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NASA's CRS contract with Orbital is for 8 flights for $1.9 Billion. Today's flight was supposed to be number 3 of 8. It remains to be seen if they will be abl
by Crito 12y ago
NASA's CRS contract with Orbital is for 8 flights for $1.9 Billion. Today's flight was supposed to be number 3 of 8.
It remains to be seen if they will be able to complete the rest of their contract. The cause of the accident will need to be investigated, changes to future vehicles may be necessary, and right now it appears as though they damaged their launch pad severely.
- lutorm 12y agoThe CRS contract includes development costs, though. The marginal cost of one mission isn't anywhere near 1.9B/8.
- Crito 12y agoSort of. COTS was supposed to be the development costs, CRS was supposed to be the launches. Orbital got $288 Million for development of Antares/Cygnus from COTS. From wikipedia: > "COTS is related but separate from the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program.[3] COTS relates to the development of the vehicles, CRS to the actual deliveries. COTS involves a number of Space Act Agreements, with NASA providing milestone-based payments. COTS does not involve binding contracts. CRS on the other hand does involve legally binding contracts, which means the suppliers would be liable if they failed to perform. Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) is a related program, aimed specifically at developing crew rotation services. It is similar to COTS-D. All three programs are managed by NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO)." Personally, I am worried about Orbital's ability to complete the remaining flights for CRS. This is a very unfortunate setback for them.
- lutorm 12y agoOh, true, my bad. I conflated COTS and CRS... Can't keep the acronyms straight. Not to mention CCDev vs CCtCaP, etc etc...