Abstract
Following the spectacular success of SpaceX’s Dragon flight to the International Space Station (ISS) in May 2012, it wasn’t too surprising when the Obama Administration tried to take some of the credit. When Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren declared that the Obama Administration had made the Dragon flight possible, there were some rumblings among the Republicans, who felt justifiably aggrieved, since the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program had been proposed by the Bush Administration in 2005 and the COTS contract that funded the SpaceX mission had been awarded in 2006.
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- 1.
RpK was originally awarded a contract worth US$207 million. The company received only US$32.1 million before NASA terminated their contract for failure to complete milestones. SpaceX was awarded US$278 million. In 2011, additional milestones brought the contract value to US$396 million. The Orbital Sciences Corporation was awarded US$170 million and, in 2011, additional milestones brought the contract value to US$288 million.
- 2.
PlanetSpace proposed using an existing rocket to provide initial cargo delivery capability in December 2011 before switching to the Athena 3 solid-fueled rocket Alliant Techsystems would build to support a full range of cargo services starting in late 2013.
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Seedhouse, E. (2013). The engine of competition. In: SpaceX. Other Springer-Praxis books of related interest by Erik Seedhoose. Praxis, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5514-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5514-1_2
Publisher Name: Praxis, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5513-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5514-1
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