Nov 3 2003
From The Space Library
NASA filed a request for proposal with Federal Business Opportunities, inviting companies to define their schedules for Orbital Space Plane (OSP) design completion, development, testing, and delivery. NASA requested the completion of a crew-rescue vehicle by 2008 and a crew-transfer vehicle by 2012, despite congressional requests that NASA slow down its work on the OSP project. The Boeing Company and a Lockheed Martin-Northrop Grumman team had both been developing concepts for the OSP, a vehicle anticipated as the next space vehicle to ferry astronaut crews to and from the ISS. NASA had hoped to award the prime contract in August 2004 at the earliest. On 29 October, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, responsible for authorizing NASA programs, had restated its position that NASA should halt work on the OSP Program until the White House, Congress, and NASA had agreed on the direction the U.S. human spaceflight program would take after completion of the ISS. Congressional leaders had also questioned NASA's funding profile for the program. (Jason Bates, “NASA Releases Request for Orbital Space Plane Plans Despite Congressional Concern About the Program,” Space News, 4 November 2003.
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