SFS News: NASA to Open New Competition for Space ...

Hello, Andy Hill,

I only had in mind to explain what I said. There are several strategic options Scaled have to do according to all their different contracts - with Virgin Galactic as well as with their t/Space-partners - and also to improve the chances that t/Space might win the new competition.

Regarding the $ 400 mio I have in mind to make more use of the data available under www.airlaunchllc.com.

I hope that t/Space will compete again and continue to look at them, at Scaled Composites and the others.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

NASA announced that it would re-compete the money from RpK in another competition. Has anyone seen anything giving what this new competition will be or whether the rules/delivery times have been modified for any of it?

Planetspace have announced they will compete for the new COTS competition in partnership with Lockheed and ATK.

http://www.planetspace.org/pdf/PressRelease112107.pdf

This partnership seems strange to me, what will planetspace bring to the partnership that either of the other 2 havent got already? New space kudos perhaps?

I would have thought that Lockheed would rather have teamed with SpaceDev and their Dreamchaser as it was announced a while back that they were working together on the possibility of launching it on Atlas.

In these things it's less a matter of which is the better design than who has the funding.
Evidently they think they're far enough along with their design to get it up and flying in time to replace the shuttle.
More importantly they have a bank.

This is interesting, NASA is talking about letting the phase 2 COTS contract before anyone has flown a demo flight.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/20 ... ctors.html

This would allow the supplier to start operating from July 2010, I would have thought that they could have waited until someone had flown a demo to the ISS, even if it had pushed out ISS service to 2011 or early 2012 even. They do have Russian Soyuz and Progress signed up so they can live with a small delay, we're not talking about the 6 years they are currently touting for Orion.

Hello, Andy Hill,

it might have to do with RpK's protest since they argued that NASA's policy to buy rusian launches to be able to get to the ISS was one of the main reasons investors didn't fund RpK's K1.

Beyond that it would be interesting if one of the companies the article talks about was t/Space because t/Space have said that they will go for private money after NASA cancelled the fly-offs for the selection of the developer of the CEV.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)