And So It Begins...
The privatization of the space "industry" has officially begun.
Yup. NASA has picked two companies to take over supplying the International Space Station (ISS) once the shuttle "fleet" (can you really call so few craft a fleet?) retires in 2010. Not too shabby that the companies will share a $500 million contract over five years as "seed money" for their troubles.
Oh yeah and a new acronym has joined the ranks of the oh-so-many out there: COTS. Stands for Commercial Orbital Transporation Services. Which apparently is a program now. In phase one of the COTS program the companies have to demonstrate four capabilities: unpressurized cargo delivery; pressurized cargo delivery; internal cargo delivery and return and an option for crew transportation (well, gee that would be helpful - hard to run the ISS without a crew after all).
The contract is to develop a cargo ship to serve the ISS and went to Space Exploration Technologies Corp (also known as SpaceX) and Rocketplane Kistler and the companies get to retain ownership of the craft, not NASA. You see Rockwell and friends didn't end up owning anything they developed over the years for NASA. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle craft had contractors to build them but NASA retained ownership. Adds an interesting spin I think.
NASA gets behind in paying the bills and the ship don't fly. Of course you have to keep the investors happy so maybe it will fly if the bills are past due but probably not for long. Businesses are much more picky about that sort of thing than government agencies.
Check out the NASA site for more info or hey look up the companies online. They probably have great press releases on their sites as well.
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1
SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/
Rocketplane-Kistler: http://www.kistleraerospace.com/
Yup. NASA has picked two companies to take over supplying the International Space Station (ISS) once the shuttle "fleet" (can you really call so few craft a fleet?) retires in 2010. Not too shabby that the companies will share a $500 million contract over five years as "seed money" for their troubles.
Oh yeah and a new acronym has joined the ranks of the oh-so-many out there: COTS. Stands for Commercial Orbital Transporation Services. Which apparently is a program now. In phase one of the COTS program the companies have to demonstrate four capabilities: unpressurized cargo delivery; pressurized cargo delivery; internal cargo delivery and return and an option for crew transportation (well, gee that would be helpful - hard to run the ISS without a crew after all).
The contract is to develop a cargo ship to serve the ISS and went to Space Exploration Technologies Corp (also known as SpaceX) and Rocketplane Kistler and the companies get to retain ownership of the craft, not NASA. You see Rockwell and friends didn't end up owning anything they developed over the years for NASA. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle craft had contractors to build them but NASA retained ownership. Adds an interesting spin I think.
NASA gets behind in paying the bills and the ship don't fly. Of course you have to keep the investors happy so maybe it will fly if the bills are past due but probably not for long. Businesses are much more picky about that sort of thing than government agencies.
Check out the NASA site for more info or hey look up the companies online. They probably have great press releases on their sites as well.
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1
SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/
Rocketplane-Kistler: http://www.kistleraerospace.com/
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