This cancellation was entirely predictable for anyone who spent some time on the inside. I can't adequately describe the mixture of sadness, frustration, bitterness, and anger I feel about this tremendous waste of investment and many people's time and energy. I see most commenters laying blame on the prime contractor, MAXAR, and NASA certainly throws MAXAR under the bus in the press release. But this is a case where we have to look carefully and honestly at the role that NASA played, and the fundamental problem with NASA's approach to the "Public/Private Partnership" method of accomplishing space missions. A couple key points I'd like to make: 1) The fundamental issue with the NASA's Public/Private Partnership approach is that once the contract is signed, NASA forgets that it's a "partnership" and it reverts to its typical role as the "Customer", demanding massive scope changes to minimize program technical risk while expecting the commercial "partner" to foot the bill for all of the changes. I was involved in an experiment that was supposed to fly on this mission, called MakerSat (the gold rectangular box shown in the figure in the article). When the "partnership" contract was signed, this was funded as a low-cost "Class D" experiment (COTS parts, just enough redundancy and QA to have a good chance of working without breaking the bank). Over time, the NASA 'customer' imposed dramatic changes in requirements - radiation tolerance, triple redundancy, etc., etc. - none of which was in the original contract, none of which was really needed, and all of which drove cost increases by many, many $M, – and NASA expected my small business to pay for all of the scope increase. Needless to say, we were relieved (and heartbroken) when this experiment was de-scoped from the mission. 2)The overall thesis of the mission that NASA chose to pursue was based upon a dead-end business case: Let's spend billions on figuring out how to service large, old, expensive satellites that were never designed to be serviced. It may have seemed like a good idea 15 years ago, but the industry has changed dramatically in the time that the program has dragged out. Yes, there is something of a business to be made in servicing existing satellites, as Space Logistics is proving, but it's not a growth market that scales sufficiently to justify massive continuing co-investment by a commercial partner to accommodate NASA's scope creep.
NASA is so risk-averse these days that it has a crippling effect on all its partnerships. They unilaterally change risk posture during development and then complain about cost growth. After two failures, it will be interesting to see what happens to the CLPS program. Hopefully, they will stick to the original CLPS concept and let these companies figure out how to do things.
Kyra Adams (Kim)
9mo
Rob Hoyt This was an interesting read! Curious, what were NASA’s motivations / justifications for some of the dramatic changes requested? Were they to abide by some safety guideline, increase mission success, etc.? Such requested should have been scoped out initially anyway, but just wondering if it’s just been a cultural issue for pub/private partnerships.
Jim Baer
9mo
We at Ball Aerospace worked on the Aspect Camera (AC) and Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) AXAF, renamed Chandra after launch, in the '90's. We had a great relationship with MSFC on the AC, but it did not go as well for the ISIM. That group kept making change requests. Our manager would record these and present the resulting cost increases to MSFC. MSFC in turn pressured upper management to replace that manager. His replacement just collected all the change orders and presented them en masse after delivery of the ISIM. Years of negotiations followed. The contract covered changes, but the politics overrode it. The Aspect Camera was delivered at the agreed adjusted cost a little late, but with it the Pointing, Control, and Attitude Determination (PCAD) system performed beyond 3X beyond requirements and continues to do so now almost a quarter of a century later without ever going to the backup "B" side. Cooperative success was possible, but it was not a discipline always followed then or now. On the other hand, winning by underbidding, sometimes because the challenge in poorly understood, is a great budget extender for NASA (and other agencies) until it's not.
Dennis Wingo
9mo
I agree, with a caveat. It's in the contract language. I know that TUl had no power here as they were a sub, but Maxar should have known what NASA GSFC was going to pull and put contract language in, that if a SOW or scope change happened, that it would be priced by Maxar and then a negotiated dollar amount for the change incorporated, with a flow down to the subs. This story was told to me by Boeing. Dick Grant, VP of the Boeing work package on the Space Station, who kept their contract (work package 1) (the only one among the primes to do so) within budget and schedule. "We would get a call from MSFC asking for a scope or SOW change to our work package. I had a team to deal with this. We asked the MSFC management to fax over the requested change. I had a team that would then develop an SOW for the change, and we would then price it. Then our contracts team would put together a contract change order, based upon the requested work. We would sign it, then send it back to MSFC for their signature. Of course NASA did not have the money to do these changes, and almost every time, this is where the scope or SOW change would die. This is how we kept Workpackage 1 on time and on schedule. Maxar did not know how to play.
Gregory Vialle
9mo
Disappointingly, I hear OSAM-2 is also cancelled. It sure seems like NASA (and some primes) have lost sight of the culture of choosing the hard things, in favor of only doing the things that won't fail. This is why I started my own venture, based on the philosophy of 1) mapping what HAS to be done, and 2) solving the problems NO ONE else is working on. 3) embracing failure as a teacher.
Joel Sercel
9mo
100%. Also, did you see that just one NASA center had about 200 full time people working on this? That is simply insane. The issue there is two fold: 1) That is ≈$40M/yr in real costs to the tax payer that add very little value. and 2) Those people don't build, they watch other people build and they write requirements they don't understand. This cause cost growth (as you point out) on the part of the contractor.
Sergey Zhdanyuk
9mo
Still, I can’t resist commenting. (At the same time, I understand that there is unlikely to be an answer, but oh well) Here I would like to draw attention to 2 points: NASA, as a customer, puts forward an awkward project; The contractor MAXAR does not fulfill the terms of the contract, explaining this by “technical complexity” and insufficient funding.” so here it is: 1. even if you consider the project a “dead end”, you should have done it - since you took money for it. You could THEN express your disagreement in a separate opinion. (But you didn’t do that?) 2. even if the “customer”, who was considered a partner, began to position himself as a “Client” and at the same time put forward some “special” demands, if he pays for these demands, then what are the problems? Triple redundancy? Radiation resistance? - for God's sake/ 3. What is the "complexity of the project " if you take a CONVENTIONAL SATELLITE PLATFORM ( the cost of which varies, but anyone can find it out) and put a manipulator on it? ( or several manipulators ) ? The entire “project” easily fits into an amount approximately equal to 5-10 million dollars (IMHO)
Bernd M. Weiss
9mo
What happens now? Gregory? Any follow up projects in the pipeline?
Space Infrastructure Advocate at Robots in Space LLC
9moCouldn't have said it better myself, Rob Hoyt. I would point out that there are more successful examples of NASA PPPs: the iconic COTS program, which gave us the Falcon 9, and more recently the CLPS program, which yielded multiple lunar landers including the recent IM-1 "Odie." But for both of those, NASA respected the boundaries.