ARS Technica by Eric Berger - 5/3/2022
"You get it done with that competitive spirit. You get it done cheaper."NASA Administrator Bill Nelson appeared before a US Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday to discuss NASA's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. Then, quite unexpectedly, he dropped a bombshell.
After his opening remarks, Nelson was asked what, in his opinion, was the biggest threat to NASA's goal of landing humans on the Moon by 2025. Nelson responded that the agency needed competition in its program to develop a Human Landing System. In other words, he wanted Congress to support NASA's request for funding to develop a second lander alongside SpaceX's Starship vehicle.
But Nelson didn't stop there. He said Congress needs to fund this lander contract with a fixed-price award, which only pays companies when they reach milestones. This contracting mechanism is relatively new for the space agency, which traditionally has used "cost-plus" contracts for large development programs. Such awards pay contractors their expenses, plus a fee.
"I believe that that is the plan that can bring us all the value of competition," Nelson said of fixed-price contracts. "You get it done with that competitive spirit. You get it done cheaper, and that allows us to move away from what has been a plague on us in the past, which is a cost-plus contract, and move to an existing contractual price."
More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/nasa-chief-says-cost-plus-contracts-are-a-plague-on-the-space-agency/
