Working together with industry to identify and resolve problem areas, NASA has evolved innovative contracting approaches which emulate good commercial contracting practices while retaining some traditional Government contracting practices where industry has expressed a preference for their retention.
NASA acquires ELV [Expendable Launch Vehicle] services in quantities large enough to serve as a reasonable business base for the launch services provider. We do that without using MilSpecs or FedSpecs; we do it based on performance specifications.
We do not require certification of cost or pricing data; we allow the offerors to propose their own unique and creative approaches to managing, producing, and ensuring the quality of their product; and we have reduced the NASA level of oversight.
Sounds contemporary, but that statement was made nearly 30 years ago by Michael T. Lyons, Deputy Associate Administrator for Space Flight (NASA) at the Commercial Space Markets: Launch Vehicles hearings before the subcommittee on Space, July 17, 1991.
What went wrong then? What is going right, now? Perhaps the “commerciality” of a good or service cannot be dictated by government commitments to commercial practices on the buying side, which it often cannot follow through on, but instead must be imposed by an innovative firm with outside money.
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