This site may earn chapter commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

In a new report on NASA's Commercial Coiffure Development Program published this week, the Office of the Inspector General delivered a pointed indictment of the agency's bureaucratic delays, and confirmed that the project will not reach completion until at least 2018. The source of the problem seems to be in coordination with the corporate partners that are the plan's target, virtually notably Boeing and SpaceX. Though the aim of this endeavor was to appoint the efficiency and ability of the free market toward space exploration, it seems to have had trivial effect on the government's tendency toward discussion and delay.

Notation that this written report was produced before Thursday's explosion of a SpaceX Falcon 9 at Cape Canaveral. Its thoughts and recommendations, every bit well as its evaluation of the companies' looming technical challenges, do not take this event into account.

The cadre of the event seems to be shifting requirements, and an arthritic system for safety checks. It seems that the engineers at Boeing and SpaceX have been dealing with moving astronomical goal-posts, as their designs take had to modify in response to what they see equally shifting priorities late in the game. The report warns that such changes create delays and funding shortfalls as companies have to redesign their technology too far into the development process. The report claims that while slow progress could one time be blamed on irregular funding, at this point pure blueprint issues present a much more time consuming problem.

SpaceX-Falcon-9-vertical

Then, there are the safety checks. Any time that a safe business organization is found and reported (and when you're designing a manned spacecraft there volition be many of those), a condom review is supposed to come up in and assess the situation, and whether the problem has been fixed. NASA's goal is to consummate these reviews in just eight weeks, allowing the teams to movement forward at a reasonable pace, merely the report claims bodily wait times can reach 6 months or more.

crewdragon_superdracosThis is a trouble when your launch schedule says yous should be in the air in a year or so; when your safety check procedure takes major fractions of your overall time limit, yous're going to either miss your target or launch an improperly checked vehicle. NASA has, rightly, opted for the sometime of these paths, but of course a far preferable solution would be to actually become the projection moving at a reasonable pace while keeping safety checks intact. That was the plan all along.

These delays have required NASA to purchase more launch seats to fulfill their ongoing requirements — $490 meg, or $82 meg a seat for six more seats. And, the worst example scenario: "If the Program experiences boosted delays," says the report, "NASA may need to buy additional seats from Russia to ensure continued United states presence on ISS."

In the end, some arraign must be laid at the feet of Boeing and SpaceX for their ongoing technology troubles, simply most of the potential for positive alter is at NASA. The report claims the solution to this consequence is better oversight, and increased accountability for the workers making the checks. NASA executives agreed to implement a monitor for checks, and said that it would consider how to build amend communication — the Inspector Full general notes that "we believe NASA needs to accept additional action."