in need for certain well-entrenched government contractors and their fat contracts.  Losing voter jobs and constituent cash flow is a fear that is real for politicians, and can override national priorities.

However other than expressing a lack of confidence in the best aerospace industry in the world, Congress really hasn't explained why they would rather continue to send money to Russia instead of of supporting U.S. industry.

But likely it's based on fear - fear of losing influence and money in the political districts.

My $0.02

[joek]

How does this work? Have they already awarded the contracts even though the budget has not passed? Can the contractor depend on getting his money if it doesn't pass?

Or are the bids not binding if the money is not there, and the whole process starts over?

Contracts were awarded last year; contracts are binding, but there are caveats if funding is not available (as with all such government contracts).  The process would not start over if the money is not there.  Beyond that, what would happen is anyone's guess.

[Billium]

From my basic knowledge of government RFPs, albeit from a different jurisdiction and without knowing the specific wording, I don't think NASA can simply down select to 1 unless it does so based on the criteria of the RFP.

I think that certain members of congress intend the CCtCAP budget shortfall to either delay commercial crew so that it is not available before Orion and SLS are ready, or in the alternative that there will be a down select to Boeing.

I recall that certain members of congress had previously tried to write into law that NASA had to give weight only to safety or schedule certainty and give no or little weight to price, but that never became law, and the RFP does have price as a criteria. Given how close spacex was on everything other than price, and how far ahead it is on price, it is not clear to me who would win.

Although I'm sure certain members of congress would like to think that NASA can/should just down select to Boeing because it was number 1 in most criteria, except price, I don't think this is an option because that is not how the RFP was issued.

If that happened I think Spacex could protest because they could have bid differently if price was weighted differently. I think NASA would have to reissue the RFP. I think the only other option is to delay the milestones or attempt to renegotiate with the bid winners.

I imagine this won't come to a head until the fall at least because of general disagreement about the federal budget. I'm really excited about dragon2 so I'm hopping they can make enough progress even if they get cut, so that they don't get delayed multiple years.

[arachnitect]

Please someone succinctly summarize for me in a nutshell why the US Congress has done what is has done. Why pinch pennies with such a promising program like Commercial Crew, which could add significant capability for reasonable cost? I don't want to get political, but I thought previous testimony and debates by US Congress had expressed a consensus on trying to avoid reliance on Soyuz for future manned flights. The reasoning about Boeing being better as backup seems to be convoluted. Has the US Congress shot US manned spaceflight interests in the foot?

Even if SpaceX seems a little bit slow on the timeline to be astronaut-ready, surely their past track record shows them to be quite credible.

What risk was the US Congress trying to avoid by voting this way? Were they afraid that neither SpaceX nor Boeing would deliver on readiness for manned spaceflight? I don't understand why they went with Soyuz over their own people. Surely there was more to this decision than just a few hundred million dollars.

Without going too much into the details, I'll point out that getting a top line budget increase for anything discretionary is basically impossible right now.

Commercial Crew needed a big increase and that's very hard to do right now.

[QuantumG]

Without going too much into the details, I'll point out that getting a top line budget increase for anything discretionary is basically impossible right now.

NASA got a top line budget increase.

[the_other_Doug]

     I'm not saying Bolden isn't a good director of Nasa, but we NEED someone who can go to Congress and explain to them, quite simply...

Mike Griffin tried to do that, and they rewarded him with the mandate to land people on the Moon and then Mars while giving him a tenth of the money he said he needed to do it.  By the end, just to keep things going, hoping for that balloon payment at the end when it's time to start flying, Griffin was telling them whatever they wanted to hear that would keep him from being fired and keep the VSE from being canned altogether.

Congress is not a rational body, and cannot be swayed by rational logic, any more than you can convince someone who believes Apollo was a hoax with all the evidence in the world.  Its standpoint is an emotional one, and cannot be swayed by facts.  I don't think this is a good way to govern, but them's the facts of the matter.

[the_other_Doug]

The thing that gets me is Congress says they're saving money by cutting $300 million from commercial crew, but it's turning around and spending almost the same amount on Soyuz seats in that same period.

As Joe Shea used to say, a decision against is not a decision delayed.  Commercial crew is a decision that's already been made -- the decision against making Orion a LEO shuttle, and against continuing to depend on the politically unreliable Russians to field an American presence in LEO, has already been made.  Money has been spent (a lot of it) and metal is being bent.  Crewed flights are less than two years away, not 10 to 20 as was the case when VSE was canceled.  It's not the time to come back to it and say, "Well, wouldn't it be better to just keep buying Soyuz seats?"  The time to ask that question is long past.  It's time to finish what we started, and go freakin' fly!

[Coastal Ron]

The folly started when they decided to retire the Shuttle without an operational replacement thus shooting themselves in the foot and needing to rely on Russia...

The Shuttle was never a replacement for the Soyuz, since it could only stay in space for two weeks maximum, and the requirement is to have a vehicle (i.e. a lifeboat) available at all times during a normal crew mission (typically 6 months).  The Shuttle could provide temporary access, and it could swap out crew, but it couldn't keep crew at the ISS for longer than two weeks.

The real root of this situation goes back to the beginning of the ISS program, when it was known back then that only the Soyuz was available for lifeboat duty.  The X-38 was to be the U.S. lifeboat vehicle (still would need the Shuttle for swapping crew though), but it was cancelled in 2002 due to budget cuts.  Of course we were far friendlier with Russia back then, and even then the Soyuz had a long and safe flight history.

So our current dependence on Russia for keeping crew at the ISS goes back to decisions made in 2002.

[yg1968]

How does this work? Have they already awarded the contracts even though the budget has not passed? Can the contractor depend on getting his money if it doesn't pass?

Or are the bids not binding if the money is not there, and the whole process starts over?

Contracts were awarded last year; contracts are binding, but there are caveats if funding is not available (as with all such government contracts).  The process would not start over if the money is not there.  Beyond that, what would happen is anyone's guess.

Bolden sort of answered that during a hearing. He said that they would have to renegotiate milestones with SpaceX and Boeing.

[Patchouli]

Please someone succinctly summarize for me in a nutshell why the US Congress has done what is has done. Why pinch pennies with such a promising program like Commercial Crew, which could add significant capability for reasonable cost? I don't want to get political, but I thought previous testimony and debates by US Congress had expressed a consensus on trying to avoid reliance on Soyuz for future manned flights. The reasoning about Boeing being better as backup seems to be convoluted. Has the US Congress shot US manned spaceflight interests in the foot?

Even if SpaceX seems a little bit slow on the timeline to be astronaut-ready, surely their past track record shows them to be quite credible.

What risk was the US Congress trying to avoid by voting this way? Were they afraid that neither SpaceX nor Boeing would deliver on readiness for manned spaceflight? I don't understand why they went with Soyuz over their own people. Surely there was more to this decision than just a few hundred million dollars.

The folly started when they decided to retire the Shuttle without an operational replacement thus shooting themselves in the foot and needing to rely on Russia... Shuttle should have been slowly phased out in a sensible retirement, one Orbiter at a time, while CC proved itself...

Having a set in stone retirement date for the Shuttle was making the exact same mistake they made retiring Apollo before the Shuttle was ready.

The X-38 should have never been canceled and Orion should have stayed on the spiral development plan as it could have been ready by now and the Shuttle could have been flown for a few more years.

It is just dumb to keep buying seats on Soyuz when Spacex has proven they can safely fly to ISS.
Though I do not believe Boeing's time line and feel their vehicle is over priced even they're a better investment then sending money to the Russians.
But they if have to make do with 300 million less and cannot afford to fund both Dragon V2 and the CST-100 the wise thing to do would be the drop Boeing and put SNC or Blue Origin in their place so they still get two providers while meeting their budget.
Dropping Spacex would be pretty brain dead since they're the only provider who have both a working spacecraft and crew rated launch vehicle with domestically produced engines.