Sierra Nevada Sues To Force NASA Partners To Stop Work On Next-Gen Spacecraft

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Privately-owned space transport firm Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has filed a federal lawsuit in its latest challenge to NASA contracts awarded to Boeing and SpaceX in September, various media outlets are reporting.
On September 16, the US space agency selected Boeing and SpaceX to build next-gen vehicles that will eventually be used to ferry American astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). SNC challenged that decision, filing a formal protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) a few weeks later, citing “serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process.”
[ Watch the Video: SpaceX Dragon Version 2 To Transport US Astronauts To The International Space Station ]
“With the current awards, the U.S. government would spend up to $900 million more at the publicly announced contracted level for a space program equivalent to the program that SNC proposed,” Sierra Nevada said in a statement in late September. “SNC, therefore, feels that there is no alternative but to institute a legal challenge,” it continued, adding that a “thorough review” of NASA’s decision to award the contracts “must be conducted.”
Earlier this month, Steven Siceloff of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center announced that the agency had instructed Boeing and SpaceX to temporarily stop work on their Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts while the GAO resolved the protest. Three days later, however, NASA reversed course and said that it planned to proceed with the CCtCap, despite Sierra Nevada’s protest with the GAO.
“The agency recognizes that failure to provide the CCtCap transportation service as soon as possible poses risks to the International Space Station (ISS) crew, jeopardizes continued operation of the ISS, would delay meeting critical crew size requirements, and may result in the US failing to perform the commitments it made in its international agreements,” the agency said in an official statement.
“These considerations compelled NASA to use its statutory authority to avoid significant adverse consequences where contract performance remained suspended,” it added. “NASA has determined that it best serves the United States to continue performance of the CCtCap contracts that will enable safe and reliable travel to and from the ISS from the United States on American spacecraft and end the nation’s sole reliance on Russia for such transportation.”
Now Sierra Nevada has taken the fight to the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington DC, according to Reuters reporter Irene Klotz, asking for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to stop work on the CCtCap contracts pending a GAO ruling on the dispute. A hearing over the lawsuit was scheduled for Friday morning, and if SNC wins its challenge, Klotz says that it could force the competition for the NASA contacts to be restarted.
“The legal move comes as more details emerge about price differences between Sierra Nevada’s unsuccessful bid and Boeing’s more-expensive offering, renewing debate about NASA’s ability to ultimately pay for all the projected trips to the international space station over the next several years,” said Andy Paztor of the Wall Street Journal.
Paztor said that sources familiar with the matter claim the court filing “alleges that NASA in the end failed to give enough weight to the price difference and instead relied too much on other factors, including likelihood of meeting schedules, which Sierra Nevada contends weren’t part of the criteria in the request for bids. Price was supposed to account for half the score assigned to the bidders.”
The contracts being challenged would pay Boeing a total of $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion, and would require each company to provide at least one crewed flight test with at least one NASA astronaut on board to verify that the respective rocket and spacecraft systems are capable of launching, maneuvering in orbit and docking at the space station. SNC’s proposal asked NASA for $3.3 billion, $900 million less than Boeing, according to Reuters.
—–
FOR THE KINDLE – The History of Space Exploration: redOrbit Press
—–