Updates NASA's CCDev-2 Program

[T.Neo]

will make Dragon the safest spacecraft in history

Isn't marketing awesome? :dry:

 

[Codz]

Isn't marketing awesome? :dry:

That is the problem I have with him. All he seems to be trying to do is sell his capsule.

 

[NovaSilisko]

Just add an asterisk at the end of it.

 

[Wood]

This should be starting in about 25 minutes.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will present a status of the Commercial Crew Program strategy via webcast on Tuesday, February 7, 2012. The Forum will be held at the Press Site at Kennedy Space Center from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

The Program Forum’s key topics will include:

•Information on the release of the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Announcement for Proposals (AFP)
◦Context and Scope of CCiCap
•An update on the Commercial Crew Program Strategy since the Decemember 20, 2011 Program Forum
◦Initial thoughts on Certification phase
•Short clarification question and answer session

Links to the webcast and the presentation.

 

[orb]

Parabolic Arc:

• Commercial Space Partners Complete 8 More Milestones:

  NASA PR — NASA’s industry partners continue to make good progress in maturing designs and development of their commercial crew transportation systems under CCDev2. During the past two months, eight milestones were completed by Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, Boeing, United Launch Alliance, Alliant Techsystems, Inc., and Excalibur Almaz, Inc. This brings the total number of completed milestones under CCDev2 to 34 of the 62 planned. Each of these milestone accomplishments brings the United States one step closer to ending the gap in America’s human access to space.
  
  Among the recent milestones was Sierra Nevada’s delivery of their Dream Chaser spacecraft Engineering Test Article (ETA) structure at their facility in Louisville, Colorado. The all-composite structure was designed by the Sierra Nevada team and built in collaboration with composite industry experts. When competed, the Dream Chaser ETA will be a full-scale prototype of the company’s planned orbital spacecraft. It will be used for several tests, including a free- flight test of the vehicle in the summer. These upcoming test milestones are critical to further understanding aerodynamic and control qualities to validate computer models used to finalize the design of the Dream Chaser.
  
  Another recent milestone was SpaceX’s “Crew Accommodation Concept Prototype and In-Situ 1” milestone. For this event, SpaceX completed prototypes of the Dragon spacecraft’s crew cabin, seats, and control panel layout. NASA astronauts participated in trial evaluations of the crew cabin and provided feedback to SpaceX. The data will be used to refine their prototype designs to improve usability, reduce the chance of human error, and improve functionality in preparation for a second astronaut evaluation trial scheduled later this year.
  
  A summary schedule showing all completed and planned CCDev2 milestones can be found at:
  
  http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/
  
  

  ​

  
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• Informal NASA Forums Foster Collaboration With Commercial Crew Partners:

  NASA PR — Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs) are informal forums where NASA and industry partners’ experts meet and discuss detailed topics in a collaborative fashion where a free exchange of ideas is encouraged. TIMs allow quick identification and resolution, at an engineer-to-engineer level, of technical questions that crop up as systems development activities progress.
  
  TIMs provide access to the vast knowledge and experience of NASA’s subject matter experts and is a valuable benefit to industry partners as they continue development of their cargo and crew transportation systems. These exchanges can help accelerate industry’s efforts by avoiding “re-inventing the wheel” as designs mature. Likewise, there has been a great deal of learning on the NASA side regarding industry’s new ways of doing business and implementing new practices as they produce safe, reliable, and cost- effective commercial space transportation systems.
  
  As SpaceX and Orbital Sciences progress toward their cargo demonstration flights to the ISS this year, TIMs continue to play a critical role in rapidly identifying, understanding, and mitigating issues associated with systems development and qualification, as well as ISS visiting vehicle interface and safety verification.
  
  TIMs are also proving beneficial under CCDev2. Several TIMs a month have been held, in areas such as launch abort, ground operations, testing, docking systems, and ISS requirements for crewed operations. NASA’s funded CCDev2 partners have recognized the value face-to-face interactions between experts provide, and they are taking advantage of the opportunities.
  
  “TIMs have been extremely valuable during our CCDev2 effort and are perhaps the most productive technical interchanges between SpaceX and NASA,” states SpaceX’s CCDev2 Manager, Garrett Reisman.
  
  Blue Origin has participated in a number of TIMs recently on topics such as rendezvous and docking, Space Shuttle Main Engine lessons learned, power, and life support systems.
  
  “We’ve found it very valuable to have direct interactions with the NASA personnel who have learned these important lessons from hands-on experience,” said Blue Origin’s Bretton Alexander. “It is much harder to incorporate the lessons learned from 50 years of spaceflight if you’re just reading technical reports.”
  
  NASA’s unfunded CCDev2 partners are also utilizing TIMs to further their efforts.
  
  “Being able to pull from some of NASA’s best talent has furthered our progress on the Liberty Transportation System,” said Kent Rominger, ATK VP and program manager for Liberty. NASA’s other unfunded rocket developer, United Launch Alliance (ULA), is also active in TIMs with NASA personnel.
  
  “ULA and NASA partnering in a Commercial environment is very effective,” says Michael Holguin, ULA’s CCDev program manager. “TIM’s provide ULA the opportunity to use NASA team members as human space flight subject matter experts.“
  
  As NASA and our industry partners continue to work together to develop new cargo and future crew transportation systems, TIMs will continue to play a critical role ensuring our future in space.
  
  {...}

 

[orb]

 

[MattBaker]

Commercials with epic music while cutting the budget of your "product", that's a paddling!

 

[orb]

Parabolic Arc: Commercial Crew Officials Respond to Congressional Safety Concerns

 

[orb]

Parabolic Arc: NASA’s Latest Commercial Crew Update:

NASA PR — Steady progress continues for industry partners in maturing their commercial crew transportation systems. Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK) completed milestones over the past two months while SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Excalibur Almaz Incorporated prepared for future milestones to get them closer to fielding operational crew transportation systems. The recently completed milestones bring the total number of completed milestones to 38 of the 62 planned for Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) activities.

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[orb]

Parabolic Arc: NASA Tranferring Expertise, Knowledge to Private Commercial Crew Companies:

NASA PR — A critical element of NASA’s support to our CCDev2 partners is the exchange of knowledge and experiences NASA has gained over our 50-year history of human spaceflight. One the way we transfer knowledge and experiences is though the distribution of current and historical technical products.

For CCDev2, NASA has received nearly 500 requests from our partners for NASA products, including design, manufacturing, test and evaluation, and operations information they wish to use to help mature their crew transportation systems. The most requested documents, to date, are the ISS Cargo Transport Interface Requirements Document and International Docking System Standard (IDSS) Pass-Through Requirement. Both documents are needed to understand the interfaces needed to successfully dock to the ISS.

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[orb]

Parabolic Arc:

• House to NASA: Down Select to Single Commercial Crew Competitor Immediately:

  The FY13 Commerce, Justice, and Science Draft Committee Report [PDF] says that NASA should immediately down select to a single competitor in the commercial crew program to save money and time in fielding a shuttle replacement:

  “The Committee believes that many of these concerns would be addressed by an immediate downselect to a single competitor or, at most, the execution of a leader-follower paradigm in which NASA makes one large award to a main commercial partner and a second small award to a back-up partner.”​

  In short, the committee believes the commercial crew program is too expensive and will take too long. Legislators also do not believe there is a market for more than one crew provider and that the program risks becoming another Solyndra. So, they want commercial crew to look as much like a traditional NASA procurement, with one provider and procurement under traditional Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).
  
  {...}

  
  
• CSF Criticizes House’s Effort to “Reconfigure” Commercial Crew Program:

  The Commercial Spaceflight Federation today hit back at a House plan to strictly limit the way that NASA can conduct its commercial crew program. CSF released the following statement from President Michael Lopez-Alegria:

  “The funding level provided in the draft Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill produced by the House Appropriations Committee represents a commitment to the Commercial Crew Program that is greatly appreciated by the industry,” said Commercial Spaceflight Federation President Michael Lopez-Alegria. “As important, however, is preserving competition in the program, as the vehicles are not sufficiently mature to enable NASA to confidently select a single vehicle at this time. The next phase of the program should also maintain the use of Space Act Agreements, which require meaningful investment by the competing companies to augment NASA funding. NASA does plan to move to FAR-based contracts at the appropriate time prior to certifying any provider to carry crew. We believe NASA has carefully designed a program that maintains competition, and preserves safety, through the development and certification process, and that uses the appropriate contracting mechanism at each stage. It is best to leave decisions on program management to the NASA human spaceflight professionals who have access to all the information and have worked closely with all the competing companies. If the language in the report were applied to the current round of competition, it would result in a significant delay in restoring U.S. human access to orbit.”​

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[orb]

Parabolic Arc:

• Blue Origin Completes Wind Tunnel Tests on Orbital Vehicle:

  KENT, Wash. (Blue Origin PR) – Blue Origin successfully tested the design of its next-generation Space Vehicle, completing a series of wind tunnel tests to refine the aerodynamic characteristics of the spacecraft’s unique biconic shape. The tests were carried out as part of Blue Origin’s partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the agency’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. Blue Origin is designing the Space Vehicle to provide safe, affordable transport of up to seven astronauts to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station.
  
  {...}

  
  
• SNC Highlights Support of NASA JSC for Dream Chaser

 

[NovaSilisko]

House to NASA: Down Select to Single Commercial Crew Competitor Immediately

>Attempt to eliminate competition
>Expect things to go well

God dammit.

 

[Urwumpe]

>Attempt to eliminate competition
>Expect things to go well

God dammit.

Always the same with this Grand Old Communist Party.

 

[orb]

Parabolic Arc: SNC Completes Wind Tunnel Testing on Dream Chaser:

Sparks, NV – April 24, 2012 – Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems has successfully completed wind tunnel testing of a scale model of the Dream Chaser® orbital crew vehicle in the Oran W. Nicks Low Speed Wind Tunnel at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Aerodynamic data generated from this testing, coupled with data from computer simulations, will define the characteristics of the Dream Chaser® lifting body vehicle during the approach and landing phase of flight. This information will assist engineers in preparing for the Dream Chaser®vehicle’s first free flight test scheduled for the third quarter of this year.

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[orb]

Parabolic Arc: ORBITEC, SNC Begin Tests of Dream Chaser Life Support, Thermal Systems:

Madison, WI (ORBITEC PR) – Orbital Technologies Corporation (ORBITEC) is the prime contractor for Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) and Thermal Control System (TCS) for the Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) Dream Chaser® Space System. ORBITEC has, along with its partner Hamilton Sundstrand, successfully completed two major tests for SNC under NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) Program. The tests include the first integrated system testing and first integrated human testing of ECLSS and TCS components developed for the Dream Chaser®, SNC’s reusable orbital crew vehicle, intended to carry astronauts to and from low Earth orbit.

{...}

The SNC Dream Chaser® testing was completed at ORBITEC facilities in Madison, WI with assistance from the Hamilton Sundstrand office in Connecticut and Texas. Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, said, “SNC is proud to partner with the leaders in crew support systems to bring known hardware to the Dream Chaser® and assist in the creation and retention of high value jobs in Wisconsin, Connecticut and Texas.”

All tests were completed in an environmental chamber representative of the Dream Chaser® containing a majority of the ECLSS and TCS subsystems that will ultimately be located inside the spacecraft. Successfully completing the integrated hardware testing advanced and matured the ECLSS and TCS architectures and the integrated Dream Chaser® configuration.

{...}

 

[RGClark]

Parabolic Arc:

• House to NASA: Down Select to Single Commercial Crew Competitor Immediately:
  
  
• CSF Criticizes House’s Effort to “Reconfigure” Commercial Crew Program:

It seems the closer we are getting to successful commercial space flight the more hysterical becomes the opposition.
Let's hope the SpaceX Dragon successful launch and docking with the ISS can provide ammunition for the other side.


Bob Clark

---------- Post added at 03:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:02 AM ----------

Parabolic Arc: NASA’s Latest Commercial Crew Update:

​

Thanks for that. What the opponents of commercial spaceflight have to grasp is that supporting multiple entrants in the market for producing spacecraft increases the US space industry not decreases it.


Bob Clark

 

[orb]

Parabolic Arc: MDA to Develop Communications Concept for SNC’s Dream Chaser:

Richmond, B.C. (MDA PR) – MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (TSX: MDA), a provider of essential information solutions, announced today that it has signed a contract with Sierra Nevada Corporation to provide an engineering concept for a communications solution for the ongoing phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program. This program aims at developing a reusable spacecraft to transport crew and critical cargo to the International Space Station and then return to Earth.

If successful, this work could form the basis for an operational communications solution to be incorporated into the future reusable crew transportation spacecraft.

{...}

 

[orb]

NASA:

• NASA's Commercial Crew Partner Boeing Completes Parachute Test
  
  
• RELEASE : 12-147 - NASA's Commercial Crew Partner Boeing Completes Parachute Test

 

[orb]

SPACE.com: Secretive Blue Origin Reveals New Details of Spacecraft Plans