In a possible blow to NASA’s own COTS program, the space agency is considering purchasing the Japanese HTV cargo freighter to aid in the resupply of the International Space Station, The Yomiuri Shimbun reports.
“The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration has begun unofficial negotiations with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on purchasing units of the H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV), an unmanned cargo transfer spacecraft developed in Japan, as the successor to its space shuttles, which are to retire in 2010, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Saturday.
“Behind the move is NASA’s concern that the retirement of its space shuttles will make it difficult for the United States to fulfill its responsibilities to deliver water, food and materials for scientific experiments to the International Space Station.”
Space X and Orbital Sciences Corporation are currently developing commercial ISS resupply vehicles under NASA’s COTS program. It’s possible that NASA’s efforts are part of a contingency plan to guard against delays in the COTS effort.
UPDATE: NASA has released a statement denying the story:
“Contrary to news reports, NASA has not officially or unofficially been discussing the purchase of H-II Transfer Vehicles (HTV) — uninhabited resupply cargo ships for the space station — from the Japanese Space Agency, or JAXA.
“NASA is committed to domestic commercial cargo resupply to the space station and does not plan to procure cargo delivery services from Japan. As part of our original agreements as compensation for common system operating costs NASA has limited cargo capability on the Japanese and European cargo vehicles. NASA has recently issued a request for proposal for the cargo needs of International Space Station beyond those supplied by our current international agreements. NASA has chosen to depend on commercial resupply of cargo delivery to the station.”
Spaceport plan ‘once in a lifetime’ for county
Carol Vaughn
The Daily Times
“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for the county,” said Accomack Economic Development Director Larry Forbes of the Orbital project, adding that county officials will do everything they can to maximize the economic opportunity it brings.
“Who knows where all this is going to go?” Forbes said, citing a June 6 report in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report that suggests NASA may be considering accelerating the crew transport portion of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.
After months of weighing competing bids, Orbital Science Corporation has decided to launch its new Taurus II rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia, instead of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Virginia Gov. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine made the announcement on Monday, ending months of uncertainty. The rocket will be launched from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport located at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
Orbital Sciences, based in Reston, Virginia, is developing the Taurus II rocket to deliver cargo to the International Space Station under NASA’s COTS program. It will serve as an alternative to the space shuttle, which is due to be retired in 2010.
NASA’s decision to award the COTS contract to Orbital set off a competition between the two American states, which are promoting rival launch facilities. The decision is a setback for Florida, which is hoping to attract commercial companies in order to offset job losses resulting from the space shuttle’s retirement.
Deal for resupply rockets seen as chance for Wallops Island site to take off
Virginia Pilot
Wallops Spaceport wins $45M project
The Daily Times
Orbital Sciences chooses VA over FLA
Orlando Sentinel
COTS Review In Final Stages
Jefferson Morris
Aviation Week & Space Technology
“NASA is in the final stages of vetting a review on the feasibility of accelerating the crew transport portion of its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, according to Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Rick Gilbrech.
“NASA is funding SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. to develop cargo capability for the International Space Station (ISS) under COTS, but so far has held off on greenlighting the crew transfer portion of the program, known as “COTS D.” Only SpaceX has been actively working on a COTS D concept, with Orbital focused exclusively on cargo at this point.”
VC Cash in Tow, Space Tourist Biz Moves Beyond Early Adopters
Glenn Reynolds
Popular Mechanics
“Space tourism has attracted over $1.2 billion in investment, mostly from individual “angel investors,” of which only about 25 percent has been spent. Revenues last year were $268 million, up from $175 million the year before.”
Space: Tourism May Hold Key To Making ‘Space Faring’ A Reality
Taylor Dinerman
Radio Free Europe
“More than 1,000 men and women from around the planet gathered in Washington, D.C., recently to explore the idea that the future of the human race is not confined to this world alone. They came together for the 27th-annual International Space Development Conference (ISDC), sponsored by the National Space Society (NSS).”
Incentive Prizes: Shooting for the Stars
Rachael King
Business Week
“Taking his cue from Lindbergh’s famous prize-winning moment, Peter Diamandis fulfilled his dream to send people into space through his X Prize. BusinessWeek.com writer Rachael King recently spoke with Peter Diamandis about incentive prizes and why they work.”
The Spaceports blog reports that Orbital Sciences Corporation is expected to make a decision this week on whether to fly its COTS rocket out of Virginia or Florida.
Both states have been heavily lobbying the Reston, Virginia-based company, which is developing commercial transportation to the International Space Station under the NASA program. The company will choose between the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island or Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Below is an excerpt from a GAO Report titled, “NASA: Challenges in Completing and Sustaining the International Space Station,” that was presented to Congress last week. The except offers a succinct explanation of NASA’s COTS program and the challenges it faces over the next few years. As you will see, GAO is not real optimistic…
“NASA is working with the commercial space sector through its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to develop and produce vehicles that can take equipment and crew to and from the space station. NASA expects that these vehicles will be ready for cargo use in 2010 and crew use in 2012. However, these vehicles have yet to be successfully launched into orbit, and some NASA officials have acknowledged that their development schedules leave little room for the unexpected.
“Under the COTS program, NASA has pledged $500 million to promote commercial opportunities for space transportation vehicles. Using Space Act agreements instead of traditional contracting mechanisms, NASA will make payments to companies based on the achievement of key milestones during the development of their vehicles. These agreements are both funded and unfunded. For the two funded agreements that have been reached, NASA stated that the commercial suppliers for space transportation services will have customers outside of ISS, including NASA’s Constellation program, which plans to send humans back to the moon and eventually Mars. The COTS program will occur in phases. In the first phase companies will demonstrate the vehicle launch and docking capabilities with the ISS. The second phase is the procurement of services for transportation of cargo and crew to the ISS, which is scheduled to begin sometime in the 2010 time frame.
Continue reading ‘Construction Ahead: Expect Delays’
Investors and would-be space tourists are getting antsy about the prospects of Rocketplane Global, the Oklahoma company that plans to launch suborbital flights in two to three years.
Eliza Strickland has an excellent story at Wired.com about the problems plaguing Rocketplane, which originally hoped to begin flying its business jet-style space plane last year. Some investors and customers are looking at other options.
Strickland believes the company made a mistake by trying to tackle both suborbital tourism while also developing an orbital vehicle under NASA’s COTS program. The space agency ended the $207 million agreement in September after Rocketplane failed to come up with private financing to supplement NASA’s funding.
Rocketplane is also suffering from a lack of billionaire investors, such as Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Microsoft’s Paul Allen. Virgin also has suffered years of delay, soaring costs, and a fatal explosion that killed three workers at spaceplane builder Scaled Composites. However, investors are still confident about Branson’s suborbital venture.
Former astronaut John Herrington resigned as Rocketplane’s chief test pilot in December. Earlier in the year, a travel company sued Rocketplane alleging the space firm was focusing on the COTS and had abandoned it space plane.
Spacehab, a Texas company that soared into orbit building habitable modules for the space shuttle’s cargo bay, has seen its fortunes fall back to Earth in recent years. Its shares closed Wednesday at 48 cents on NASDAQ.
On Monday, NASDAQ notified Spacehab that it faces being delisted from the exchange for failure to maintain the minimum $1.00 per share closing bid over the preceding 30 trading days. The company has until October 6, 2008, to demonstrate compliance with the standard.
In an SEC filing dated April 8, Spacehab said it “has not yet determined what action, if any, it will take in response to this letter, although the Company intends to monitor the closing bid price of its common stock between now and October 6, 2008, and to consider available options if its common stock does not trade at a level likely to result in the Company regaining compliance with The NASDAQ Stock Market minimum closing bid price requirement.”
Spacehab had been hoping to sell 55,000 shares of stock to investors in February. However, that sale was contingent upon winning a contract under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. That contract went to Orbital Science Corporation instead.
NASA is close to completing a study on how to speed up development of an orbital crew vehicle under its COTS program, according to testimony on Capitol Hill this week.
Richard Gilbrech, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, told Congressmen on Thursday that the agency is in the “final stages” of the study, Aviation Week reports. Under the COTS program, NASA is providing funding to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to developed cargo vehicles capable of supplying the International Space Station. SpaceX has committed to building both robotic and crewed versions of its Dragon spacecraft; Orbital Sciences is only focused on a cargo vehicle.
Speeding up COTS could help NASA fill a projected five-year gap between the end of space shuttle flights in 2010 and the first flight of its successor, Orion. Another option would be to increase funding for Orion and its Ares booster.
During the hearing, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher asked whether NASA was pursuing the one thing that could make all these issues moot: anti-gravity technology. The answer was “no.” The maverick California Republican has a history of intriguing statements: last year, he publicly questioned whether past temperature spikes had been caused by dinosaur flatulence.
One interesting bit of news that came out of the Space Access ‘08 conference in Phoenix involved efforts by Florida to lure Orbital Sciences’ COTS program away from Virginia.
NASA recently awarded the Dulles, Virginia-based company with a $170 million contract to develop commercial transport to the International Space Station under its COTS initiative. Orbital Sciences will operate out of Wallops Island on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Jim Muncy of PoliSpace told conference attendees that Florida is trying to convince Orbital to move the program south, according to an account of his talk on Rand Simberg’s Transterrestrial Musings blog.
“You should see the list of things that Orbital wants from Florida to get them to move there from Wallops,” Muncy is quoted as saying. Simberg’s post provides no elaboration.
Continue reading ‘Will Florida Lure Orbital’s COTS Program Away from Virginia?’