SpaceDev presents (SPDV)
SpaceDev (SPDV.OB), the little entrepreneurial space company that's vying for some big NASA contracts, is presenting to NASA on their biggest potential piece of business yet, and generating some news in the process.
I wrote last month about SpaceDev's selection as a finalist for the $500 million COTS program to provide NASA with a viable service and delivery vehicle for the international space station to take the load off of (and partially replace) the aging and expensive Shuttle. No decision is expected about this contract until at least August, but NASA officials are making the rounds and hearing presentations from the various finalists -- including, yesterday and today, SpaceDev's presentation and prototype display at Centennial Airport outside Denver.
I didn't buy SpaceDev based on their ability to get this particular contract -- in fact, one of the reasons I really like this company is that they are not totally reliant on any one contract, though their performance is clearly very "lumpy" as larger contracts come and go. If they did get this contract, however, the impact would be absolutely huge on this company. That's a $500 million contract over several years, for a company that currently sports a market cap of under $40 million and had sales of about $14 million last year. All of the other finalists are tiny, too, so I expect that whoever gets this contract is going to have a fire lit under their seats, even if this isn't enough money to really cover the full development of a commercial space program ($500 million is only about 2 percent of the annual NASA budget, I think). All of the finalists in this program, including SpaceDev are planning to use this as basically government sponsored R&D to help them build commercially viable orbiters, though hopefully there will be some significant profit in there as well.
There has been some interesting news, including photos of the prototype craft and a lot more background on the plane and the various companies that are involved in the contract proposal (including the folks who will fabricate the composite airframe, the Starsys division of SPDV that will handle the robotics and the docking mechanisms, and the core SpaceDev folks who designed the engines and propulsion system that powered SpaceShipOne).
The articles are local cheerleading to some extent, so I wouldn't take their boosterism as any guarantee that SpaceDev is going to get any of this business, but they're still worth reading.
Dream assignment: Colo.-based team vies for NASA contract to build new spacecraft is an article from today's Denver Post that talks about the Starsys folks (the Starsys division, formerly an independent company that SpaceDev just acquired very recently, is headquartered in Colorado).
and the Daily Times-Call of Longmont, CO, had a nice article today as well, also building on the Starsys Colorado roots --The next generation: Gunbarrel company hopes to help fill shuttle void. This article goes into a little more depth on the SpaceDev "philosophy" of off-the-shelf design, efficiency, and space commercialization.
Finally, the Boulder Daily Camera pitched in with an article, too -- Proposed NASA orbiter has Boulder ties. For a little non-local perspective, there was also a good article on Space.com today about the presentation, and MSNBC's science editor Alan Boyle wrote last night that Spaceship Dreams Get Real and included some nice updates on the other five finalists.
I'm encouraged after seeing all this reporting about SpaceDev's presentation -- I don't know whether they'll get any of this contract, but the more I learn about the bid the stronger it sounds. SpaceDev has put together a good team with a diverse set of specialties and I suppose they've got as good a chance as anyone -- and perhaps the fact that they seem to be the only ones who are basing their proposal on a tested space plane will help (the other candidates are generally focused on capsules, or at least reusable vehicles that look like capsules and, I assume land in the water using parachutes instead of at airports as SpaceDev's DreamChaser is capable of).
We'll see. Final presentations in August, and it seems most folks expect that this initial work will be split among at least two of the contenders.
I wrote last month about SpaceDev's selection as a finalist for the $500 million COTS program to provide NASA with a viable service and delivery vehicle for the international space station to take the load off of (and partially replace) the aging and expensive Shuttle. No decision is expected about this contract until at least August, but NASA officials are making the rounds and hearing presentations from the various finalists -- including, yesterday and today, SpaceDev's presentation and prototype display at Centennial Airport outside Denver.
I didn't buy SpaceDev based on their ability to get this particular contract -- in fact, one of the reasons I really like this company is that they are not totally reliant on any one contract, though their performance is clearly very "lumpy" as larger contracts come and go. If they did get this contract, however, the impact would be absolutely huge on this company. That's a $500 million contract over several years, for a company that currently sports a market cap of under $40 million and had sales of about $14 million last year. All of the other finalists are tiny, too, so I expect that whoever gets this contract is going to have a fire lit under their seats, even if this isn't enough money to really cover the full development of a commercial space program ($500 million is only about 2 percent of the annual NASA budget, I think). All of the finalists in this program, including SpaceDev are planning to use this as basically government sponsored R&D to help them build commercially viable orbiters, though hopefully there will be some significant profit in there as well.
There has been some interesting news, including photos of the prototype craft and a lot more background on the plane and the various companies that are involved in the contract proposal (including the folks who will fabricate the composite airframe, the Starsys division of SPDV that will handle the robotics and the docking mechanisms, and the core SpaceDev folks who designed the engines and propulsion system that powered SpaceShipOne).
The articles are local cheerleading to some extent, so I wouldn't take their boosterism as any guarantee that SpaceDev is going to get any of this business, but they're still worth reading.
Dream assignment: Colo.-based team vies for NASA contract to build new spacecraft is an article from today's Denver Post that talks about the Starsys folks (the Starsys division, formerly an independent company that SpaceDev just acquired very recently, is headquartered in Colorado).
and the Daily Times-Call of Longmont, CO, had a nice article today as well, also building on the Starsys Colorado roots --The next generation: Gunbarrel company hopes to help fill shuttle void. This article goes into a little more depth on the SpaceDev "philosophy" of off-the-shelf design, efficiency, and space commercialization.
Finally, the Boulder Daily Camera pitched in with an article, too -- Proposed NASA orbiter has Boulder ties. For a little non-local perspective, there was also a good article on Space.com today about the presentation, and MSNBC's science editor Alan Boyle wrote last night that Spaceship Dreams Get Real and included some nice updates on the other five finalists.
I'm encouraged after seeing all this reporting about SpaceDev's presentation -- I don't know whether they'll get any of this contract, but the more I learn about the bid the stronger it sounds. SpaceDev has put together a good team with a diverse set of specialties and I suppose they've got as good a chance as anyone -- and perhaps the fact that they seem to be the only ones who are basing their proposal on a tested space plane will help (the other candidates are generally focused on capsules, or at least reusable vehicles that look like capsules and, I assume land in the water using parachutes instead of at airports as SpaceDev's DreamChaser is capable of).
We'll see. Final presentations in August, and it seems most folks expect that this initial work will be split among at least two of the contenders.
Labels: SPDV
This article posted by One Guy @ 6/23/2006 10:50:00 AM 0 comments
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