Is COTS being killed? If so, by whom? It’s coming out of the House, so it doesn’t have Shelby’s fingerprints on it.
I was told on good authority years ago that COTS was surviving Griffin’s NASA because of strong White House support. Well, that was a different president. We’ll see what this one does.
This is really unexpected. Stimulating commercial manned spaceflight capability is one of the aims stated in the Augustine commission’s charter.
This is the kind of thing that could kill a fledgling company that get’s entangle in government contracts. A huge government contract might require a company to spend money gearing up to support it, then have it’s legs cut off.
SpaceX has commercial customers, but spent a lot gearing up for COTS (creating a huge burn rate) so I hope they can survive this.
Sad as it is, I predicted this. I had hoped that I was wrong (and still hope that things will turn out right), but it should not be a surprise that the socialists who control the Congress should want to do away with a program that helps the private sector. Sad to that what passes for space activists were too busy screaming about the Constellation architecture and were not defending COTS.
Including that socialist Richard Shelby.
Sad to that what [sic] passes for space activists were too busy screaming about the Constellation architecture and were not defending COTS.
Just what more were we supposed to be doing to defend COTS that we were not? Why can’t we both complain about Constellation and support COTS (which we did)?
I wonder is this a precurso to a move to keep the shuttle.
Without Shuttle or COTS, there is not practical way to support ISS.
I expect Sen. Shelby can influence a House markup simply by trading favors.
That’s what I meant by not having his fingerprints on it…
Oddly, the document indicates a $113,900,000 reduction in the 2009 enacted budget but no reduction in the 2010 request.
That looks more like a realignment or reallocation than a cancellation, but it does say “program phase out.” Although, it’s listed under “reductions” rather than “terminations.”
Although I’m of course hoping this doesn’t go through, if it did, what would it mean? Did SpaceX already sign contracts and/or receive money for its scheduled milestone launches with NASA, and if the program is cancelled would those launches still happen?
SpaceX has said that they will fly both Dragon and Falcon 9 anyway. Its just going to take a longer time for Dragon, and they have probably wasted quite some money by designing it to ISS proximity ops standards.
Falcon 9 has its own reasons for flying, far more important than COTS funding.
I wonder is this a precurso to a move to keep the shuttle.
If so, then that too would be in conflict with the Augustine commission’s instructions. They’ve been told to consider architectures that will among other things allow missions to the moon and “other destinations beyond LEO”. They have also been told not to rely on Shuttle extension.
If so, then that too would be in conflict with the Augustine commission’s instructions. They’ve been told to consider architectures that will among other things allow missions to the moon and “other destinations beyond LEO”.
The Augustine Commission and their instructions are not binding on Congress.
Here is my take on this>>>
I believe that Alan Lindenmoyer stated at the ISDC conference in May that the COTS office had paid Orbital $100M of the $170M total (which leaves $70M for milestone payments to go), and that they had paid SpaceX $234M of the $278M total (which leaves $44M for milestone payments to go).
Adding the “to go” amounts you get $114M – which is the exact amount of the 2009 rescission. Unless there is a plus-up in 2010 budget to cover the $113.9M there is no funding for future milestones – which may make it very difficult for Orbital and SpaceX to continue their development and to get ready for CRS missions.
However, if this action allows NASA to eliminate the requirement to perform demonstrations to ISS under COTS then it would save them both, especially SpaceX, a lot of money. The 3 SpaceX demo missions may cost them around $100M (propbably more) and the one demo that Orbital has to perform under COTS may cost them around $150M. As long as this budget action does not impact the awarded CRS contracts ($1.6B for SpaceX, and $1.9B for Orbital) this may actually help them, as long as NASA changes the funding restriction in CRS that caps payments at %30 of active missions until “ISS integration” is achieved (which is what NASA would have to do – either that or terminate CRS altogether). I wonder what they all are going to do?