For all the hoopla and commentary over the Christmas gifts given to SpaceX and Orbital, we nevertheless have to wonder how PlanetSpace ended up with a piece of coal in its stocking. Bringing together a team of "been there, done that" Who-villian contractors, PlanetSpace certainly fielded a competent proposal. Too competent and too cheap, perhaps? How else could Orbital, with opposite polarity on those all important proposal criteria have eked out a win? We thought the days of putting lipstick on pigs were behind us now.
The Emperor's heavy hand will be evident to those that go looking for it. It certainly won't help his negotiating position with the suits when the time comes.
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Having some knowledge of the system they proposed, I'd say that it was far too expensive, but not a terrible design. It was; however, business as usual. Did the Emperor have a say in it? Maybe, but who knows. If I was going to do business as usual, I'd slap a can on top of an Atlas 5 or Delta 4 and have a go at it, but that's not what the PlanetSpace group was working on. You, sir, show a considerable amount of ignorance on this subject.
BA-LM-ATK-PS aren't telling the whole story in their well-placed complaints.
Did anybody read the source selection letter? Far too expensive? PS proposed less expensive than Orbital, my friend. Before you tell RocketMan he is ignorant, you might want to get the facts straight yourself.
I would expect that, like other last minute Bush administration shenanigans, this contracting activity will fall under some detailed review by the incoming administrator. The selection is clearly not based on any cost-risk-performance criteria that would hold water. It is very well to encourage SpaceX to build the Falcon 9. It is not acceptable to base an entire logistics system on launch systems that are either non-existent or have no track record of success. This is gambling. Given the past year's showing when it comes to even the cleverest of people gambling I think it is high time we stopped this self-destructive behavior.
It is high time that we only permit our government institutions to be run by grown ups again. The pathetic crew in place right now don't qualify. It is my recommendation that they take some lessons from Rumsfeld- who staged a disappearing act after his discrediting that was truly amazing. Mr Griffin and his close cronies would be do well to pay attention to this performance.
Wow, you got this right! Don't imagine Cowling will write about that do you?
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