The recent NASA award for Crew Transportation was somewhat suspect and as I noted in my earlier post, the cost of the Boeing proposal was inexplicable high when weighed against others.
I’m not the only one who feels that the decision was flawed; the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), who submitted plans centered around its Dream Chaser project has now filed a challenge to the contract award. Part of the company’s release states:
While all three competitors were found to be compliant and awardable under the criteria set forth in the request for proposal (RFP), only two proposals were selected (Boeing and SpaceX), one of which would result in a substantial increased cost to the public despite near equivalent technical and past performance scores.”
So a rough translation would be: “How come you gave Boeing so much money for services that we could provide at a fraction of the cost?”
That seems pretty straightforward to me. It’s also interesting that on the same day that SNC submitted their appeal, NASA announced a Request For Proposals for a second round of cargo resupply contracts.
Something smells very bad in the Space industry right now and it makes me angry and embarrassed to see these political games being played out in this arena.
