The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) believes that NASA’s commercial crew program is at risk from inadequate funding and the space agency’s decision budget-based decision to use less intrusive Space Act Agreements (SAA) to oversee the work of developing vehicles to replace the retired space shuttle.
“It appears to the ASAP that the fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding level approved by Congress, which was less than half of what was requested by the Administration, will not allow commercial crew transportation to the ISS by 2016,” ASAP said in its annual report released this week. “In fact, if the new funding level continues into the future, it is the ASAP’s belief that the program is in jeopardy, thus extending the current lack of a U.S. human spaceflight capability and resulting in no alternative to reliance on Russia to obtain access to the ISS.”
After Congress provided less money for the program than requested, NASA decided to continuing using SAAs, reversing an earlier decision to use the more rigorous Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)-based contracting approach. Space agency officials said it was the only way they could fund multiple vehicles.
“We believe that the sudden change in acquisition strategy in an effort to salvage the CCP may have significantly increased the risk to safety that the previous plan had begun to address,” ASAP said. “The lack of the ability to incorporate firm safety requirements using an SAA procurement exposes NASA to new risks if, at the conclusion of the developmental phase, the proposed designs do not meet minimum safety requirements. In that event, NASA will have to either (1) expend additional time and money having the designs modified and retested or (2) accept the risk associated with flying its astronauts on systems that do not meet the currently articulated minimum safety requirements….
“If NASA is deciding to take on more risk because the cost is otherwise prohibitive, then the Agency should be clear about that increased level of risk acceptance and develop approaches to manage that risk,” the panel added. “While it is possible that NASA can find a way to accomplish the assigned mission with the available budget, at this point in time the Panel has serious concerns about the likelihood of such an outcome. The ASAP plans to closely examine the SAA approach in 2012 and will be most interested in the plan for transitioning the designs into certified systems before their use as crew transport.”
Read the full report here.