Comments on: NASA plans to announce commercial crew awards next month

By: Fred Willett

Fred Willett — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 01:09:53 +0000

This round of funding for CCiCap is going to take the contestants through to 2014.
Depending on how close to completion of actual flight vehicles they get another round of SAAs may be required.
However by 2015 NASA will have had to issue a FAR contract (or contracts) for actual crew delivery starting in 2017 else there won’t be time to build the contracted vehicles.
Sorta like CRS was awarded before the end of COTS. SpaceX is just winding up COTS now. (Orbital still has a way to go) but SpaceX has already got the first CRS Falcon 9 at SLC 40.

By: yg1968

yg1968 — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:40:46 +0000

NASA keeps saying that there there will not be a downselect. But all this means is that it is a new competition and new entrants can enter the competition at any point in time. What isn’t yet clear is what will be the phase after CCiCap? Will it be a certification phase that includes test flights or not?

By: Space Politics » Briefly: Hutchison’s goals, lobbying for GEMS, and possible confusion over an FAA/NASA MOU

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:31:18 +0000

[…] Monday the FAA and NASA announced a memorandum of understanding about how the two agencies will cooperate on regulation and oversight …. The contents of the MOU were not that surprising, and most of the news came from the comments that […]