Scaled Composites - AirLaunch LLC win small part of NASA CEV contract

MENLO PARK, CA – Sept. 1, 2004 – NASA has awarded a $3 million
contract to the Transformational Space Corporation LLC to develop a
comprehensive plan for renewed lunar exploration and development.

Transformational Space Corp. (“t/Space”) was chosen by NASA based on a
proposed lunar architecture powered by market-based competition,
spurred initially by NASA incentives. In the t/Space scenario,
companies will design, build and own the lunar infrastructure
(vehicles, habitats, power stations, greenhouses and the like) from
which NASA will buy services to support its explorers.

The t/Space team includes Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites Inc., which
made history recently by rocketing the first commercial pilot into
suborbital space aboard SpaceShipOne. Another key player is AirLaunch
LLC, which is under contract with the Defense Dept. to develop a
low-cost responsive launch vehicle. These two companies will
collaborate on the design of a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) to carry
NASA astronauts to the Moon in the next decade, and eventually to
Mars. Their design will demonstrate how the CEV can be developed on an
affordable basis by private industry via NASA incentives, saving the
government billions of dollars compared to traditional contracting
approaches.

Full article at this URL:

http://www.transformspace.com/pages/5/index.htm

In article ,
Rusty Barton wrote:

MENLO PARK, CA – Sept. 1, 2004 – NASA has awarded a $3 million
contract to the Transformational Space Corporation LLC to develop a
comprehensive plan for renewed lunar exploration and development.

Transformational Space Corp. (“t/Space”) was chosen by NASA based on a
proposed lunar architecture powered by market-based competition,
spurred initially by NASA incentives. In the t/Space scenario,
companies will design, build and own the lunar infrastructure
(vehicles, habitats, power stations, greenhouses and the like) from
which NASA will buy services to support its explorers.

The t/Space team includes Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites Inc. ...

This is really cool. It's only $3M, but that's still significant --
only a half-dozen other firms were given equivalent grants. That
indicates that at least some at NASA are receptive to this highly
commercial approach.

And this is also the first time I've seen a committment from Scaled to
continue to be involved in aerospace R&D. This contract involves
developing a concept for the CEV, so it will be very interesting to see
what they come up with.

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Joe Strout wrote:

This is really cool. It's only $3M, but that's still significant --
only a half-dozen other firms were given equivalent grants. That
indicates that at least some at NASA are receptive to this highly
commercial approach.

It's a contract for a study. Just like hundreds? thousands? that NASA
has entered into over the years covering everything from a three man
orbiting capsule to speculative propulsion concepts like warp drive.
It's utterly unidicative of NASA support for anything.

Move along, nothing to see here.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

Derek Lyons wrote:
Joe Strout wrote:
This is really cool. It's only $3M, but that's still significant --
only a half-dozen other firms were given equivalent grants. That
indicates that at least some at NASA are receptive to this highly
commercial approach.

It's a contract for a study. Just like hundreds? thousands? that NASA
has entered into over the years covering everything from a three man
orbiting capsule to speculative propulsion concepts like warp drive.
It's utterly unidicative of NASA support for anything.

Move along, nothing to see here.

This was the result of the Concept Exploration and Refinement
Broad Agency Announcement (aka CE&R BAA). As noted, this team
includes Gary Hudson's Airlaunch company as well as Scaled Composites,
and clearly from looking at it uses the HMX (Hudson) Alternate
Access capsule design concept from a few years back
(see http://www.hmx.com/AAS_Briefing_Edited.pdf ).

A very large set of companies and organizations filed
proposals, including Retro Aerospace. The full set of
winners are listed a http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14924

This *is* the entry point into the Office of Exploration Systems
concept definitions. Assuming the budget axe that hit today
is deflected sometime before the beginning of the next fiscal
year, this is the start of the serious work on these projects.


-george william herbert
Retro Aerospace