NASA Awards Spacesuit Contract - Again

Oceaneering won the original contract and the award was appealed by Hamilton. This movement would seem to indicate that the appeal process is resolving.

Hamilton Sundstrand protested

Oceaneering International Inc. did win the "1st" round of this bid. However Hamilton Sundstrand balked at that and they basically did a redo of the award. And now Oceaneering wins it again. I'll let you guys decide what the means.

Though I do have a question. I thought Oceaneering and Ham. Sundstrand were going to team up. So was this win by Oceaneering only? or was it a Oceaneering/Hamilton Sundstrand team?

Will we get to look at their proposed designs anytime soon? Is it basically the blue Mark III above?

Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC withdrew their bid and joined the Oceaneering team. Bid protest was dismissed. Oceaneering was awarded the prime contract. Team includes Bastion, Cimarron, David Clark/Air Lock, Hamilton Sundstrand, Harris, Honeywell, ILC, Paragon, and USA.

I think the GAO or NASA found a problem or conflict of interest with an contract award reviewer and the award was thrown out.

The reason the contract had to be awarded twice to Oceaneering International again is since Hamilton Sundstrand protested and Senator Chris Dodd backed them up since they are located in his state. It was pork barrel politics at its finest and Hamilton Sundstrand had to get a piece of the pie before it could get resolved.

NASA didn't follow their own procurement rules, so Hamilton/United Tech protested. People are coming to realize that this program is simply going to be canceled, so they are trying to milk as much cash from the cow as they can before that happens.

I agree with Werner. [President Obama] will limit or cancel the whole thing and when we wake up and realize that a big mistake was made, a lot of money will have to be spent to play catch up.
What a mess this is.

All of the media coverage on this (including the "Changing Horses" post here) was inaccurate by omission.

Oceaneering was originally teamed up with David Clark - which has a long history of providing suits for both the Air Force and NASA, including the early X-Plane flights, the X-15 suit, the Gemini suits, the Shuttle LES, and the Shuttle ACES. David Clark has delivered just as many, if not more, suits then Hamilton Sundstrand, over the same period of time.

It's unfortunate that the procurement process was co-opted by Chris Dodd. I'm sure there were valid reasons to go with Oceaneering/David Clark.

Oceaneering won the initial competition outright and their proposal was deemed far superior to the Hamilton Sunstrand/ILC Dover proposal in every way that NASA scored the proposals. The initial award was thrown out on a completely trivial technicality, that had absolutely nothing to do with Oceaneering's ability to build the lowest-cost, highest quality spacesuit for the Constellation Program. Hamilton Sunstrand and ILC Dover joined the existing Oceaneering team when it became clear to all that there was no way they could compete on a technical, cost, or management basis with the superior Oceaneering team. Hamilton Sunstrand and ILC Dover will compete between themselves for a small portion of the contract work.

With regards to canceling this contract and starting over. If that happens, then it means all of Constellation Program has been canceled, as Orion, Altair, and the future lunar exploration activities cannot fly without humans without a spacesuit. The current Shuttle and ISS spacesuits are not at all compatible with Constellation architecture or performace requirements. It would be a huge setback to the American human spaceflight and exploration program in Constellation in its entirety is canceled.