In 2017, NASA decided to design, test, and produce xEMU [Extravehicular Mobility Units] suits in-house. As a result, the Agency would serve as the prime integrator of six suits built from components supplied by 27 different contractors and vendors.
That was from a NASA IG report on the new space suit development for the Artemis program to the moon. Elon Musk tweeted that it “Seems like too many cooks in the kitchen.” NASA has spent $420 million already on three space suit programs since 2007, and is expected to spend more than $600 million more to complete the effort with delays into 2025, affecting a moon landing scheduled for 2024. Elon Musk offered, “SpaceX could do it if needed.”
It looks like NASA decided to be lead systems integrator in 2017 after a decade of underperformance by its contractors. That decision doesn’t seem to have led to much better outcomes, however. NASA originally put out an RFI in 2019 to seek sources for production of the xEMU suits after NASA-led development finished up. However, in April 2021, NASA changed direction:
The [new] xEVAS RFI proposes a commercial services approach to acquiring extravehicular activity capabilities for the ISS and Artemis programs. Under this approach, NASA will pay to use contractor-developed suits instead of building the xEMU qualification and flight suits in-house or purchasing extravehicular suits from a contractor. Historically, NASA has relied on government-owned hardware to provide extravehicular activity capabilities.
… even though NASA will provide access to xEMU technical data, the xEVAS RFI does not require potential contractors to utilize any of this data for their spacesuit development. Instead, NASA will give industry the choice to either leverage NASA designs or propose their own designs. Therefore, it is unclear to what extent NASA’s $420 million investment to date will be utilized. Additionally, although highly desired, the xEVAS RFI does not stipulate that the suit be compatible with both the ISS and Artemis programs. This could result in industry developing (and NASA purchasing) two different spacesuits.
Now, there’s 92 distinct end-items in the xEMU suit, and that’s contracted among 27 vendors. Is that too many cooks in the kitchen? Perhaps, but certainly not by most government contracting standards. Prime contractors will often contract out 70% or so of program work.
I wouldn’t charge NASA with causing a proliferation of contractors. NASA probably took the existing supplier base in 2017 and decided to separately contract with them in order to take ownership. Indeed, they probably couldn’t have forced an integrated outcome as the agency would have to accept one of the vendors’ proposals and no vendor had all the past performance qualifications to do it.
SpaceX is well known for vertically integrating is launch production due to high costs and timelines from traditional aerospace vendors. The company also has a space suit designed for its Dragon Crew capsule, so it already has some experience in the area. The new procurement approach NASA is taking seems to be inviting SpaceX and others to take a shot at it.
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