One of my sources inside the aerospace industry has alerted me to the following (unconfirmed) news: Prior to closeout of the Orbital Space Plane program, NASA is requiring the contractors to complete their Critical Design Reviews (CDRs) on the cancelled designs, so that NASA can apply the knowledge learned to future CEV work.
As might be expected, the workers in the cancelled OSP projects aren't very happy about this--NASA's requirement to complete design reviews on vehicles that will never be built (at least in their present forms.) The motivation to actually do this work at one large firm is described as "quite low".
Posted by jburk at February 8, 2026 11:28 PM | TrackBack