"Jorge R. Frank" writes:

Indirectly, yes. NASA took over DC-XA when SDIO cancelled it. When it came
time for the next phase, which would have been DC-Y. NASA re-competed the
contract under the name X-33 rather than sole-sourcing it to MDAC.
Procurement law sets out specific circumstances under which sole-sourcing
is allowed (small contracts or lack of other suppliers in the market), and
the circumstances of DC-X did not fit: the contract was too large and there
were other suppliers in the market. Had NASA sole-sourced it anyway, it
would have invited legal challenges from other potential suppliers and a
lot of scrutiny from Congress. MDAC bid on the re-competed contract but
lost to LockMart. We can debate the relative merits of the X-33 competitors
(personally I preferred MDAC and Rockwell's designs over LockMart's), but
not the necessity of re-competing the contract.

There's something that bugs me about that argument:

When they recompeted the contract, they did not compete a contract for
DC-Y. They competed it for something completely different; the resulting
vehicle was not a decent followon capable of expanding the envelope of
DC-X.

It was a different vehicle with a different flight profile.

--
Phil Fraering
http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com
"Something's just not right..."
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