Posted on 02/18/2007 2:56:22 PM PST by KevinDavis
HOUSTON - Two companies that are receiving NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services funds achieved significant milestones this month in their efforts to develop and demonstrate space cargo launch and delivery systems.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) completed a preliminary design review for its first orbital demonstration mission. Rocketplane Kistler completed a system requirements review for its cargo services system. The two companies want to offer commercial delivery services for cargo, and possibly crews, to the International Space Station in the future. In August 2006, NASA and the companies signed Space Act Agreements that established a series of milestones and criteria for assessing progress toward their individual goals.
"These milestones demonstrate genuine progress toward a new way of doing business for NASA and pave the way for the commercial purchase of transportation services needed to maintain the International Space Station," said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston. "If these companies can continue this rapid pace, the first demonstration launches are right around the corner."
(Excerpt) Read more at nasa.gov ...
Transformational Space Corporation"Under our approach, government development contracts and incentives focus on top-level goals, with technology and operational choices left to the private sector. The government sets specific top-level needs, but the 'invisible hand' of market forces will shape choices as they flow down multiple supplier chains. Contracts and incentives will be structured so that several companies in each major area have an opportunity to win this support."
(about page)t/Space Crew Transfer Vehicle"They proposed a radical idea to NASA: Use contracts that NASA was offering for mere paper studies on next-generation spaceships to instead build actual, working hardware. In Gump's plan, incremental progress toward a fully functional vehicle would be rewarded with additional funding, allowing the project to move forward... 'What we're proposing to NASA,' Gump said, 'is a type of incremental side bet' to the big aerospace effort to build America's next spaceshipthat is, a scaled-down backup and supplement to the CEV. 'Every 6 to 12 months we have performed a set of hardware milestones, and NASA has had a chance to say, Well, have you actually performed what you promised?' So they never are betting the entire amount of money.' The big aerospace effort to build the next- generation CEV, which will be led by either Lockheed Martin or the team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing, will have no such requirement. But t/Space won't compete with those companies for the contract to build NASA's primary space-launch system; it will just quietly build a backup machine more quickly and at a fraction of the cost. 'We are trying hard not to claim to be a space-shuttle replacement; we are a Soyuz replacement,' Gump said, 'a simple craft to ferry people up and back rather than a self-propelled space station like the shuttle.'"
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