The current state of play. This is disturbing:
Bolden has acknowledged in congressional testimony, most recently in an April 25 hearing of the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, that without a fully funded Commercial Crew Program, the agency may have to pick only one aspiring provider to fund.
That could happen as soon as next summer, when NASA plans to award the next round of Commercial Crew funding.
They make it sound like he’s issuing a threat when that’s exactly what Congress wants them to do. If I were Bolden (or rather, if I were administrator — obviously if I were Bolden I’d do what Bolden would do), I’d be figuring out a way to avoid the down select with a smaller budget. But if I were administrator, a lot of things would be done differently.
Doing the down select to one vendor is a big mistake. It never gets cheaper than having two/three vendors. What will end up happening is the sole remaining vendor will jack up the prices until it costs more than funding all three of them would have cost in the first place. Not to mention that you just lost all redundancy in the crew transport system.
What really needs to be cut is SLS and the James Webb Space Telescope but that obviously won’t be happening any time soon.
The article also mashes together the CCiCap and CPC programs, with no distinction. CCiCap under SAAs is (was?) supposed to continue from a “Base” period into an “Optional” period after next May, which could include company-only crew test flights. CPC (“Commercial Products Certification”) was supposed to start with the relatively low cost _contracts_ in Phase I (current) then become a big behemoth contracted program to “certify” for NASA astros in Phase II.
The most immediate wall that we’re going to hit is _this Oct 1_ because the Base period of CCiCap sprawls out over more than one fiscal year. So no matter the awards under that program last summer, if NASA doesn’t get enough money to fill out the rest of the Base period in FY14, it will _have to_ immediately cut out all but one (or 1.5?) of the “2.5” awardees of last summer.
That’s leaving aside the false “need” to have CPC done under contracts, at the insistence of Congress and some in NASA. In fact, I question the “need” for CPC at all, since if under an Optional CCiCap period the companies could fly their own people to orbit, why isn’t that “safe” enough for our “brave NASA astronauts???” Again, Rand, the false safety issue figures in this, with all else.
That is not the current plan. The CCiCAP optional milestones will not be exercised and crew test flights will be under CPC phase II (now called CP2).
When did that change occur? I’m not questioning your statement, I just would like to find some reference documentation for a future issue of my Report. So if you have any references, please point to them. Thank you.
PS Terrible news of course.
I don’t have a precise reference. I think it happened shortly after the last ASAP report (the ASAP was not keen on using SAAs for crew flight test, to say the least).
The only optional milestones that might get exercised would be SNCs, because those milestones are necessary just to get them to CDR due to SNC getting a partial CCiCAP award. But those milestones would only be exercised if SNC were to survive a downselect.
the ASAP was not keen on using SAAs for crew flight test, to say the least
Yes, I beat them up pretty hard about that in the final version of the book.
Will they do the logical thing if they do down select? What is that? Not give money to businesses that are viable without the funds. I would say both Boeing and SpaceX fall into that category making Dream Chaser the vehicle to continue funding.
Boeing may of course take their ball and quit playing. SpaceX is perhaps the one that would best put the funds to good use but will continue development regardless.