So 2010 begins with delays for two high profile projects on either side of the Atlantic ocean. NASA’s Commercial Crew Development initiative still has no announcement about the awarding of its $50 million and the European Union’s much delayed satellite navigation system Galileo still has no space segment contractA fight between the Franco-German EADS Astrium and Germany’s OHB-Systems the prospects for anyone to make any profit out of producing the satellites dimmed as the companies were told by the EU that only 22 spacecraft, not 28, would be ordered
Galileo has been delayed to such a degree that a “late 2009” contract award slip to “early 2010” is no great disaster for the programme but the question really is, why is there a delay for the announcement and how ominous is that?
Meanwhile NASA’s CCDev, an “initiative” that was to see $50 million split between one or more companies wanting to develop a commercial space transport concept and related hardware, could never announce its funded space act agreement awards
Originally planning for a November announcement, two months on, CCDev is likely to suffer a similar fate to its human rating study counterpart and become something else, rolling into the commercial transportation programme that is expected be a part of the human spaceflight vision US president Barack Obama is thought to be planning to unveil in February with this 2011 budget request
Rob,
Are you speculating or do you know for a fact that the $50M CCDev award has been cancelled? It’s not clear in the article.
My suspicion on CCDev is that it has been put on hold while this proposed multi billion dollar commercial crew competition is put together for Congress to consider and so CCDev will never happen as planned, rather those funds will go into the new commercial pot. I guess in a way I am saying its cancelled because the down selected winners of CCDev will have to recompete in the new commercial program
So in other words, you are guessing on what may have happened to CCDev but you don’t have any word yet on what actually happenned.
In any event, the CCDev funding is part of the Stimulus package. The Stimulus money has to be spent one way or another before September 30th 2010. I suppose that you could still cancel the CCDev solicitation and use the $50 million on other human exploration projects. But it seems odd to have a bunch of companies make a proposal and then choose none of these proposals. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Yep! That is what a blog is for, wild speculation