SNC Protest Ruling: SpaceX and Boeing to Continue Commercial Crew Work

Image Credit: SNC

Not a good day for Sierra Nevada at court. In a very brief ruling, a judge in the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals declined to “overrule the override” and order NASA rescind its order to Boeing and SpaceX to resume work on the recently awarded Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts. To put it a bit more plainly, SpaceX and Boeing can keep on working, and Sierra Nevada can keep on protesting, at least for now.

While this ruling does not necessarily have any correlation to the GAO protest which got the whole ball rolling, the rather terse nature is at the very least, foreboding.

Here it is:

O R D E R

On October 21, 2014, the court held a hearing in the above captioned protest.
Given the urgency to resolve the override issue, the court provided the parties with a
verbal decision declining to overrule the override.
IT IS SO ORDERED.

s/Marian Blank Horn
MARIAN BLANK HORN
Judge

While hardly encouraging,  Judge Horn may have actually done SNC a favor. Had the ruling come down the other way, the blow-back from forcing a second stop work order in NASA’s Commercial Crew program may have been severe.