Talk:Development of the Commercial Crew Program/Archive 1

Archive 1

Full citation needed

A full citation for use of WK2 can be found in the video. I don't know the correct wiki syntax for this, can someone else add it? Martijn Meijering (talk) 13:46, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I'll be glad to help. But I'm quite a bit more motivated to "teach a man how to fish..." rather than just "feed him with fish...". Are you interested in learning? _{(I would also be glad to help you with the new (totally unsourced) article you recently created at Prometheus (spacecraft). Nowadays, unsourced newly-created articles are being deleted rather rapidly.)}

Cheers. N2e (talk) 14:33, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. Martijn Meijering (talk) 14:50, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, we're on. I going off wiki for a while but will add a full citation sometime later today, as an example for you on this article. Then I'll add other thoughts and ongoing discussion on citing and sourcing on you Talk page. Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:12, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I added the critical citation metadata, so it is now a full citation. N2e (talk) 19:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I misunderstood what you meant by full citation, I thought you wanted a literal quote to put in the footnote. Is there an easy way to find all the relevant fields? I know url and title are required, so I always add them when I add a link. Martijn Meijering (talk) 20:51, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Whoa. I just now saw this nested comment (above, by Mmeijeri at 20:51). I had missed it when I wrote below (N2e at 21:48 UTC). The answer is that I just wrote a long intro about citations on your help page. Let's continue the general citation assistance discussion over their. N2e (talk) 23:27, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

By the way, where in the text or the video does it mention that WK2 will be used? I didn't find it in the text, and was doing several things at once while listening to the video (so might have missed it). IF the claim is supported by the video, I would like to add an additional element to the citation.

It's 0:18 into the video. "Behind me is the Dream Chaser. It's the core structure that will become an atmospheric flight test vehicle in 2012 for drop tests. We're gonna take it up on the Virgin Galactic White Knight 2, the big airplane, that's gonna carry it underneath, drop it, and we'll do approach and landing tests, much like what was done for the Space Shuttle before it flew into space." I also saw a newspaper report that named May 2012 as a target date. Martijn Meijering (talk) 20:51, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Super! I'll fix the citation. I thought I had seen or heard it in the source when I checked it out yesterday, but I sure missed it today looking the second time. Oh the problems of multitasking. :-)> N2e (talk) 21:48, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

CCDev phase 2

As the time nears for the expected NASA announcement this month, Cosmic Log has just published an article that lists "at least eight companies" who have submitted proposals to NASA. The Wikipedia article currently, as of 2011-03-07, also lists eight companies, with citations for each. The two lists are not identical, so the article can/should likely be expanded a bit to pick up Excalibur Almaz and Blue Origin, who are mentioned on the Cosmic Log list but not yet in the WP article section covering CCDev 2. N2e (talk) 06:01, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Another editor has helpfully added the Blue Origin and Excalibur Almaz info to the CCDev 2 section. N2e (talk) 18:08, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

CCDev phase 2 awarding decision delay: waiting on the US Congress

Apparently, the CCDev phase 2 awards, expected in March, are now on hold at NASA, awaiting Congressional action on NASA funding. See NASA mulls commercial space plan on Cosmic Log. "but Bolden ... suggested that the payout depended on whether Congress approved a spending plan that provided $312 million for the program, which would cover the awards as well as administrative costs." Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:37, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

CCDev1 candidates

Currently we have the CCDev1 winners, CCDev2 candidates (some of these will become CCDev2 winners when this round is awarded). But we are missing information on the CCDev1 candidates. Could someone add these? Alinor (talk) 12:54, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. I'd like to see the article improved in this way too, but I have not yet found any sources to detail it for us. I have however added quite a bit to the CCDev1 section of the article to indicate current status. N2e (talk) 13:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I have seen somewhere a list of the CCDev1 candidates, but I have to look for it.

While we are at this - table here lists only Orbital and SpaceX as COTS winners, but in fact initially one of them was not selected and Rocketplane Kisler was selected instead. Later it didn't fulfill the requirements and its contract was terminated and re-tendered and the second one of these (Orbital and SpaceX) won. Or at least this is the story I remember - anyway, the article is vague about this and should be updated with the correct chronology of evenets. Update: Cygnus (spacecraft) article already includes explanation and sources - Kisler and SpaceX won the first contracts, Kisler later failed and Orbital got the remaining amount. Alinor (talk) 05:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

At Space Act Agreement we should add short descriptions of the projects of Planetspace, tSpace, Spacehab, SpaceDev, CSI [1] - see [2]. Maybe this is suitable place also for this (one more SpaceDev contract listed as "other partnership"). These 6 contracts are something like "CCDev0" - predecessors to the more structured CCDev1&2 programs. Alinor (talk) 05:23, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Done most of the above. Alinor (talk) 20:21, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately the source doesn't include information about "what was proposed", but only about "why X was selected and Y wasn't"... Alinor (talk) 20:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Good work Alinor. I think the article is better with this info on the CCDev1 "applied but not selected" entities added into it, and "well done" on the sourcing! Looks like, when we finally see the full list of which entities applied for CCDev2 funds, we might have to significantly expand that part of the CCDev2 section also.

One other thing. I thought I might have read about "Firestar engineering" before so did a little search and came up with them mentioned in another article (that I have edited previously). So don't know if you would want to possibly link it thusly: Firestar engineering (assuming "Firestar engineering" is the name given in the source. Cheers. N2e (talk) 01:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Also at the List of private spaceflight companies there is mentioned a Firestar Technologies. But I'm not sure that we should redirect the company name to a fuel type. Also, I see that ARES (another participant) is a DAB page - so it should be changed to the appropriate link or made a redlink to ARES (company) or something like that.

What about umbrella Commercial Crew and Cargo article describing the items from the template?

Anyway, I think that CCDev1 candidates section is really lacking explanations about what have been proposed - at least by these that weren't dismissed at the initial stage. Alinor (talk) 05:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Recently an IP editor changed the list of CCDev1 "The remaining proposals, other than the five winners are:" from bulleted list with one company per line into a column list. The reason why it was with one company per line is that I hope that we will have more information about what the proposals included - as we have for CCDev2 - and this information will be added on each of these lines. The current format wouldn't allow that. Anybody object to revert to one company-per-line? Alinor (talk) 07:54, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

That's going to be a massively long section with each company on a line. Try reducing the list to 2 or 3 columns instead and adding brief proposal info in parathenses. Maybe just add detail to the 2nd candidate list. -Fnlayson (talk) 15:01, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I speak about the "shortlisted" only, not about all participants. Do you have any info on their proposals? Alinor (talk) 15:30, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

CCDEV 2 contracts

Here's a link to all of them, including the unfunded agreements

http://procurement.ksc.nasa.gov/

--Craigboy (talk) 01:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Justification

Maybe we should have some info for the layman who doesn't understand why the Space Shuttle isn't being used for crew transportation. Such as its ability to only stay docked to the station for 12 days where as Commercial Crew is being required to be able to stay docked for about 180 days.Craigboy (talk) 03:10, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a valid idea. If it still needed in the article, and you have sources, seems reasonable context to me.N2e (talk) 04:35, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Assessing the CCDev-2 losers

NewSpace Journal had a recent article on Assessing the CCDev-2 losers, which includes several relevant verifiable claims that may be relevant to improving the article. These include:

• that United Space Alliance company officials acknowledged in early April that their proposal to continue flying to the Space Shuttle orbiters was "an extremely long shot."
• Excalibur Almaz will likely continue its commercial activities, although at a slow pace.
• United Launch Alliance is likely to be back for future activities with Commercial Crew Development, possibly as a subcontractor bidding a portion of a commercial offering on multiple teams' projects.

If someone thinks these are sufficiently notable to make the article, have at it. Each claim is sourced by the NewSpace Journal article dated 19 April 2011. Cheers. N2e (talk) 01:07, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The Space Shuttle proposal came from USA not ULA. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:44, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Whoops, yes, my typo. That one was USA, not ULA. I have now corrected my previous comment. N2e (talk) 04:40, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Financing

Why reference is needed for the table? All data presented here are available in the previous sections of the article. Jasiu Szt (talk) 21:20, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

The same as everywhere else per WP:V. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

NASA Commercial Crew Forum and conference Updates

"We have a -- I believe a very good concept for what we want to put into this to the AFP. I’m excited about it and I wish I could tell you more about it today but the program intends to do is shortly before we release the AFP we’ll have another forum and we’ll get together and talk about how this next phase and Space Act Agreement fits into a bigger strategy. So look for that sometime early in February." - Brent Jett, December 20th Forum

Forums are archived here.--Craigboy (talk) 05:52, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Date has been set for February 7th. It will be broadcast live from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Eastern time zone). More info here.--Craigboy (talk) 12:47, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

CCiCap Pre-Proposal Conference will be held on February 14th, 2012.--Craigboy (talk) 00:59, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

CCiCap funding

"The Administration strongly opposes the level of funding provided for the commercial crew program, which is $330 million below the FY 2013 Budget request, as well as restrictive report language that would eliminate competition in the program. This would increase the time the United States will be required to rely solely on foreign providers to transport American astronauts to and from the space station. While the Administration appreciates the overall funding level provided to NASA, the bill provides some NASA programs with unnecessary increases at the expense of other important initiatives." - May 7, 2012--Craigboy (talk) 04:30, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Progress updates

[Moved from User talk:Fnlayson to seek assistance]

If you want a cite for the extra Dream Chaser milestones use http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/august/nasa-partner-completes-second-dream-chaser-captive-carry-test/#.UofZjnC-068

It does not say how many milestones have been met. Andrew Swallow (talk) 20:52, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The articles I found so far ([3], [4]) say 2 milestones were added to Sierra Nevada in Aug. to increase to total to 12, but nothing from then or newer on how many have been completed. -Fnlayson (talk) 22:10, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

We're had trouble finding a recent status on Sierra Nevada's work. The newest status is 3 of 9 milestones completed in February 2013. Their milestones increased to 12 in Aug. 2013, but no idea on how many had been completed then. I could not find anything newer updates from NASA, by searching news releases and such. Does anybody have any info on this? Thanks. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:23, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The NASA Return on Investment Report is back, I have inserted the information in Issue 13. We can stop worrying about this now. Andrew Swallow (talk) 21:04, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

CCtCap Awards (to SpaceX and Boeing), and subsequent Protest (by SNC)

The article notes the awards in Sep 2014 to Boeing and SpaceX. But not the protest by SNC, which some media are reporting scored about as well as the others but was all in for $3.3 billion, some $900,000 lower than Boeing. So it appears the whole process may go on hiatus while the US GAO does their 90 or 100 days of investigation. As reliable sources come in, this should go in the article. N2e (talk) 20:27, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

The protest is just a little over 1 day old now. The GAO typically has a max of 90 days to review a protest, which usually means a stop work order or equivalent. -Fnlayson (talk) 01:01, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

100 days is right. Aviation Week put out an article on this late yesterday. -Fnlayson (talk) 01:20, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Number of operation flights covered by the award

Commercial Crew Development#Awards (subsection of "Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap)") currently references Jeff Foust's Sep. 19, 2014 Space News article, NASA Commercial Crew Awards Leave Unanswered Questions which says that, "The contracts also include at least two and as many as six operational flights per company to the ISS, each carrying four astronauts, once NASA certifies each company’s vehicle." and goes on to assume that the up to $6.8 billion includes up to 12 flights of four seats each at $70.7 million per seat for a total operation cost of up to $3.4 billion. I have not found any other source that make this assumption, and the NASA announcement is far from clear. From NASA:

The companies selected to provide this transportation capability and the maximum potential value of their FAR-based firm fixed-price contracts are:

-- The Boeing Company, Houston, $4.2 billion

-- Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Hawthorne, California, $2.6 billion

The contracts include at least one crewed flight test per company with at least one NASA astronaut aboard to verify the fully integrated rocket and spacecraft system can launch, maneuver in orbit, and dock to the space station, as well as validate all its systems perform as expected. Once each company’s test program has been completed successfully and its system achieves NASA certification, each contractor will conduct at least two, and as many as six, crewed missions to the space station. These spacecraft also will serve as a lifeboat for astronauts aboard the station.

So the contract does cover one crewed test flight per company, but it is unclear if the up to $6.8 Billion of this award includes zero, four, of twelve operational flights, or if the operational flights are paid for separately. Unless someone can find an additional RS which agrees with Foust's interpretation, we should either remove the price breakdown or indicate that it was supposition by a single source, and await clarification when NASA finally releases details of the contracts to the public. -- ToE 13:58, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

NASA published the press release on its webpage
[5]
September 16, 2014 RELEASE 14-256
NASA Chooses American Companies to Transport U.S. Astronauts to International Space Station Andrew Swallow (talk) 14:29, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is essentially the same link that I gave for release 14-256, quoted above. The question is whether, "Once each company’s test program has been completed successfully and its system achieves NASA certification, each contractor will conduct at least two, and as many as six, crewed missions to the space station." implies that the cost of those operational flights are included in the $6.4 billion award. I'd like to think that it does, as that would indicate lower development costs, but I don't think that wording of NASA's release is clear one way or the other. And as far as I can tell, Foust is the only source who has made that conclusion. Additionally, he says that he is assuming $70.7 million per seat based on a "Sept. 18 report by the NASA Office of Inspector General on the ISS program".

NASA's Extending the Operational Life of the International Space Station Until 2024:

... much of the projected cost increase is attributable to higher transportation costs, and we found NASA’s estimate for transportation costs unrealistic. For example, NASA’s estimates for the cost of the commercial crew transportation services they expect to replace for the Russian Soyuz are based on the cost of a Soyuz seat in FY 2016 – $70.7 million per seat for a total cost of $283 million per mission for four astronauts. However, the Program’s independent government cost estimates project significantly higher costs when the Agency transitions to purchasing these seats from commercial companies.

Foust does go on to say that the NASA's budget, "requested $848.3 million for commercial crew in 2015, and a total of nearly $3.42 billion for the program from 2015 through 2019." which would certainly support the up to $6.8 billion including up to 12 operational flights, with those twelve flights costing half of the total sum. NASA FY 2015 Budget Estimates backs that up. That makes me less dubious about the breakdown, as I don't see how they could be awarding $6.8 billion for development without requesting equal funding. I'd be happier if I found someone in addition to Foust coming to that conclusion (nothing wrong with Foust, but everything else I've read has ponder why Boeing needs 60% more than SpaceX's $2.6 billion for development -- the conclusion is generally that it is because SpaceX is that much further along, and that Boeing needs the extra cash to catch up in time -- when if Foust is right, then Boeing really is receiving more than 2.75 times as much as SpaceX's $900 million to complete development), but I think that is good enough for me to take down the "dubious" tag I placed on this section. -- ToE 18:04, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm. I just originally added the statement as clarified by the Foust source you give. Although the statement in the article seems quite consistent with the other coverage I've read, I don't have any problem clarifying that the breakdown was given by a particular source, or news publication, if noone is able to locate another source for it. Foust is a long-time serious space journalist, who is usually one of the most reliable and careful journalists out there; and he has many sources in the various aerospace companies that might be expected to clarify his press release information when he is writing a story.

One more thought on your NASA source comment: generally speaking, reliable secondary sources are preferred by policy in Wikipedia to primary sources like NASA docs; however, both may be used, especially when there is inadequate secondary source coverage of a matter. Cheers. N2e (talk) 17:50, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

(I think that we had an edit collision there.) No, looking at the budget numbers, I think that Foust's analysis does make sense, but is it true that this is consistent with any other coverage you have read? I've not found anybody else who has broken the up to $6.8 billion into up to $3.4 billion development and up to $3.4 billion operation. I'm not questioning the quality of Foust's work, (and quite to the contrary, I now think that his analysis makes a lot of sense that we should run with it even if he is the only one explaining it that way -- it's the budget numbers that convinced me), but I thought that it was strange that the breakdown was not picked up by any other source.

And I wasn't suggesting primary sources for the article, but was linking to them from the talk page in order to provide evidence with which we could evaluate the quality of the secondary source.

I'm now happy with the article as it stands. Thanks for responding, N2e -- ToE 18:18, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

I went to remove the "dubious" tag only to see that Andrew Swallow beat me to it, with a "The same information is in the NASA press release" comment. I don't want to flog this dead horse now that I understand and agree with Foust's analysis, but the NASA release does not contain the same information. It gives the up to $4.2 billion Boeing / up to $2.6 billion SpaceX numbers, but does not break it down into development and operational moneys, and as I said above, NASA's language is unclear about how many, if any, of the operational flights were covered by the up to $6.8 billion. It is Foust connecting the dots with the budget request and the OIG report that allowed him to break it down. -- ToE 18:35, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

We will just have to wait for the contracts to be published. Andrew Swallow (talk) 21:15, 29 October 2014 (UTC)