Comments on: Assessing the CCDev-2 losers

By: Orbital may wind down its commercial crew effort « NewSpace Journal

Orbital may wind down its commercial crew effort « NewSpace Journal — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:17:48 +0000

[…] Orbital Sciences was one of the companies that submitted CCDev-2 proposals but did not get funded, raising the question of whether they will stay involved in the larger commercial crew effort. On Thursday, company officials indicated they would likely not pursue further work in this […]

By: Paradox Olbers

Paradox Olbers — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 22:06:11 +0000

An additional factor might be how long will the Emergency Detection System [not to be confused with the same acronym for the Earth Departure Stage] take to build? Less time, I bet, than the crew-carrying capsules and spaceplanes.

Also, here’s wikipedia reminding me that LockMart got CCDEV1 money:
“On February 2, 2010 NASA awarded[11] ULA $6.7 million in stimulus funds under the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. A Space Act agreement was set up to develop an Emergency Detection System (EDS) that could be used on both EELVs. An EDS monitors critical launch vehicle and spacecraft systems and issues status, warning and abort commands to the crew during their mission to low Earth orbit.”

So how did the round1 money for EDS get used? How much much more is needed? Will work be suspended until CCDEV3?

Paradox Olbers
International Spaceflight Museum,
SciLands, Second Life

By: Coastal Ron

Coastal Ron — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:24:52 +0000

There may be some calculated risks that NASA is taking regarding funding for ULA, but with so little money for CCDev-2, it may be necessary.

What I’m thinking is that part of the reason some in Congress are skeptical about commercial crew options is that there isn’t much to see yet, at least beyond the SpaceX Dragon.

What NASA may be doing is getting the spacecraft development going fast enough that it will be clear that all that is needed for a redundant commercial crew system is to fund the safety improvements for the Atlas V, which everyone would have to admit is a pretty low risk task.

You would even think that Shelby would listen to his ULA constituents and agree to push for the funding, since ULA (aka Boeing & Lockheed Martin) will be able to show that there is lots of commercial business waiting for Atlas V rockets to be built in Decatur Alabama. If Shelby wants it, then everyone else will likely fall in line too.

That’s what I’m thinking.