When it comes to space policy in Congress, you rarely hear the name of Senator Chris Dodd. However, when a business in his home state is involved, the Connecticut Democrat spring into action. Dodd’s office issued a press release calling for “fairness” in the upcoming recompete of a spacesuit contract that involved Connecticut company Hamilton Sundstrand. In June NASA awarded a contract for the Constellation Space Suit System to Oceaneering International, beating out a rival bid from Exploration Systems and Technology, a joint venture between Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC Dover, who had been making spacesuits for NASA for decades. The losers filed a protest with the GAO, but before that protest review was completed NASA terminated the Oceaneering contract, citing only “a compliance issue”.
Dodd’s release included the full text of a letter he sent to NASA administration Mike Griffin, outlining his concerns with the original procurement, including a potential conflict of interest involving one member of the review board for the contract. In the press release portion of the statement, Dodd states that he is “convinced that Hamilton Sundstrand can win this competition fair and square and will continue manufacturing the suits that protect America’s astronauts for years to come.”
Ironically, while Hamilton Sundstrand is based in Connecticut, so is one of the subcontractors to Oceaneering: Air-Lock, Inc., in Milton, CT.
the JSC engineers working on the next-gem suit were as upset about the Spacesuit award as was Senator Dodd, feeling that it made 0, zero sense to award a company that had neither built a spacesuit before nor handled a gov’t contract of such a size. A very big gamble by NASA.
Oceaneering makes hard deep sea diving suits and had a experienced spacesuit subcontractor in David Clark.
Senator Dodd’s manipulating of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac for his own gain should land him in the Federal Pen. His letter to the administrator is typical hot air from a guy used to pushing people around.
And Oceaneering can engineer a suit with as much or better vision of the future with a helluva lot less arrogance than HamSund.