Godlike Productions - News: NASA Offers $175 Million For New Space Freight Partner

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

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NASA Offers $175 Million For New Space Freight Partner

Wired

2007-10-19

NASA officially severed its relationship with the struggling Rocketplane Kistler Thursday, and says it's now looking for another commercial space company to fund.

Rocketplane had been one of the winners of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Project (COTS) program, developed to find private-sector companies that might help ferry cargo to the International Space Station after the space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010. But the company failed to meet private funding deadlines in May, and was officially warned in September.

A company appeal earlier this month essentially blamed the private funding shortfall on NASA's own inconsistent policies. But, uh, apparently this turned out not to be the best strategy to take with someone giving you millions of dollars. NASA said Thursday it had "decided to terminate the Rocketplane Kistler agreement when, after careful consideration, (we) concluded that further efforts were not in the agency's best interest."

On the bright side, this leaves $174.7 million of Rocketplane's original $206.8 million still available for other companies who think they might be able to develop space cargo services for low earth orbit. The original COTS competition included six finalists, including Rocketplane and fellow winner SpaceX; I'd bet the other four, including Andrews Space, SpaceDev, SpaceHab (which is having financial problems of its own), and Transformational Space have been watching Rocketplane's problems closely enough that they'll have proposals ready to go.

According to NASA, a summary of the new competition requirements will be released on Friday, with a full announcement slated for Monday. Companies will have 30 days to respond, and NASA said it will pick a new winner by early next year.

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