I Took The Money – I’m Not Crazy (Dudley Moore quote from the movie “Arthur”, 2007)

[The following article was written by Phil McAlister, Director of NASA’s Commercial Space Division.? The views reflected here are those of Phil McAlister and do not necessarily reflect the views of NASA.]

One of the things that worked out in favor of NASA’s Commercial Cargo Program (also known as Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS) was that nobody really paid much attention to it in the beginning (circa 2005).? When then-NASA Administrator Mike Griffin announced the program, he used the word “gamble” to describe it.? He thought it could work, but he wasn’t sure because it had never been done before.? Failure was in fact an option for COTS.

Also at that time, the Agency had lots of options for cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS).? The Shuttle, with its 35,000+ pounds of payload capacity to the ISS, had just returned to flight in July 2005.? The Russians, Japanese, and Europeans all had ISS cargo delivery systems.? And the Crew Exploration Vehicle, part of the recently established Constellation Program to go back to the Moon and Mars, had a cargo variant that NASA planned to use for ISS cargo delivery.

For all those reasons, COTS flew under the radar for the first few years.? It was a back-up plan to a back-up plan that most people in the Agency thought would fail anyway.? But incrementally, things changed.? The Space Shuttle was getting close to retirement, which it did in 2011.? We stopped buying cargo transportation from the Russians in 2011.? The cargo variant of the Crew Exploration Vehicle was canceled for budget reasons.? And while Europe and Japan had their cargo transportation systems (the Automated Transfer Vehicle and the H-II Transfer Vehicle, respectively), each had a finite number of flights planned.? It was becoming clear that without the commercial cargo delivery systems, there would be a large shortfall in our ability to keep the ISS resupplied.

If you look carefully at NASA’s messaging during this time, you will see this incremental change in importance of the COTS program.? It was originally a “gamble” or a back-up plan, then our messaging changed to “mixed fleet” – in other words, we were going to use a mixed fleet of all the ISS cargo delivery systems, including the commercial systems.? By, 2010, we were referring to the SpaceX Dragon and Orbital Sciences Cygnus systems as NASA’s primary means of keeping the ISS resupplied.?

But, as I mentioned, it was an incremental change, not noticed by many outside the Agency unless you were paying very close attention.

Enter the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans committee, aka The Augustine Committee.? It was a blue ribbon committee chartered by NASA at the request of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in May 2009.? The review aimed to “examine ongoing and planned NASA development activities, as well as potential alternatives, and present options for advancing a safe, innovative, affordable, and sustainable human space flight program in the years following Space Shuttle retirement”.? [Note:? I was NASA’s liaison to the Committee, and I participated in almost all of its deliberations.? It was a fascinating time for me, and I will likely post an article about it in the future.]

Most of the focus of the Committee was on the Constellation Program.? But the Committee also had to deal with the question of what to do with the ISS now that the Space Shuttle was being retired.

The Committee formed four sub-groups, and Dr. Sally Ride led the Shuttle-ISS sub-group.? The sub-group received detailed briefings from NASA and others about the retirement of the Shuttle and the status of the ISS.? While most of the space community was sleeping on the issue of the shortfall in ISS cargo delivery capability, Sally picked up on it almost immediately.

The Final Report of the Committee contained the following finding (page 57):? “Commercial cargo carriers: ?NASA’s planned transition of much of the ISS cargo resupply to the commercial sector is a positive development. ?Financial incentives should be added to those suppliers to meet their schedule milestones.”?

This was just one of over 40 findings contained in the report, and it didn’t garner much attention.? Regardless, the finding was in the report, and Sally stated the need for additional incentives for COTS during one of the Committee’s public meetings.

Back in Washington DC, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy were figuring out what to do the Augustine Committee’s findings.? My understanding is that a NASA detailee to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Rich Leshner (a colleague and good friend of mine), remembered the public meeting where Sally had mentioned the additional incentives and decided it would be a good idea to add some money to the COTS budget for a variety of reasons, the most notable being that Sally had recommended it, and her words carried weight.

When the FY2011 President’s Budget Request for NASA was released in February 2010, it included an additional $312 million for COTS.

Funny thing though – the COTS Program Manager, Alan Lindenmoyer, and I didn’t want any extra money.? NASA hadn’t requested it, and Alan felt that SpaceX and Orbital were already extremely incentivized to meet their milestones – both companies had already been awarded contracts potentially worth more than a billion dollars each to resupply the ISS once they finished development of their systems.? They had plenty of incentive.? And I didn’t want people to accuse COTS of having a cost overrun if we just gave the companies more money.? The COTS agreements were fixed-price, and I didn’t think it was appropriate or necessary to give the companies more money for what they said they were going to do originally.

Now, we weren’t crazy.? We took the money.?

But we didn’t just give it to the companies for the already-agreed-to scope of the agreements.? Alan decided to split the money evenly between the two companies and added milestones to the agreements for additional tests and reviews.

And then another funny thing happened.? One of the milestones we added to the SpaceX agreement was for electromagnetic interference testing of the Dragon. When that test was performed, it was discovered that there was some interference that would have affected the Dragon navigation systems which would have prevented berthing to the ISS.? The test wasn’t included in the original agreement, and I don’t believe SpaceX would have performed the test on its own.?

Had the Dragon not been able to berth with the ISS during its demonstration mission in May 2012, it would have been a huge blow to the COTS program, and it would have seriously undermined the Commercial Crew Program, which was modeled after COTS.? Luckily, the additional test revealed the interference issue, and SpaceX subsequently fixed the problem.?

Space policy is a relatively small world.? Two or three people can make a huge difference.? In this case, had Sally not picked up on the looming cargo capability shortfall, and had Rich not picked up on Sally’s comments, and had Alan not been insistent that that the extra COTS money go towards additional milestones, then things would have played out very differently.? I don’t even like thinking about what might have happened because it would have been bad.

As John F. Kennedy is quoted as saying:? “One person can make a difference, and everyone should try”.