Sec. 224. Commercial cargo and crew capabilities
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Congress finds that— NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, Cargo Resupply Services, and Commercial Crew Program demonstrate the potential for procuring routine, commercially provided access to the ISS and to low-Earth orbit using innovative and cost-effective development and procurement strategies; Federal investments in the U.S. private space industry have the ability to provide for lower cost access to space for researchers and for commercial ventures; commercially provided space transportation is critical to maximizing utilization of the ISS; encouraging competition among launch service providers and maintaining multiple space transportation options helps to reduce long-term costs to the Federal Government and to induce continual improvement in available private-sector services; and consistent with section 201(b) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 (42 U.S.C. 18311(b)), maintaining multiple launch service providers helps ensure uninterrupted access to the space environment should a particular provider’s services become unavailable.
It is the sense of Congress that the Administration— should continue to support the development of safe, reliable, and cost effective commercial launch capabilities for the primary purpose of securing domestic access to the ISS as quickly and safely as possible; and should encourage a viable commercial market for the capabilities under paragraph (1). It is the policy of the United States that, to foster the competitive development, operation, and improvement of private space transportation services, services for Federal Government access to and return from the ISS, whenever feasible, shall be procured via fair and open competition for well-defined, milestone-based, Federal Acquisition Regulation-based contracts under section 201(a) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 (42 U.S.C. 18311(a)).
In evaluating commercial space transportation service providers, the Administrator— shall aim to minimize the life-cycle costs of obtaining transportation services; shall assure compliance with all safety and mission assurance requirements; shall consider contractor financial investment into the development of transportation capabilities; and for commercial crew transport services— shall consider flexibility in design, including sample return capabilities; and shall provide a written notification and justification to the appropriate committees of Congress if the price per seat exceeds the cost negotiated by NASA for crew transport in April 2013.
In implementing the policy under subsection (c), the Administrator shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress, not later than 120 days after the date of enactment of this Act, a strategy for transitioning from Space Act Agreements to Federal Acquisition Regulation-based contracts for the procurement of crew transportation services to and from the ISS. The strategy shall include— a comparison of potential procurement strategies based on— maximizing safety and mission assurance; the total projected costs to the Federal Government through 2020, given multiple projections of Government demand for launch services; the feasibility of the procurement strategy and timeline, given projected funding availabilities; the potential for supporting the research and exploration test bed needs of the Federal Government and of the independent entity responsible for ISS national laboratory activities for the purposes described under section 504(d) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 ( 42 U.S.C. 18354(d) ); and the projected impacts on developing a viable market for commercial launch services; an evaluation of the costs and benefits of ensuring the availability of at least 2 U.S.-based launch service providers, considering— the potential need for diversified cargo and sample return capabilities, including a soft-landing capability as described under section 404 of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 (124 Stat. 2822); and the ability of multiple cargo or crew launch service providers to meet private or non-NASA Government mission requirements and the subsequent benefit to the United States of such ability; justification for the procurement strategy selected from among those considered; and for the selected procurement strategy, identification of additional or modified authorities, regulations, or guidelines that are necessary for successful implementation.
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- 124 Stat. 2822
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