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>> Okay. Welcome, everybody.
Thanks for sticking around after lunch.
It's good to see that we've still got a good crowd.
And I hope there are still a lot of people out on the web watching.
I hope everybody got their post-lunch nap out of the way during Jay's session.
I know I did, no, I'm kidding, Jay.
[ Laughter ]
>> Yours is great.
I'm kidding, it was very good.
Okay. Well, let's jump right in.
[ Pause ]
>> Maybe, there we go.
Okay. These are the topics that I'm gonna be talking about today.
I definitely wanna acknowledge the efforts of my fellow study team members.
We had over a dozen of us that have been working
over the last 3 months representing all the human space light centers as well as most
of the major technical disciplines including the crew office.
And so, they contributed very much to these concepts that I'm gonna be showing today.
But we have a lot more work to do, obviously, and to help us with that,
it's already been announced that the Commercial Crew,
the lead center for commercial crew is gonna be at the Kennedy Space Center,
and the lead for the center planning office at KSC is Ed Mango.
So, Ed, if you're out there, there he is.
For those of you on the web, he's the good-looking guy over here.
He's leading those efforts at KSC to help flesh out the next level of detail
for the commercial crew activity.
And so, I wanna say, obviously, that what we're gonna present today shows a significant amount
of effort, but we'd still have a lot of-- a long way to go.
We've incorporated several touch points with industry into our strategy.
And so, we-- just like everyone else and that you've been hearing many, many times today,
we definitely wanna hear from you as we go forward.
And we're gonna refine these concepts, and that's where the last box is.
We're definitely gonna be changing things as we go forward.
We have the RFI that we also submitted on Friday as well as the one-on-ones tomorrow.
We hope to have additional RFIs, and like I said, additional touch points
with industry academia and other partners and other stakeholders to make sure
that we get this right as we refine our strategy going forward.
Okay. When-- in order to start our planning, we thought it was helpful for us to define
and agree on what our future state was going to be.
And that's where you get the graphic on the-- on your right-hand side.
You can see that the N state, where we hope to get to, is routine space access for humans
where you could see we've integrated it with airplane operations.
You've got the space station out in the side because that's our near-term destination.
And we really want our vision for commercial human space flight to be a robust,
vibrant profit-making enterprise with a wide range of users.
In the near term, NASA hopes to be a reliable customer for these services -
for US and US-designated astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
And then it is hoped that these activities will stimulate the development
of additional markets and a new space industry for us.
And there's gonna be a lots of benefits associated if we're successful.
It's gonna strengthen the ISS program.
It's gonna allow NASA to really focus on beyond LEO which is really our core mission.
It's gonna contribute to the national economy, help the US industrial base, enable world peace.
I don't know, maybe that last one's a little stretched, sorry.
Yeah, maybe, yeah, it's a little stretched, sorry.
But we do believe the crew, the Commercial Crew initiative
to be the next major step in making this vision happen.
We have been talking about routine access for humans to space for decades.
And I believe that this is the next major step for us in that direction.
[ Pause ]
>> There we go, okay.
So, the objectives of this program for the crew, Commercial Crew initiative,
we wanna facilitate the development of US, US Commercial Crew Transportation with the goal
of safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from LEO
in the International Space Station.
You're gonna hear that mantra over and over again during my pitch and throughout
as we go forward with commercial crew safe, reliable, and cost effective.
Those are the key ingredients.
And once this capability is mature, we hope to be able to purchase seats for this service,
for government, and other users to meet our ISS crew transportation needs.
So, in order to meet this objective and these goals,
we're gonna be following an innovative way of doing business with the U.S. Aerospace Industry.
We hope to have a development and demonstration phase followed by a services phase.
For the development and demonstration phase,
we very much wanna use a public-private partnership.
We wanna engage with the commercial sector to bring about these capabilities.
And to do that, these-- the partnerships are gonna feature these items that you see here -
competition which is a key ingredient.
We definitely want competition be going forward
through pre-negotiated milestone-based agreements
that will hopefully support multiple system, there's the competition again.
We're gonna support a range of higher- and lower-programmatic risk systems.
We'd like to get the innovation associated with the entrepreneurial sector as well as some
of the more-- the systems that are more steep in heritage.
We'd like to get the best of both of those worlds.
So, we're gonna be funding a variety of those concepts so that we can get the best.
Again, some amount of industry investment capital is gonna be required
for any agreement, any relationship that we have.
This is the skin in the game feature that you've heard so much about.
We believe it's a critically important facet of our strategy going forward.
So that will be a key ingredient.
We have to clearly and promptly state our NASA safety requirements,
and ensure that they're gonna be met.
We spent probably the most amount of time on defining what our safety requirements are,
what our process were, ensuring that they're gonna be met.
And again, always at the end of the day, NASA is gonna be verifying
that these requirements are gonna be met at the end.
And then that's-- those are the development phase aspects.
We hope that that will lead to a--
the competitive selection of ideally more than one commercial provider
through firm fixed-price contract.
So, you can see that this approach is very analogous to the COTS/CRS model,
COTS standing for Commercial Orbital Transportation Services that we use for cargo
that then led to the Cargo Resupply Contract or CRS contract.
And so, this model does use that as an analogy.
And there is definitely-- we have to acknowledge that there is some risk
to this innovative approach, and there is no guarantee for success associated with it
as there is no guarantee of success for any NASA mission.
But we do hope that this Commercial Crew initiative holds a promise
of enabling routine safe, reliable, cost-effective access to space going forward.
Okay. Gotta hit-- no, I went too far, sorry.
Okay. So, the framework that we put together, we wanted it to be designed
to achieve both the goals of safe transport for our U.S. and U.S.-designated astronauts
to the International Space Station, but also support the development of non-NASA markets
for commercial human space transportation.
Now, we know that there are other customers for commercial,
for human space transportation services.
That is a historical fact.
Since 1978, the United States and Russia has transported almost 100 astronauts
from foreign countries to space.
That averages about to 3 a year.
In addition, since 2001, 8 individuals have flown on Soyuz
as space flight participants including one re-flight.
And that averages out to about 1 per year.
And that's at the time when the availability of Soyuz seats has been severely constrained.
In addition, Bigelow Aerospace has reportedly spent about 180 million dollars
on their inflatable modules, which, if successful,
would put another destination LEO for these services.
Bigelow Aerospace has estimated that they have--
that there is demand for 6 flights per year initially and then ramping up after that.
So, a very robust market demand estimated there.
On the supply side, as many of you are probably aware, earlier this year,
we awarded 5 Space Act Awards for the CCDEV or Commercial Crew Development Program.
This was using the ARPA money.
I forget what that acronym stands for-- the stimulus money.
And so that-- those were awarded in February.
We received-- NASA received over 30 proposals for activities associated with that,
and we awarded 5 Space Act Awards.
So that shows that there is robust interest on the part
of the U.S. Aerospace Industry to supply these systems.
But probably, the most important development
for enabling these services was the decision recently by the part of the administration
to extend the life of the ISS likely to 2020 and or beyond.
For the first time in history, we have a reliable sustainable market
for human space transportation services.
So that was the key, I believe, to making this program really feasible at this time.
And that's why we have put it together this way.
So, I did spend a lot of time on that.
So, we can say again that there are other customers for this service,
but we cannot positively say that there are sufficient customers
to enable multiple viable commercial providers.
And that's what we're gonna be exploring on this program.
But we can't-- what we can say is that by combining NASA's near-term needs
for ISS Crew Transportation with the potential for other customers
that we have the opportunity now, as no time better in history, to be at the forefront
of a new industry in enabling routine space access to space.
>> And that's why we're so excited about this program.
Okay. So, how do we make that happen more, I guess more tactically,
I've been talking about strategic things.
I think I've got to hit this button twice to get it to go.
Okay. Here we go.
The key attributes of our strategy, how are we gonna make this happen.
We used a lot of industry feedback that we've received over the years.
We received or we incorporated the lessons learned from our COTS program,
and our CRS activities, and the CCDEV activities.
So, we brought all of that knowledge to bear, all of that experience.
We actually did have now real experience; it wasn't hypothetical
about what things actually did work with the partnership with the commercial industry
for these types of things, what things didn't work so well.
And we were able to incorporate those and establish some key attributes
for our strategy going forward, and you can see them listed here.
We definitely want performance-based milestone payments.
We think this is very important.
It encourages new and efficient vehicle designs.
It shifts some of the risk associated away from the government.
We only have to pay for those milestones that get met.
If the milestones don't get met, we're not on the hook for paying.
And then future milestones are always based
on a successful execution of those by the private sector.
Fixed government investment.
This is a key.
This permits NASA obviously to do support multiple systems
because we have a fixed investment.
We can hopefully spread that money around.
But most importantly, this provides a sort of a corporate development mindset to bear
on bringing these new systems to fruition.
And we think that that is critically important.
So, for the first time, we're really gonna be making trades between performance
and cost effectiveness, and we think that is what is a critical aspect
for bringing a commercial system that has cost-effective prices associated
with it and can gather other customers.
In order to do that, we feel like this corporate development mindset is very, very important.
And to get that, you need a fixed government investment.
We feel like, again, very important.
We want industry financial investment.
Again, that expands our overall pool of funds, enables us to fund multiple systems.
It also-- it very much encourages our partners to stay in the game.
The only way they're gonna recoup that money that they have put forward is
through the successful selling of services both to NASA and potentially to other customers
to get their return on investment.
So, it very much incentivizes them to perform and to stay in the game,
which is all of the things that we want.
It also supports them getting other customers.
And you can see that these attributes,
they kinda feed together, they're very much synergistic.
One of them sort of supports the other, and that feedbacks into another one,
so these all sort of come together.
And we'd like to get a strategy that features all of these attributes.
We want only for the government to have a very limited intellectual property.
We'd like the contractors or the commercial providers to be able to retain as much of those
as possible so that they can have uninhibited commercial sale
or future application of their capabilities.
We also believe that this facilitates industry investment.
If the commercial providers own their products, again, they won't--
they'll probably be more willing to contribute their on funds, or not their own funds,
or funds that they can get through marketplace as well.
We'd like to only specify high level objectives.
These are mostly performance objectives.
This is not safety.
And I'm gonna go into the safety aspects in a little bit.
But in a performance level, we know we want safe, reliable space transportation to
and from the International Space Station.
That's a very highest level goal that we want to mandate.
And we'd like to stay as high level as possible to encourage the private sector
to be coming forward with innovative designs, ones that can meet our needs as well
as other customer needs and potentially close their business case.
That's why this is so important.
Again, as you can see, this sort of all ties together allowing creative solutions.
Relieve from the requirement of improved government accounting system.
Again, we like a leveled playing field.
We like to get these innovative entrepreneurial ideas as well as the ones that are more steep
in heritage so that we can go forward.
And in order to do that, it might not necessarily require an improved accounting
system which requires a lot of overhead, a lot of red tape.
We'd like to get the innovative ideas.
And then the biggest one, well, I don't know if that's the biggest one,
these are not prioritized, competition.
Multiple industry providers are gonna be key during this development phase
so that we are not dependent on a sole provider.
In case one drops out, we'll have others that we can rely on.
This is gonna be very difficult.
It's very likely or it's possible that somebody's gonna drop out.
It's gonna be difficult to maintain all of our milestones on time.
Test objectives.
We're probably gonna-- there's gonna be some test failures 'cause we're gonna have a lot
of test, we're gonna learn from those.
So, these are sort of the expected things that go forward.
But when we get to the point where a commercial provider is not performing,
we'd like the ability to move forward and have others in the mix.
It will also lead to lower prices, more efficiency,
and we think all in all a very good thing.
So, the study team reviewed all types of mechanisms, all types of mechanisms available
at NASA's disposal to achieving these kinds of attributes.
And we're still fine-tuning our acquisition strategy or our investment strategy.
But we very much like NASA's other transactional authority.
We think that those types of arrangements space act agreements provide for the most,
the best fit for these kinds of attributes, but we're also exploring sort
of the more innovative fixed-price relationships associated with that.
So, I've got another slide that shows our acquisition strategy or our investment strategy.
But we can say, even going forward this far in the planning, that cost,
the traditional cost plus type relationships do not seem to be consistent with this approach
and are not being considered for the development phase going forward.
[ Pause ]
>> Here we go, I'll skip it again.
Okay. So, now comes the hard part, in my opinion,
which is ensuring that these systems are gonna be safe and reliable.
And this is a critical component of this program.
Like I said before, this is probably something
that the study team spent the most amount of time on.
Once we've determined some of these aspects of the program that I've shown previously,
we said okay, well, how are we gonna make sure that we can do this in a reliable safe manner
because it is very much a different way of doing business
for NASA and for the Aerospace industry.
So, we developed this-- this was an approach
that was actually proceeded the study team activity.
We started on this late last year calendar year.
So, we've been working on this for a number of months with multiple centers feeding in,
a lot of lessons learned from previous activities.
But before I get into this chart, we did notice right off the get-go that the definition
of terms need a little bit of specificity because even at NASA, we use the terms "insight"
and "oversight" interchangeably and there's not a lot of clarity on those terms.
So, for the purposes of commercial crew and the purposes of my pitch today,
insight refers to discerning the true nature of the system.
It has to do with penetrating the vehicle design and understanding its performance
and capabilities, that's what insight is about.
Oversight has to do with government approval of the vehicle design
and direction to the commercial provider.
So, those are 2 very different things but both are critically important
in determining whether these commercial systems are safe
and reliable for NASA personnel to fly on.
In previous human space flight programs, the government had total oversight responsibility,
meaning NASA made all the major decisions associated with the design,
the development testing production.
All of that was NASA's.
And for the Commercial Crew program, we are gonna be going forward with a partnership,
again, with us and the commercial providers.
So, the key first aspect right off the bat is there is going to be a stronger reliance
on the part of the commercial providers for making their systems safe.
NASA will though have in-depth insight into those vehicle designs predominantly
through colocating NASA personnel on site with the contractor
so that we can see the real time test data as it comes through,
we can see the analysis as it's coming through.
And again, real time.
We're not waiting for a milestone where we receive a whole bunch of contract deliverables
and we review those deliverables.
The strategy going forward and the key aspect of our insight approach is having NASA personnel
on the floor with the commercial providers, again, seeing the raw data,
seeing the test data, knowing more precisely and more accurately where they are with their design
and how close they are to meeting those requirements or not meeting those requirements.
So that was the key aspect that we felt was important going forward.
The other aspect is making sure that we have our requirements and standards well defined
and that we're applying those to the commercial providers consistently.
We have just released our-- I'll get in to this a little bit more
in the second requirements for comment from industry.
But those documents, those standards, those requirements are gonna be important.
We're gonna tailor those to make sure that the commercial provider knows
which one's they're responsible for and which ones we're responsible for.
But at the end of the day, NASA is always responsible for verifying
that they meet these standards and requirements.
So, we're not offloading that.
Again, at the end of the day, NASA's responsible for verifying
that these requirements are gonna be met.
So, in order to do this, we are gonna have insight/oversight teams.
>> We're gonna try and stay flexible or at least the ideas
to be flexible with those teams going forward.
It's gonna be dependent on the vehicle design.
Some vehicle designs have sort of more risky features than others.
So for those, we may have a bigger insight team.
One commercial provider may be using a launch vehicle with a lot of flight heritage and a lot
of history of successful flights, so you might not need as many insight personnel
as you would need for somebody with the brand new launch vehicle, for example.
And we're also gonna be using experience for what subsystems have failed mostly in the past.
If you look at our historical failures, a lot of them have happened in propulsions,
so we'll probably beef up our propulsion team.
But again, we're gonna be sort of rightsizing it for the particular system
and the particular commercial provider.
We believe that this approach, while it is different in the past,
will result in a more efficient, more penetrating,
and more insight so that we can get a reliable system at the end of the day.
And also, I should say, as we've been socializing this within NASA,
a lot of people said, well that's not new, we've kind of used aspects of that on this program
or that program, and that's very true.
We did kind of borrow the best ideas from some of other NASA's other high value launch vehicle
and payload programs in the past, and we've incorporated that.
So, the very first part of defining this is we went through and surveyed a lot
of our previous both human and nonhuman space life programs
to see how they did this insight/oversight approach.
And again, we took those and combined them in a way
that we think is gonna be a very effective process going forward.
Okay, I'm just right on time.
Okay. In terms of the human space flight certification, over the years,
NASA and the aerospace community, we've developed an outstanding complement of standards
of rules and processes to enable safe human space flight.
These are designed to enhance vehicle reliability,
improve mission success, and maximize crew safety.
And for the Commercial Crew program, our requirements are gonna be
in this Commercial Human-Rating Plan which we have affectionately termed the CHRP.
Nobody likes that acronym, but it is stuck.
We can't seem to shake it.
So, that is the plan that we led out in an RFI last Friday.
Anybody should be able to access this.
The original RFI is at 3 pages, but you have 20 page--
we want 20 pages of response up to 20 pages.
If you have that kind of feedback, we definitely wanna hear that,
because we've been developing this sort of only on the NASA side.
This is our first opportunity to get industry input on these requirements,
and we definitely wanna hear what you have to say.
We started with NASA's standard which is this 8705.2B for those of you who are familiar
with the NASA Human-Rating Standards.
These are requirements that NASA imposes on government-developed vehicles and spacecraft.
So, obviously, it was not appropriate for us to just apply 8705 to the commercial providers.
So, the biggest step we had to do in tailoring this was determining which one
of these are gonna stay with NASA, and which one of these are gonna be
on the responsibility of the commercial provider.
And we have done that.
There's a table in the CHRP that shows who has responsibility for which requirements.
In addition, we took the standards and we append those into mandatory standards,
standards that you cannot provide an alternative or you cannot meet, you have to meet this.
There's another set which people, or commercial providers can provide alternative standards
and NASA will review those to ensure they meet or exceed the standard that we have put forward.
And then there's the third which are sort of the golden rules, things that we have learned
over the years that we recommend, but we're not gonna require them to necessarily incorporate.
So, this tailoring, we believe, again, is gonna maximize safety
and reliability while not overly burdening the commercial providers
with unnecessary requirements that significantly and sometimes unnecessarily increase the scope
and size of the government team and run up the development cost.
What we wanna ensure is that we're only applying safety requirements here,
not performance requirements.
That's where you can get into a very difficult game of sometimes making changes a lot of times.
That was one of the things that we found on some, not all,
some of our previous space flight programs where we had sort of a continuous oversight model,
where we're continually providing change and new direction to the contractor.
We get into this mode where we're getting changes on top of changes
and it gets really hard to just figure out exactly where you are.
We wanted to minimize that.
So, we have discrete oversight times when we can provide direction to the commercial provider.
But the insight will be continuous, mostly through the NASA personnel in the factory floor,
getting back to the previous line.
Okay. So, the CHRP is the main document.
I hope you guys can read that.
That's the center document.
Also, we are gonna plan to release the ISS Interface Requirements Documents.
The first phase of that was out for COTS cargo.
We're gonna be updating that for crew and releasing that later this summer under an RFI,
that's the plan, as well as the Service Requirements Document.
These are the things that the ISS Program needs in order to be successful.
The plan is to let those 2-- we're currently working on those 2 documents.
Hopefully, they will be ready later this summer, and we'll send those out in an RFI for comment.
The commercial provider is gonna need all 3 of these documents in order
to achieve their human space flight certification.
Because we are gonna be certifying these vehicles for the ISS mission.
If they go to some other place, that's gonna require some other certification.
As part of this program, we are defining the human space flight certification
for the ISS mission for NASA personnel.
And in order for commercial providers to fly NASA personnel,
they have to meet NASA human space flight certification.
We are not-- NASA is not going to allow any of our personnel, U.S. astronauts
or U.S.-designated astronauts to fly on commercial provider systems
until they have received their NASA human space flight certification.
And also, the Service Requirements Document, we will have this for the development phase.
And then it is planned that that will be transitioned to the actual requirements document
for these services phase where we're actually purchasing seats.
So that will be a key document and will stay with us going forward.
Okay. So, what is this Service Requirements Document and the ISS Programmatic Requirements.
Those will be captured in this SRD which I mentioned to you.
And again, we've been able to use lessons learned from past programs in developing this.
Mostly the services that we provided-- that are provided by Soyuz, that has provide us
with the key set of implementation ideas and like requirements I guess you could say.
As well as lessons learned from prior NASA programs, constellation program,
a lot of lessons learned associated with that, the orbiter space-plane, and even X-38
and some of those previous thing.
We have tapped into that expertise to figure out what exactly we need for a commercial ISS--
for commercial provider to provide ISS through transportation services.
As well as, of course, COTS, the CRS, and the CCDEV models.
Again, actually having real experience with this kind of model has proved to be invaluable
in laying the groundwork for this Commercial Crew program.
That does not mean we're gonna follow exactly the way we did for cargo, this is different,
and we are gonna be aware of those differences.
We're gonna be incorporating the things that may not have worked as well and the things
that worked really, really well in coming up with these processes and requirements.
So, the key program requirements that we've got at this time, and I have to say just
like everything that I presented, this is subject to change.
I think we said that about 52 times, and probably 52 more to go.
But the ISS mission is evolving.
These requirements may change based on the needs of the ISS program as well
as NASA's exploration goals, that may require some change to these.
But these are the top level list that we've got right now.
Safe transit for up to 4 ISS crew members per flight, at least 2 flights per year,
targeted availability of 2015, we've realized this is very aggressive.
We currently have contracts for Soyuz purchases right up until that point.
We also have the IRAN-- I've never got that acronym, XNOS [phonetic],
for those of you who are familiar with that, that that--
I think that goes to right up until the end of 2015.
So, this is the targeted availability date for these services,
which when NASA would like to have those.
We're gonna have to have safer board and crew recovery for all phases
of the launch and asset including pod escape.
Obviously, you're gonna have to meet ISS visiting vehicle requirements as well
as the physical and environmental interface definitions,
because we're gonna actually be docking these things or birthing these things,
these spacecraft to the ISS so that they've got to be able to interface successfully.
And I have to have it line in here about the Orion Emergency Rescue Vehicle.
We're obviously, just like everybody else, still incorporating that into our program planning.
And so, we're currently evaluating how that is gonna fit
into our overall requirements, have not determined that yet.
Okay. The concept of operations that we have laid out,
this is mostly for the services phase, so let me mention that.
We're trying to keep it as a high level as possible,
and allowing the commercial providers some maximum flexibility
to design their own solutions that meet our needs as well as close their business case.
So, for example, NASA is not gonna be specifying what the launch or landing site will be
for the commercial providers or the landing mode, water versus land.
That is gonna be up to the commercial providers, as long as it meets our requirements for safe,
reliable, and cost-effective transportation for our U.S. astronauts.
I think I've said that the required 5 times.
>> The commercial providers generally gonna be responsible for all phases of the mission.
So, you can see the overall management integration arrow as well as each one
of the individual phases of the program or major phases production all the way through recovery.
The commercial providers, again, responsible for this.
They're also gonna be responsible for all facilities and infrastructure.
However, if the government and particularly NASA has a test stand or some other training facility
or some piece of equipment that a commercial provider may need, we are definitely open
to providing those on a reimbursable basis.
We wanna make sure that we have a level playing field,
that we don't require the commercial providers to all use the system that may--
some may fit their business case and their system and it may not fit others.
So, we have to very careful about maintaining a leveled playing field.
But we would-- we definitely are open and anxious to provide those
that make sense on a reimbursable basis.
Commercial providers are responsible for this certification of flight readiness.
For those of you in the business who know about the Kaufer [phonetic] process.
We're gonna have a Kaufer review.
We probably will not have a DD-250 'cause we're not actually taking ownership of any hardware.
Again, we're not buying missions.
Hopefully, in the services phase, we'll be buying seats.
And that sort of imbues all of our planning going forward.
So NASA-- we even envision that the launch director authority will reside
with the commercial provider.
Now, NASA will have a go-- no go veto for our contracted services.
So, we're, you know, if there's some issue that crops up and we feel
like that there's a safety issue, we would be able to pull our astronauts from that mission.
If the providers then wanted to continue to go forward
with that mission, that would be up to them.
So, we would still be in a position of authority for our astronaut's safety which is a key.
And again, while the commercial provider's gonna be responsible for these activities,
NASA will still be applying our full insight and oversight approach, and then again,
at the end of the day, verifying that these systems are safe
to meet our requirements and the flyer personnel.
Okay. I save the best for last.
Also, there might be a delay.
Here we go.
Notional timeline, and I-- if I could have made this word "notional"
in red blinking lights, I would have done that.
This is very much notional, but it does have sort of--
it incorporates the ideas that we put forward.
At the very top, you can see the COTS and CRS milestones, above,
the white or the COTS milestones.
We have 3 demos-- demonstration flights for SpaceX, one for orbital,
and then the CRS services purchases in red going out 'til 2015.
And then in the next sort of row down,
we have this Commercial Crew Enabling Initiatives starting
with the CCDEV Space Act Agreements that we awarded earlier this year.
Most of those are gonna be wrapped up by the end of this year.
Also feeding into that is another initiative that we used
with the stimulus money were these dual use infrastructure items
where we're augmenting some ground and launch infrastructure with that money
that could potentially be used by commercial providers as well as NASA.
And then, as I mentioned, the IRD and SRD, we hope to get a draft
of those documents out by the end of the summer.
That's that first white tick mark.
And hopefully, baseline those before the end of the calendar year
with the Commercial Human Rating Plan or CHRP.
We've got the first draft that's out on the street now.
If possible, we'd like to turn that around one more time and send that out again at the end
of the summer with the SRD and IRD.
I'm not committing to that 'cause I'm not quite sure if we get a gazillion inputs.
We might not be able to turn around that fast.
But we would like another-- give industry another crack
at that Human-Rating Requirements Plan 'cause it is so critical.
And then this is the key development and demonstration phase right here.
We realized that this is a very aggressive schedule.
It assumes that NASA receives approval to move forward this calendar year.
Now, it does show one phase for development demonstration.
That does not mean it will be one agreement or one relationship.
We could break this up into a design phase and a development phase.
Again, we like Space Act Agreements for this
or potentially some other innovative fixed-price arrangements.
We're not envisioning cost plus contracts for this middle phase
or this development demonstration phase.
We may even have combinations of vehicles and mechanisms with the Space Act
and maybe an additional sister contract.
We are gonna be refining that strategy going forward.
But this is the way we've landed out so far.
We hope to have awards.
If we get approval to proceed with this program by Congress, we'd like to have award sometime
in the middle to the later part of the fiscal year leading
to having multiple providers throughout this period.
And we've received industry input prior, and also the Augustine Committee also received input
over the summer-- last summer that indicated
that the Commercial Crew providers are very aggressive and believe
that they can provide this in about a 3- to 5-year window or timeframe.
So, you can see I've got 3 years in the red, and then sort of a doted line
for an additional 2 years maybe stretching out to 5 years.
So that represents the 3 to 5 years of input that we received preliminarily.
Now we're not gonna know until we actually get proposals
from private industry how long this is gonna take and how fast we can move forward.
And then the services phase, that's the last row here at the bottom.
We do envision this to be firm, fixed price probably for our part 12 contract relationships.
The exact timing for when we are gonna pull the trigger
on the services phase cannot be predicted at this time.
It's gonna depend on the progress and the maturity
of the commercial providers during the development and demonstration phase
as well as the needs of the ISS program.
You don't wanna do it too early because then the commercial providers can't price with any kind
of fidelity what their services phase prices are gonna be.
And you don't wanna do it too late because the ISS program has real needs
for crew transportation.
So we're gonna be assessing that as we go forward on an ongoing basis and when we feel
like the providers are mature enough and the time is right, we'll pull the trigger
for the services phase, hopefully leading to missions in fiscal year 2015, 2016 timeframe.
Okay I got 5 more minutes so if I stretch it our long enough I can avoid questions.
Not that I'm avoiding questions, I want questions of course.
So in summary, the commercial crew initiative design to meet the needs of the ISS program
for commercial crew transportation and enable the growth
of this commercial human space flight industry for use by NASA and other customers.
While this does and I cannot stress this enough, this is a big change
for NASA and the US aerospace industry.
So this is a big deal and we're working through this but we didn't start from scratch.
We start at a lot of-- we used and leveraged a lot of the lessons learned,
a lot of the experience of NASA over the years.
Again, we've been talking about doing this for decades.
So now we're actually doing it and being able to apply those lessons learned going forward.
And if successful, we feel that there are significant benefits,
this could really transform human space flight for future generations.
Results in safe reliable, this is number 6, and cost effective crew transportation
for ISS it's again gonna free NASA to do the beyond LEO exploration mission,
reduce our reliance on foreign systems and hopefully lower the access--
lower the cost of access to space and enhance the industrial base, act as the catalyst
for future programs, a lot of cool things that we believe are benefits to this program.
So in terms of personal note, a lot of people are asking me what this program is like.
And even for me starting out right now, it's a lot like parenthood.
When I first started having kids, a lot of my friends were asking, well,
what is it like to be a parent Phil?
And my response was it is both more challenging and more rewarding
than I ever thought it was gonna be.
And I believe the same could be said about this program.
It's gonna be more challenging and more rewarding than we can envision today
and we already know it's gonna be hard and rewarding.
So but that's what I'm looking forward to, that's what I'm excited about this program
and hope that we can move forward expeditiously, still got a little bit of time.
[ Laughter ]
>> So I will throw up the questions but this will not be your only opportunity for questions.
We're gonna have the Q and A session here and obviously my door is open
at headquarters as well as Ed Mango down at KSC.
And again, a lot of touch points with industry--
okay, a lot of touch points with industry to get your input and we very much want that.
So that's it.
[ Applause ]
>> Oh, thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Phil.
>> Actually, I have so many questions that I don't know where to begin but--
>> One per person.
[ Laughter ]
>> I'm assuming that the list of the three design documents or the documents
that people have to meet in order to have NASA sponsored astronauts fly on these vehicles.
I assume that those only apply to NASA sponsored astronauts if a commercial company wants
to fly somebody else, how do they do they do that, is it the FAA,
where is the FAA on all this, and what about indemnification?
>> Yes, those are all good questions.
I did-- I must have missed that on my slide.
I did have the FAA on there.
But we do envision that eventually that the FAA will be licensing this launches.
We haven't laid out specifically when the FAA is gonna be involved or in the scope
of their timing that's still some forward work.
But we've already engaged in a very good dialogue with the FAA.
We've got a great relationship from the COTS cargo program with the FAA.
We feel like that's been a very, very successful partnership and we like to take
that forward especially since this is suppose to be commercial crew transportation
or commercial human space flight.
>> So the FAA is very much gonna be involved in the exact timing and nature
of the FAA involvement is still forward work associated with us.
But to confirm the first part of your question,
absolutely those three documents will certify commercial vehicles for NASA personnel to fly
to the International Space Station.
If they are gonna go to another destination, even another NASA destination say,
they're gonna go to another place in LEO, supposed we send humans to--
like the Hobble again potentially or some other servicing thing
that will require a different certification.
The loads are gonna be different.
I mean, you got the human rating requirements and those deal
with the requirement for the system.
But also where it's going is important to know so that you can factor both
of those things in for the certification.
So of course, if they're going to a non-NASA location, for example a Bigelow Aerospace module
or some other location that would require some other forms of certification and we'll have
to work out these details whether-- we've gotta work out these details.
>> One more question right here, Phil.
>> Yeah, I think I can have one more question, 47 seconds.
>> Dave Hampson [phonetic], I work at commission on space initiatives at NASA headquarters.
First a comment, Phil, the White House budget language in February made it clear that NASA was
to operate in way from now on that did all the things you're talking about setting
up sustainable commercial industries as we do NASA's other business in the process.
And based on-- solely on the thumbnails we've heard today got
to congratulate you and your team.
I think your team is the only one who actually addressed that part
of the White House direction fully.
>> Thank you.
>> Based on what they've said.
My question was also FAA related so I'll give it a little bit more specific.
Will you be able to at least try to merge the FAA process and request
for documentation inside et cetera with NASA as much as possible so that there is not lot
of double bookkeeping for two totally different agencies these guys have to do?
>> Yeah, that's an excellent question.
And I can say that we haven't work out all those details but that goal
and that issue is foremost and-- on the minds of the study team when we put this together.
We said, whatever relationship that we do develop with the FAA,
we have to ensure that we do not duplicate our request for information that,
I don't know if merge is the right word, but we have to make sure that they are integrated
in a way so that the commercials providers are not confused
and that we have a very clean framework for how to do this.
We wanna make sure-- again, it goes back to helping us,
help them if they have other customers and they're successful
in getting other customers, that's good for NASA.
So the framework that we developed has got to enable those.
We want a seamless process.
We don't want two different processes.
If possible, one for NASA-- one for emission with NASA personnel and another mission
that may not have other-- may not have NASA personnel.
So we would like that to be as integrated as possible.
Good question and thanks for the complement.
At a time.
[ Laughter ]
>> Thanks.