Protest Delays NASA Commercial Crew Spacecraft Work: Report

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Protest Delays NASA Commercial Crew Spacecraft Work: Report

Protest Delays NASA Commercial Crew Spacecraft Work: Report:

The Dream Chaser space plane atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Image Credit: SNC

NASA told two companies to halt work on the next phase of its commercial crew program — the spacecraft expected to replace Russian ones ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station — because of a protest related to the contract award, according to media reports.

Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) filed a complaint on Sept. 26, shortly after its Dream Chaser shuttle-like design was not selected for further funding under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) phase of the program. Competitors SpaceX and Boeing each received billions of dollars for further development for their Dragon and CST-100 spacecraft, which are expected to start flying around 2017.

A Spaceflight Now report, quoting NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz, said the agency told both selectees that they must “stop performance of the CCtCap contract” pending the result of the challenge, which is before the Government Accountability Office. The office’s deadline for a response is Jan. 5, the report said.

In a statement, SNC said this is the first fight it undertook in relation to a government contract in more than five decades of operations. “Inconsistencies” in the process, SNC added, prompted it to go forward with the protest:

Importantly, the official NASA solicitation for the CCtCap contract prioritized price as the primary evaluation criteria for the proposals, setting it equal to the combined value of the other two primary evaluation criteria: mission suitability and past performance. SNC’s Dream Chaser proposal was the second lowest priced proposal in the CCtCap competition. SNC’s proposal also achieved mission suitability scores comparable to the other two proposals. In fact, out of a possible 1,000 total points, the highest ranked and lowest ranked offerors were separated by a minor amount of total points and other factors were equally comparable.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden declined to comment on the situation last week in response to questions from reporters at the International Astronautical Congress in Toronto, Canada, citing the legal situation.

About Elizabeth Howell

Elizabeth Howell is the senior writer at Universe Today. She also works for Space.com, Space Exploration Network, the NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Astrobiology Magazine and LiveScience, among others. Career highlights include watching three shuttle launches, and going on a two-week simulated Mars expedition in rural Utah. You can follow her on Twitter @howellspace or contact her at her website.

Tagged as: Boeing, CCtCAP, Commercial Crew, CST-100, dream chaser, Sierra Nevada

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

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Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Wednesday, October 8, 2014