Henry,
Yeah that seems to jibe with what I was remembering. Though I guess it was
more than just not knowing what refurbishment was going to cost, and more
like not knowing it well enough that they could justify it in an FFP cost
proposal as being realistic and reasonable.
~Jon
On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 10:23 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Sun, 10 Jan 2016, Jonathan Goff wrote:
... (AFAIK) NASA still wants new Dragons for CRS...
This is a bit off-topic, but wasn't Gwynne saying that SpaceX also wasn't
sure how to realistically price Dragon reuse at the time of the original
CRS-1 bid, which was part of why they were fine with offering new Dragons
for each flight? I know it's popular to blame all ills on NASA
conservatism,
but I thought Gwynne was on the record as saying that they both had
reasons
to go that route for CRS-1.
My notes from the Q&A at the end of her talk at Space Access 2011:
Why all new Dragons for NASA? Couldn't sign an FAR contract for this
without knowing what it takes to refurbish a Dragon, which they didn't
know because they'd never done it. NASA decided it was simpler just not
to go there for the first contract, but isn't opposed to it long-term.
At the time, they were enthusiastic about marketing "DragonLab" reflights
of those capsules to commercial customers, although a bit concerned that
there seemed to be lots of customers who wanted little bits of capacity, so
putting together a reasonably full flight looked like a headache.
That was what she was saying for public consumption five years ago,
anyway. DragonLab would appear to have gone on the back burner, at the
very least.
Henry
