Space Suit for Artemis, why two contracts instead of only one?

Question

NASA has selected two companies to make spacesuits for its Artemis moon program and future International Space Station (ISS) missions.

Teams led by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace (with ILC Dover as a major contributor) received access to a contract worth up to a total of $3.5 billion to supply spacesuits for future NASA missions through 2034, agency officials announced today (June 1).

Why two contracts were awarded?

Related question

Answer 1

One of NASA's fundamental principles is Dissimilar Redundancy, meaning, having (at least) two providers that share no critical path.

They do the same thing with all of their commercial partnerships:

• Commercial Orbital Transportation Services was a development program for commercial cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station, and was awarded to
  • Rocketplane Kistler and
  • SpaceX
• Commercial Resupply Services is a program for commercial cargo resupply missions to the ISS, and was awarded to
  • Phase 1:
    • Orbital Sciences (later Orbital ATK, then Northrup Grumman Innovation Systems, now Northrup Grumman Space Systems) with the Cygnus spacecraft (which is launcher-agnostic, but normally launched on Antares)
    • SpaceX with the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 launcher
  • Phase 2:
    • Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems (now SierraSpace) with the Dream Chaser spacecraft launching on United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur launcher
    • Northrup Grumman Space Systems with an upgraded Cygnus spacecraft
    • SpaceX with the Cargo Dragon spacecraft
• Commercial Crew Development was a development program originally for commercial crewed spaceflight in general, later re-focused to commercial crew transportation services to and from the ISS after the retirement of the Space Shuttle
  • Phase 1 (CCDev 1):
    • Blue Origin for a launch abort system in a pusher configuration (as implemented on New Shepard) and pressure vessels using composite materials
    • Boeing for the CST-100 Starliner
    • Paragon Space Development Corporation for some developments around Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS)
    • Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems for Dream Chaser
    • ULA for development of an Emergency Detection System for human-rating the Atlas V launcher
  • Phase 2 (CCDev 2):
    • Proposals selected with NASA funding:
      • Blue Origin for development of various technologies related to an orbital spacecraft, including a hydro lox launch abort system
      • Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems for Dream Chaser
      • Boeing for the CST-100 Starliner
      • SpaceX for the integrated abort system of Dragon 2 using the SuperDraco thrusters
    • Proposals selected without NASA funding:
      • Alliant Techsystems and Astrium for the Liberty launch system consisting of a launcher and a spacecraft
      • Excalibur Almaz for developing a crew launch system for tourism based on modernized Russian hardware
    • ULA for additional development related to human-rating Atlas V
  • Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap):
    • Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems for Dream Chaser launching on ULA's Atlas V
    • Boeing for the CST-100 Starliner launching ULA's Atlas V
    • SpaceX for Crew Dragon launching on Falcon 9
  • Certification Products Contract (CPC) Phase 1:
    • Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems for Dream Chaser launching on ULA's Atlas V
    • Boeing for the CST-100 Starliner launching ULA's Atlas V
    • SpaceX for Crew Dragon launching on Falcon 9
  • Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap):
    • Boeing for the CST-100 Starliner launching ULA's Atlas V
    • SpaceX for Crew Dragon launching on Falcon 9
• Commercial Crew Program is a program for commercial crew transportation services to and from the ISS after the retirement of the Space Shuttle
  • Boeing for the CST-100 Starliner launching ULA's Atlas V
  • SpaceX for Crew Dragon launching on Falcon 9
• Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a program to deliver payloads to the Lunar South Pole in preparation for a crewed Artemis mission. For CLPS, NASA has selected no fewer than 14 different contractors.

So, as you can see, it is actually completely normal that NASA contracts more than one contractor for a specific service, and significantly more than one contractor for a development program. In fact, one could legitimately ask the question, why did NASA only select two contractors?

The "odd couple" in NASA's commercial services are actually the Gateway Logistics Services for cargo resupply of the Lunar Gateway and the Human Landing System. Both of these were awarded solely to SpaceX with Dragon XL and Starship HLS.

And specifically for the HLS, NASA calls out in the Source Selection Statement the fact that the main reason they only selected one contractor is that Congress only gave them enough money for one. (In fact, Congress didn't even give them enough money for one, but SpaceX was by far the cheapest bidder and NASA was able to re-negotiate payment terms with them to fit the budget.)

If it weren't for this financial restriction, NASA very likely would have awarded two contracts, if not all three.

You can see how important Dissimilar Redundancy is, if you consider that:

• After the SpaceX CRS-7 explosion, Falcon 9 was grounded, but NASA could keep on re-supplying the ISS using Cygnus (plus, there is also the Japanese HTV and the Russian Progress).
• After the AMOS-6 explosion, Falcon 9 was again grounded.
• After the Cygnus Orb-3 explosion, Antares was grounded, but Orbital Sciences could continue launching Cygnus missions to the ISS on ULA's Atlas V. This is an example of nested dissimilar redundancy: not only does NASA have two different contractors (soon three) re-supplying the ISS with cargo, but one of them can even use different launch vehicles.
• Cygnus is launching on the Antares rocket, which is a Ukrainian rocket using Russian engines, both which are currently hard to come by for obvious reasons. Therefore, two Cargo Resupply Missions using Cygnus will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 until the new Antares 330 is ready which no longer uses any Russian or Ukrainian parts. (This shows both the redundancy built into Cygnus by being able to launch on different launchers and the lack of redundancy in the US launch market caused by SpaceX's towering dominance.)
• Boeing's Starliner program is significantly delayed due to first valve problems, then software problems, then again valve problems.
• SpaceX's Crew Dragon program was also delayed due to parachute problems, then a valve problem which lead to a spacecraft exploding.

The most obvious example, though is the Space Shuttle, for which NASA had no redundancy, and thus had no capability of launching crew during the grounding of the fleet after the Challenger accident and the Columbia accident, and after the retirement of the fleet.

There is also an interesting pattern in the way NASA awards those contracts: in several of them, NASA chooses an "established player" and a "newSPACE" contender, for example with CRS (Northrop Grumman and SpaceX) and CCP (Boeing and SpaceX). It is also likely they wanted to do the same with the HLS (SpaceX and National Team).

They did the same here: Collins / ILC Dover is an established player, they already built the current ISS suits as well as the Apollo suits. And Axiom is a newSPACE company. What is somewhat interesting is that NASA awarded the contract for developing new suits to Collins only a couple of days after NASA put a stop on ISS spacewalks precisely because of unsolved problems with the current Collins spacesuits.