Space Act Agreement
| NASA Commercial Crew and Cargo | |
|---|---|
| Initiative | Period |
| | |
| Development | |
| Commercial Cargo Development | 2006 - 2013 |
| Commercial Space Transportation Capabilities | 2007 - 2010 |
| Commercial Crew Development (phase 1) | 2010 - 2011 |
| Commercial Crew Development (phase 2) | 2011 - 2012 |
| Commercial Crew integrated Capability (phase 3) (base period milestones) | 2012 - 2014 |
| Commercial Crew integrated Capability (phase 4) (optional period milestones) | 2014 - 2017 |
| Certification | |
| Certification Products Contract (crew) | 2012 - 2014 |
| Commercial Crew Transportation Capability | 2014 - 2017 |
| Services | |
| Commercial Resupply Services (cargo) | 2011 - 2016 |
| ISS Crew Transportation Services (crew) | 2017 - |
| | |
| NASA's COTS program Private spaceflight companies | |
Space Act Agreement is a type of legal agreement specified in the National Aeronautics and Space Act that established NASA. Agreements of this type have been reached under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) and Commercial Crew Development (CCDev). They are not subject to normal Federal Acquisition Regulations.
Besides these two initiatives NASA has concluded five other agreements in the Commercial Space Transportation Capabilities (CSTC).
Commercial Space Transportation Capabilities
Five agreements were signed between January 2007 and June 2007:[1]
- Planetspace for their Silver Dart lifting body launched by Canadian Arrow rocket[2]
- tSpace for their Crew Transfer Vehicle (CXV) capsule launched from the now defunct AirLaunch LLC system[3]
- Spacehab for their ARCTUS cargo delivery vehicle for the ISS that is based on existing US hardware[4]
- SpaceDev for their Dream Chaser lifting body spaceplane[5][6]
- Constellation Services International for their cargo delivery vehicle for the ISS that is based on existing Russian hardware[7]
All three of the Space Act Agreement initiatives, COTS, CSTC and CCDev are for development, engineering and testing of design concepts, but CSTC is different from the other two initiatives in no providing any funding. CSTC agreements are only instruments committing NASA to increase cooperation and to support the private sector companies with information and other facilities, but this commitment is without financial implications and both sides (NASA and the private companies) should ensure by themselves the required funds for their respective parts of the activities.[8]
Results
Four of the cooperation agreements signed are for a period of maximum 3 years[2][3][4][7][9] which have lapsed in 2010. In the fifth one, that of SpaceDev, the period is censored.[5]
So far NASA has published a list of accomplished progress milestones only for SpaceDev,[6] and the same Dream Chaser spacecraft is also one of the winners (albeit with different milestones) of CCDev rounds 1[10] and 2.[11]
References
- ↑ Commercial Space Transportation Capabilities Agreements
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Planetspace Space Act
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 tSpace Space Act
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Spacehab Space Act
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 SpaceDev Space Act
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 SpaceDev progress with Space Act milestones
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Constellation Services International Space Act
- ↑ Space Act Agreements Guide 2008: Under a nonreimbursable agreement, each party assumes responsibility for its own costs.
- ↑ "shall remain in effect until the completion of all obligations of both parties hereto, or 3 years from the date of the last signature, whichever comes first."
- ↑ CCDev1 - Dream Chaser
- ↑ Morring, Frank, Jr. (2011-04-22). "Five Vehicles Vie To Succeed Space Shuttle". Aviation Week. Retrieved 2011-02-23.
the CCDev-2 awards, ... went to Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX).