Boeing, United Launch Alliance, and DoD To Grapple Over $271 Million

Well, this will be interesting. Stand by for some alphabet soup. First, the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) says Boeing needs to reimburse $72 million it has already received. Next, DCAA says the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA, not to be confused with DCAA) should notify the joint Boeing-Lockheed Martin venture called the United Launch [...]

Billion Dollar Spacecraft? No, Multi-Billion Dollar Spacecraft

“Lockheed Martin expects a multibillion-dollar production order from the U.S. government in 2012 for a next-generation satellite system,” reports Space News. The order in question–perhaps the two ‘exquisite’ satellites flagged in this post from October 2009?

Return-To-Moon Not Quite Dead Yet

NASA’s prior work to return Americans to the moon isn’t dead yet, but we may want to get a priest. The big remaining issue will be about funding for contract termination, which I predict will be paid for by NASA.  And that’s not a very bold prediction. Termination costs are why no contractor in their [...]

Lockheed Loses ‘Iridium Next’ Satellite Build To Thales Team

The essential details of the WSJ article: $2.1 billion to build the 72 satellites including nine spares $800 million to launch (and to do some undefined ground upgrades) Launches envisioned as 2015 to 2017 $1.8 billion in loan guarantees from ‘French export-credit agency’ Loral considered the margins so thin that they earlier dropped out of [...]

Prompt Global Strike and the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle

The loss of DARPA’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle, which probably disintegrated around the nine minute mark into its 30 minute flight profile, while no doubt disappointing to DARPA, was far from a total failure. What caused the failure?  Under investigation, however, in Aviation Week, the word ‘recession’ used in describing the change in the HTV-2 in [...]