Sierra Nevada Challenges NASA On $6.8bln Space Taxi Contracts With Boeing,SpaceX

(RTTNews) - Sierra Nevada Corp. said that it has filed a legal challenge to the award of contracts by the NASA to Boeing Co. (BA) and SpaceX under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability or CCtCap program. The CCtCap program will restore U.S. transportation capability to the International Space Station.

Sierra Nevada Corp. or SNC, Boeing and SpaceX submitted separate proposals for the CCtCap program. While all three competitors were found to be compliant and awardable under the criteria set forth in the request for proposal or RFP, only two proposals were selected (Boeing and SpaceX), one of which would result in a substantial increased cost to the public despite near equivalent technical and past performance scores, SNC said.

SNC stated that NASA's own Source Selection Statement and debrief indicate that there are serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process. SNC, therefore, feels that there is no alternative but to institute a legal challenge.

According to SNC, with the current awards, the U.S. government would spend up to $900 million more at the publicly announced contracted level for a space program equivalent to the program that SNC proposed.

SNC's filing seeks a further detailed review and evaluation of the submitted proposals and capabilities.

On 16th September 2014, the U.S. space agency NASA said that it selected Boeing and billionaire Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or Space X, to transport U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station from U.S. soil using their CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively, with a goal of ending the nation's sole reliance on Russia in 2017. The maximum potential value of the FAR-based firm fixed-price contracts is $6.8 billion — $4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion for SpaceX.