WASHINGTON – NASA said Oct. 18 it had pulled
the plug on its agreement with Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) to help finance the
company's effort to develop a commercial transportation service to and from the
international space station.
NASA will
take the $175 million previously committed to RpK under the Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services (COTS) program and put it back out for competition in a
matter of days.
"We
spent the last year trying to work with RpK to give them every opportunity to
succeed," said Alan Lindenmoyer, who oversees COTS as manager of the
Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Based on its failure to meet its performance
milestones, we've come to the conclusion that it is in NASA's best interest to
discontinue our funded Space Act Agreement and reopen the competition for the
remaining $175 million."
In a press
conference at NASA headquarters here, Lindenmoyer said the agency plans to
release a solicitation for a new full and open COTS competition Oct. 22.
Companies interested in winning some or all of the money now available to
invest in new COTS concepts will then have 30 days to submit proposals.
RpK of
Oklahoma City was one of two companies picked by NASA in mid-2006 to share some
$500 million in public funding to help them build and demonstrate competing
vehicles capable of carrying cargo and potentially crews to the international
space station. The other COTS winner was Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
of El Segundo, Calif.
RpK
struggled from the beginning to raise the $500 million in private capital it
needed to complete its fully reusable K-1 rocket – in development for more than
a decade – and launch it to the station. But it was not until well after RpK
failed to meet a renegotiated May deadline for completing its financing and
also missed a key early technical milestone that NASA moved toward terminating
its agreement.
On Sept. 7,
NASA sent RpK formal written notice that the company was in breach of its
COTS agreement for failure to meet the May financing deadline and for not
completing a promised critical design review of the K-1's pressurized cargo
module on schedule. That notification set the clock ticking on the 30-day
period NASA was required to give RpK before terminating the agreement.
Lindenmoyer
said NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems, Richard Gilbrech,
called RpK the afternoon of Oct. 18 to tell them that time had run out.
Lindenmoyer
said RpK was told it could continue to work with NASA on the K-1 through an
unfunded COTS agreement similar to ones the agency has awarded to a half-dozen
companies interested in selling resupply services to the international space
station after the space shuttle retires in 2010.
Lindenmoyer
said that RpK also is free to submit a new proposal when the new COTS
solicitation is released.
NASA hopes
to evaluate proposals and make its new selection or selections during the first
quarter of 2008, Lindemoyer said.
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