Today’s Orlando Sentinel features an op-ed on China’s space program by Vincent Sabathier and G. Ryan Faith of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In the essay, they argue that the US would be better served by cooperating with China’s space program, rather than competing with it. The ISS, they believe, could provide an opening for such cooperation, for practical as well as political purposes:
Much as Russian participation in the international space station was preceded by the famous Apollo-Soyuz mission during the Cold War, Chinese participation in the international space station can be a precursor for cooperation in decades to come. More practically, after the space shuttle is retired in 2010 the United States will not have a manned-spaceflight capability for as long as four years. Under current plans, during this gap there will be only one way to get to and from the international space station — via the Russian Soyuz. Having another backup such as the Chinese Shenzhou will be critical to the safety of the international-space-station crew. By the time the shuttle is retired, China will certainly have the ability to provide this backup to the Soyuz until the new U.S. vehicle is ready for flight.
The gentlemen who wrote this piece seem to have forgotten or are not aware to begin with of the COTS program, designed to encourage the development of private space craft. I would far rather have astronauts ride commercial space ships to ISS than have to partner up with the fascists in Beijing.
I agree with pushing private launch capabilities.
However, the facists are leading a country of avid capitalists. When the two come to loggerheads, my money’s on the capitalists. Alienating the capitalists to spite the facists is not in our long term best interests, space or otherwise.
How about accelerate the fielding of the spam in the can CEV rather than pay the Chinese to transport Americans? Seems kind of stupid of America to pay the Chinese to transport American’s when we need that money for underfunded American science and engineering. Fact is America could field the CEV in 2010 or 2011 if we had the will to do it. Russia knows that. China knows that. I expect all of our “partners” will drive increasingly hard financial deals with us during the Shuttle-CEV hiatus.
“The gentlemen who wrote this piece seem to have forgotten or are not aware to begin with of the COTS program, designed to encourage the development of private space craft.”
Emphasis on “encourage”. What are the odds that COTS will lead to a commercial passenger orbital spacecraft by the time the shuttle is retired in 2010? Or, rather, one that NASA is willing to purchase flights on? The former is pretty low; the latter, almost zero. Maybe some day, but 2010 seems way too early.
That’s not to say NASA should jump into bed with the Chinese (although hopefully, if they do, they’re not so dumb as to actually pay China anything for the priviledge.) But while we deplore the “fascists in Beijing”, let’s not forget that our partners in Russia aren’t exactly the shining beacon of freedom and democracy…
If anybody really cares about the gap between CEV and Shuttle, the best way to solve the problem — strategically, politically, and economically for the U.S. — is to increase the COTS budget and purchase more potential solutions.
If NASA throws additional billions at the ESAS, it is lost in the noise of that giant sucking sound called the U.S. military industrial complex. We are so used to spending a billion here and a billion there on NASA’s government designed systems, that we no longer even think much about it. (Are we the frog that is being boiled alive in water?)
But an additional $1 Billion added to COTS would triple the number of COTS winners, and would SIGNIFICANTLY increase the probability of success. If COTS succeeds, it will change EVERYTHING.
$500M will probably only buy 2 COTS winners. $1.5 Billion will probably buy 6 winners.
If NASA picks 2 high-risk winners, there is a good chance the program will fail. If NASA picks 6 winners, even if they are high risk there is a good chance the program will succeed.
It is called “diversification”. It is what high-risk investors do all the time.
Rumors are coming out of NASA that they have received more good proposals than they expected. Why not do them all?
Since NASA is spending BILLIONS on everything else, why not spend it on the most important strategic initiative they have?
– COTS Advocate
Since NASA is spending BILLIONS on everything else, why not spend it on the most important strategic initiative they have?
Because NASA’s job is space exploration not subsidizing new launcher developments.
Cyclops,
You are not only wrong. You also miss the point — COTS is the one new NASA initiative that might totally change the economics of the VSE. COTS is the one new NASA initiative that might end the cycle of one huge cost overrun after another.
The White House and the President understood this. White House policy puts “economic interests” on equal footing with “science”. There is all this talk about science at NASA, and in the media, but very little talk about how we execute on the “economic interests” of the U.S.
According to the President of the United States (NASA’s boss), the purpose of the Vision for Space Exploration is pretty clear. You just need to read http://www.whitehouse.gov/space/renewed_spirit.html. Emphasis added by me.
“A RENEWED SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY
…
Goals and Objectives
The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and ECONOMIC interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:
* Implement a sustained and AFFORDABLE human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond;
* Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
* Develop the INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES, knowledge, and INFRASTRUCTURE both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
* Promote international and COMMERCIAL participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and ECONOMIC interests.”
I believe that “the Whitehouse and [particularly] the President” understand very little about the real world. However, I emphatically agree with everything else COTSadvocate says. This is NASA’s single most important program. It should get far greater funding — perhaps the Air Force could throw in a bit of what they’re paying Boeing and Locheed Martin to create an insanely stupid launch vehicle monopoly. Perhaps NASA could throw in a bit of the $5 billion a year they’re paying to fail to fly the Shuttle.
— Donald
I don’t think NASA should get more money for COTS. The point of the program is for private companies to develop their own systems, then charge NASA for their services. What should not be done is what has been done in the past: Pick a contractor, pay it money (then more money when the budget is blown), then pay for the the launch services. If NASA does go that route then it should just eliminate the COTS program and go directly to Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
Getting back to the China/U.S. cooperation. Sure, cooperation is a good thing and should be supported. However, it is not CRITICAL that China join the ISS program. The back-up right now for the shuttle is the Russian Soyuz. As for gaps in the manned space program we’ve already gone past the 3 year mark (excluding, of course, July 2005 flight, but essentially in terms of continual operations, 3 years). The shuttle/CEV gap is currently at 4 years and will probably be more (just like Skylab/Apollo and Shuttle). So what. The world won’t come to an end.
COTSadvocate passes on an interesting rumor — that NASA has received more credible proposals than they expected. It is hard to have an opinion about this, without reviewing the proposals. Docking/berthing to the ISS is a “non-trivial” exercise. If it was easy, it would have been done much more often. So I am far from being convinced.
But if Mike Griffin was convinced, and said as much, I would trust him. And Griffin obviously has access to the information from the proposals to make this judgement.
That said, I do have to challenge “i_s_s_alpha”s statement about going directly to Boeing and Lockheed. He misses the point.
Boeing and Lockheed are being given an opportunity to bid under these Firm-Fixed-Price contracts. If they don’t bid, that is their choice. Such a result would mean that Boeing and Lockheed can’t accept the risk involved in FFP bids for this work. (It is also part of what Griffin means by “putting skin in the game”. Part of “skin in the game” means accepting more risk.)
Also, nobody in COTS is going to be allowed to blow the budget, and then get paid more money. That is what FFP means. It is a fundamental part of the COTS approach.
In fact, if you are worried about a COTS winner “blowing the budget” and then asking for more money, that argues for COTSadvocates approach. More COTS winners solves this problem, as it creates competition, reducing NASA’s dependence on any single winner. (More competition also has other positive effects, such as better prices and higher quality services to NASA, over the long-term.)
As such, there is no need to go back to cost-plus (government takes all the risk) only-big-aerospace-companies-need-apply approaches, as suggested by i_s_s_alpha.
This all ASSUMES there are more credible COTS teams than NASA expected. (Which I am skeptical about.) Maybe there are enough credible proposals to justify 3 or even 4 winners. But 6??? That is hard to believe.
– Al
Again, not to stray off the China/U.S. cooperation topic, but . . . .
The following is a list I have compiled of companies that have announced COTS proposal submissions:
SpaceX has their Dragon spacecraft/Falcon 9 system. Dragon being based on the old Corona capsule design. The Falcon 9 (or even the Falcon 1) have yet to successfully.
t/Space has their CXV/QuickReach 2 system. The CXV is also based on the Corona capsule design. The QuickReach 2 launcher is suppose to evolve from the QuickReach launcher (which itself is still in the development stage).
SpaceHAB submitted their APEX/”several families of
launch vehicles” system.
Venturer Aerospace submitted their S-550/”existing launch vehicles like Falcon 5 and Falcon 9″ system.
Rocketplane Limited stated they would submit Kistler Aerospace’s K-1 cargo module/aerospace launch vehicle for COTS after they took over the company. The K-1 launch vehicle has remained 75% since around 2002 when Kistler filed for bankruptcy.
Andrews Aerospace once had listings on their website for their CLV concept and Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Microcosm, Coleman Aerospace, and HMX once submitted concepts for the old Alternate Access to Space Station (AAS) program (2000-2004). I don’t know if any of these were then resubmitted for COTS.
As I understand it, the fallback in case nothing comes out of the COTS program is to go with Japan’s HTV. There can be foreign companies involved as long as the final signatory on the agreement is a U.S. based entity. This leaves the door open for Russia and Europe.
Personally, I don’t think NASA should give more money to these companies just so they can make their systems work given where they are right now in their development.
The companies will have to develop:
a proven launcher capable of launching . . .
a proven transfer vehicle sufficient to carry the required logistics . . .
by automatic rendezvous and . . .
may be also capable of returning logistics to Earth and . . .
eventually and hopefully also transfer people to and from ISS.
I’m afraid that NASA will fall into “look we’re so close to making this work, all we need is more money” (even though its never flown)-type of situation.
i_s_s_alpha said: I’m afraid that NASA will fall into “look we’re so close to making this work, all we need is more money” (even though its never flown)-type of situation.
I can see why you are afraid about this, as anything is possible. I can even envision situations where it would be rational for NASA to agree to add more money to a COTS provider.
But we need to distinguish between the two acquisition philosophies.
In the “cost-plus” approach, the “all we need is more money” mentaility is designed in from Day 1. In fact, NASA’s history is to down select to ONE cost-plus contractor. Look at the CEV program — the downselect will happen in a few months. This eliminates the competition before the competition really even starts.
More competition is the market’s way to manage these issues.
In the “FFP OTA” approach, with multiple competitors, there is a very high risk that a company will go out of business if they adopt a strategy of saying “Sorry NASA, we failed. We are close, please give us more money.” If Company A asks for more money, and Company B completes the mission, NASA will say “Sorry” to Company A. Therefore the incentives are strongly correlated for the company(ies) to complete the mission within the budget provided.
COTSadvocate is recommending “more competition” as the solution. This makes sense IN THE CASE where there are “more credible proposals”.
As I said before, it is hard to have an opinion on this without seeing the proposals.
– Al
I believe you left out Kistler, which apparently is still in the running.
I agree with Al. I’d rather give money to a COTS proposer with a new idea who may waste the money, than to Boeing or Lockheed who already have rockets that can do the job for too much money and are guaranteed to waste the money. . . .
— Donald
I believe you left out Kistler, which apparently is still in the running.
No, he didn’t… Rocketplane bought Kistler and submitted the K-1 as their COTS entry.
Al Fansome said:
“In the “FFP OTA” approach, with multiple competitors, there is a very high risk that a company will go out of business if they adopt a strategy of saying “Sorry NASA, we failed. We are close, please give us more money.” If Company A asks for more money, and Company B completes the mission, NASA will say “Sorry” to Company A. Therefore the incentives are strongly correlated for the company(ies) to complete the mission within the budget provided.”
The only problem with that is that COTS is Winner Take All. NASA has to draw the line when it comes to how many companies it will fund to help them develop their own transfer vehicles. This is because the companies that do not get the COTS contract will be essentially wasted money.
This down-select will occur in May/June. Now the question is: how many companies will NASA fund? 3, 5, 10? I think it will be around 3-5. If its more than 5, and it needs more money, then its wasting this money. If its less than 5, then its limiting the type of competition that Al Fansome, rightly I might add, says will guarantee a top notch product.
Now let’s say NASA does pick 5 companies and by 2009-2010 it appears that only 1 or 2 of them will actually meet the high expectations of COTS. At that point we are reduced to the same old way of doing business. If that one company (or two) is close but not quite there yet, then the money will most likely come from NASA.
Based on the 48,700kg/yr up-mass/34,800kg/yr down-mass requirement from the 2003 AAS Design Reference Mission, NASA will have no choice. IT WILL NEED TO BE ABLE TO DELIVER LOGISITICS TO ISS NO MATTER WHAT. I can see in the end NASA maybe going with 1 or 2 companies for logistics services contracts by 2010 (if there are any capable of meeting the COTS timeline and requirements).
Based on the proposals of some of the companies I listed (straight to crew transfer vehicles), combined with the way some of the other companies do business (Boeing and Lockheed Martin with their spacecraft development timelines), I FEAR that NO ONE will be ready by 2010 and the money that went to COTS (no matter how much) will have been wasted.
Limiting the money going to COTS helps eliminate the minor players from the start. The danger, however, is that the field will be wittled down to only a few companies that, just like in the past, will have NASA wrapped around their little fingers.
Not limiting the money NASA spends on COTS helps prevents this, but then its extra money that would have been better spent elsewhere since in the end only 1-2 contracts will be handed out.
Everything will be okay if a good majority of companies funded by NASA are ready by 2010. Then, as stated before, the competition will produce the best product. Although, I am an optimist by heart, I really doubt this will be the case.
Again, sorry for posting about this topic on the U.S./China cooperation thread. Maybe we should move this elsewhere?
i_s_s_alpha said: “The only problem with that is that COTS is Winner Take All. NASA has to draw the line when it comes to how many companies it will fund to help them develop their own transfer vehicles. This is because the companies that do not get the COTS contract will be essentially wasted money.”
Does anybody find it interesting that somebody with the “title” of “i_s_s_alpha” is worried about NASA wasting money on a $500 MILLION program? How about the $10 BILLION and nearly 10 years that NASA wasted on Space Station “Freedom” before it decided to throw away the designs and start over? How about the cost overrun after cost overrun that the ISS encountered in the late 1990s and early 2000s (on top of the previous money that was thrown away) … which got so bad that Congress had to write a cost cap into law? How about the many billions more that NASA is all but guaranteed to throw at the CEV, as it comes in over budget because it will have one cost-plus contractor who has no competition and is explicitly incentivized to increase costs?
i_s_s_alpha also states that if a company loses during the services phase, that this is a waste. I disagree.
If more than 1 COTS competitor succeeds, that is much better than if only 1 succeeds for at least 3 reasons.
1) NASA will have competition for at least the first services contract.
2) NASA will be able to have competition for a much longer period, if NASA can put more than 1 company under contract during the services phase. (Some companies may need all the missions to justify their business case, but some do not.)
3) Even if 2 companies demonstrate a capability, but NASA can only afford 1 winner during the services phase, this is still better for America. The one company which loses will now have a proven space system which could be used for commercial markets. Maybe Bigelow will make use of the 2nd system. Just the fact that this company has a proven spaceflight system will be good for the U.S. economy. If you look at the history of the DoD, there were many spillover economic benefits from airplanes that were initiatlly developed for the DoD, which later lost the big follow-on DoD competition to build lots of planes, but were quite successful in commercial markets.
So classifying such a result as “a waste” is incorrect.
On how many winners there are likely to be — i_s_s_alpha suggests 3-5.
This is optimistic. SpaceX has already stated that their bid was over half the entire $500M COTS program budget. Since SpaceX already has $100-200M in the game, this suggests that SpaceX thinks it is pretty hard and expensive to rendezvous and dock/berth with the ISS. If Elon thinks this, maybe we ought to listen.
Therefore, I still think there will be 2 winners.
It is better to give two competitors adequate funds, than fund 3-5 competitors at “inadequate” levels. Which is why we need to increase the COTS budget, so that we can have more than 2 winners.
– COTSadvocate
“Again, sorry for posting about this topic on the U.S./China cooperation thread. Maybe we should move this elsewhere?”
Alpha,
Only Jeff Foust gets to start threads. If Jeff started a COTS related thread, we could move it. Anyways, this is on topic in that somebody suggested that we let China into the ISS program in order to provide competition (or backup) to the Soyuz and Progress.
I agree with Mark Whittington that if the problem we want to solve is the gap, that the most appropriate U.S. space policy response is COTS. (The absolute worse thing to do is to reward failure by extending the Shuttle program beyond 2010. At $4-5 Billion/year, imagine the innovation that much funding could produce in the commercial space industry.)
Since this is all “space politics” (and policy) related, and is a substantive discussion, I think this is fine. There is a comparatively high signal-to-noise ratio on this site, compared to others elsewhere, so I don’t have a problem working within the limits set by Jeff.
BTW, the high signal-to-noise ratio is a tribute to Jeff Foust, and to the posters, including you.
– Al
Al said:
“I agree with Mark Whittington that if the problem we want to solve is the gap, that the most appropriate U.S. space policy response is COTS.
(The absolute worse thing to do is to reward failure by extending the Shuttle program beyond 2010. At $4-5 Billion/year, imagine the innovation that much funding could produce in the commercial space industry.)”
To be honest, I think if the problem we want to solve is to cover the gap, then the best solution would be to simply go to Russia, Japan, and Europe. They already have or will have transfer vehicles. Those entities (RSC Energia, EADS, etc.) have already invested their own money into the development of their own launchers and transfer vehicles. If NASA went to them then all they would have to pay for is the service (just like COTS envisions).
NASA WILL NEED a logistics transfer capability after 2010 but is most likely unwilling to rely on foreign entities (powerful Senators just don’t like that).
COTS (and the old AAS program) is more of a ” battery jump start” program designed to ENCOURAGE the emergence of a privately owned commercial launch services industry BY US COMPANIES. It should not be a program that NASA will eventually WHOLLY (OR EVEN SIGNIFICANTLY) fund. The majority of the money should come from these companies (i.e. Space X).
If the COTS program is reduced to 1-2 companies only, and if by 2010 they are having problems, then the money will most definitely come from NASA because if it doesn’t and NO ONE is ready by 2010, then NASA won’t have a logistics transfer capability for ISS.
It will be a leverage point that these companies (who, by definition, will only be in it to maximize their profit and minimize their overhead) could successfully employ.
If this is the scenario that will most likely occur, then yeah, I honestly think NASA should go the route it has always gone and down-select to one (or two companies) from the start.
As for COTSAdvocate, who posted:
“Does anybody find it interesting that somebody with the “title” of “i_s_s_alpha” is worried about NASA wasting money on a $500 MILLION program? How about the $10 BILLION and nearly 10 years that NASA wasted on Space Station “Freedom” before it decided to throw away the designs and start over? How about the cost overrun after cost overrun that the ISS encountered in the late 1990s and early 2000s (on top of the previous money that was thrown away) …”
Well, my answer to that is, based on the history of ISS as I have seen it, the continuation of this trend is what I would most like to avoid, hence my staunch opposition to feeding more money into COTS.
Right now, COTS is set to receive $500 million. This doesn’t include the money for the actual logistics transfer contracts of post-2010. The AAS program in the end received around $78.5 million (although some of it went to the old OSP program).
More money would rapidly put this program into the “billions of dollars wasted” category which NASA is so famous for.
My big worry about COTS is that the two winners will be . . . wait for it . . . surprise! none other than Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
— Donald
i_s_s_alpha stated: “The AAS program in the end received around $78.5 million (although some of it went to the old OSP program).”
This number is misleading. Much more than “some” of that money went to OSP. In the end, NASA MSFC spent less than $20M on AAS.
There were 3 AAS rounds.
In what is called AAS Phase 0, a little less than $1 million was divided up among 4 emerging companies (Kistler, Microcosm, Andrews Space & Technology, and HMX), and about the same amount was divided up among Boeing, Lockheed and Orbital as extensions to their existing NASA launch services contracts.
In AAS Phase 1, 4 companies (Boeing, Lockheed, CSI, and Andrews Space & Technology) were awarded contracts totalling $10.8 million in July of 2002.
The original AAS plan was to downselect from these 4 companies, and award the winner about $300 million to deliver cargo to ISS. However, soon after the contractors began (in the Fall of 2002, NASA Code R decided to cancel the program, instead of carrying out the plan. The extra AAS funds which had been appropriated were redirected to other Code R priorities (such as the OSP).
In Spring 2003, an outside congressional expert witness testified before Congress that NASA’s decision to cancel AAS was a mistake. That person’s name was Mike Griffin.
In September of 2003, the 4 AAS companies were given contract extensions (AAS Phase 1A), totalling about $4 million, to look at developing the equivalent of a Shuttle recoverable downmass capability.
In January 2004, the AAS contracts were completed.
The death of AAS was short lived.
In early 2004, President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, which included a “Commercial Crew and Cargo” services program. This time the program was to be managed by Code M.
More importantly, i_s_s_alphas states “based on the history of ISS as I have seen it, the continuation of this trend is what I would most like to avoid, hence my staunch opposition to feeding more money into COTS.”
This is a completely illogical statement. To use the history of the ISS to attack COTS — which is a completely new way of doing business that is justified by NASA’s long track record on managing programs like ISS — is not reasonable.
If i_s_s_alpha really cares about NOT repeating the history of ISS, he should focus his attention on the CLV, CaLV, CEV, etc.
i_s_s_alpha … are you “staunchly opposed” to giving CLV, CaLV, and CEV more money? Should CLV get the extra $800M that was recently reported it will be getting because of cost overruns?
– COTSadvocate
COTSadvocate said
“i_s_s_alpha … are you “staunchly opposed” to giving CLV, CaLV, and CEV more money? Should CLV get the extra $800M that was recently reported it will be getting because of cost overruns?”
Yes to the first question and no to the second question.
We were discussing COTS not CLV, CEV, and CaLV.
Also, the breakdown for AAS was:
FY2001 $902,400.00
FY2002 $10,800,000.00
FY2003 $62,700,000.00
FY2004 extension $4,000,000.00
The “some money diverted for OSP” was actually two-thirds of the $62,700,000.00. I only said “some money” for the sake of brevity (not to be ambiguous or “misleading”).
“A new way of doing business” and NASA just don’t mix well in the end, in my opinion (even if it deemed necessary to avoid past performance).
For the record, I am a strong supporter of ISS (the engineering and design, politics, its Construction Assembly, and overall concept) but if you look at how much money has been put into it, WOW!
I really hope COTS is a success but only with NASA encouragement and not significant funding.