Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition (Rapid IV) RFI

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is seeking capability statements from all interested parties, including Small, Small Disadvantaged (SDB), 8(a), Woman-owned (WOSB), Veteran Owned (VOSB), Service Disabled Veteran Owned (SD-VOSB), Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) businesses, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU)/Minority Institutes (MI) for the purposes of determining the appropriate level of competition and/or small business subcontracting goals for the Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition (Rapid IV) catalog follow-on contracts to procure spacecraft designs that comply with mission requirements. The Government reserves the right to consider a Small, 8(a), Woman-owned (WOSB), Service Disabled Veteran (SD-VOSB), or HUBZone business set-aside based responses hereto. The Rapid IV acquisition is intended to result in the award of multiple fixed-price, Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts for spacecraft bus core systems that would be used to meet the Government's science and technology needs. Under the Rapid IV process, contracts are awarded to vendors based on their ability to meet specific criteria (i.e. the ability to execute the Statement of Work (SOW); and provide a "heritage" spacecraft, which has successfully completed on-orbit checkout and acceptance). Vendors would submit core spacecraft designs that could be successfully modified as carriers for one or more flight instrument payloads. Each core spacecraft system would need to supply all necessary design, fabrication, assembly, test, flight payload instrument integration and test, final observatory (spacecraft plus payload) integration and test, shipping, launch support, on-orbit check-out and operations support. Operations support would include all required ground support equipment as well as associated flight and ground based software and software maintenance for the spacecraft offered. The primary purpose of this RFI is to gather information, comments, and suggestions from spacecraft manufacturers regarding: - Interest in supplying spacecraft under the new Rapid IV contract - Estimated number and types of potential spacecraft offerings - Comments on the current Rapid III contract, if any - Suggestions for the Rapid IV contract, if any Responses must include at a minimum the following: name and address of firm, size of business; average annual revenue for past 3 years and number of employees; ownership; whether they are large, small, small disadvantaged, 8(a), Woman-owned, Veteran Owned, Service Disabled Veteran Owned, Historically Underutilized Business Zone and Historically Black Colleges and Universities)/Minority Institutions; number of years in business; affiliate information: parent company, joint venture partners, potential teaming partners, prime contractor (if potential sub) or subcontractors (if potential prime); list of customers covering the past five years (highlight relevant work performed, contract numbers, contract type, dollar value of each procurement; and point of contact - address and phone number). The information provided to the Government in response to this RFI will be considered in the development of the terms and conditions of the upcoming solicitation. GSFC welcomes any information submitted by interested parties in response to this request. The Rapid IV contracts serves as a fast and flexible Government-wide, firm fixed price (FFP), IDIQ procurement tool for flight proven spacecraft or spacecraft components. The Rapid IV contracts are managed by the Rapid Spacecraft Development Office (RSDO). The RSDO also facilitates mission-specific spacecraft procurements for government customers via the Rapid IV contract. The purpose of the Rapid IV concept is to reduce overall procurement-lead time, as well as reduce mission implementation cost and risk by leveraging flight proven spacecraft designs. The spacecrafts under contract are placed in the Rapid IV "catalog" for potential procurement via IDIQ delivery orders for mission customers. These mission-specific delivery orders are competed amongst the Rapid IV contractors and awarded based on the contractor's ability to satisfy the customer's mission requirements. Modifications to the core spacecraft to meet the specific requirements of future missions are normal and expected. It is expected for the Rapid IV contracts to include an "On Ramp" feature, which allows for the catalog to be refreshed in order to give new vendors the opportunity to propose flight proven spacecraft designs. On Ramps also give vendors already awarded an RSA contract the opportunity to propose additional flight proven spacecraft designs and/or update their existing catalog designs. The Rapid IV acquisition is anticipated to be procured under Far Part 15. As opposed to the current Rapid III contracts, NASA/GSFC does not anticipate that the Rapid IV contract will include the NASA/GSFC Mission Assurance Requirements (MAR) at the Master contract level. The anticipated minimum quality management standard may be SAE AS9100/ISO 9001. The Rapid IV contracts will have a Base Period of Performance of five (5) years; however, it is anticipated that the Rapid IV contracts will also have an option to extend for an additional five (5) years, for a total of ten (10) years. Those companies not familiar with Rapid III contracts are welcome to visit the RSDO website: http://rsdo.gsfc.nasa.gov for background information. Specifically, review material under "Mission Statement" and "Rapid III" menu tabs. The range of possible NASA missions is broad in scope, type and size. Therefore, the Rapid IV contracts would seek heritage spacecraft buses of various sizes (e.g., 6U cubesats to geosynchronous spacecraft), capabilities, lifetimes, orbit use and mission suitability, in order to be ready to support a variety of mission needs quickly. This is not a Request for Proposal, nor a Request for Quotation, nor an Invitation to Bid. Therefore, this RFI is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government, nor will the Government pay for any information submitted in response to this RFI. All responses shall be submitted to Leslie Adams via email (in either Microsoft Word or ADOBE PDF format) to the e-mail address listed no later than April 4, 2018 at 4:00 PM EDT. Please reference RFI-2018-Rapid IV in any response. No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. If a solicitation is released it will be synopsized in FedBizOpps. It is the potential offeror's responsibility to monitor these sites for the release of any solicitation or synopsis. It is not NASA's intent to publicly disclose vendor proprietary information obtained from this RFI. To the full extent that it is protected pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act and other laws and regulations, information identified by a respondent as "Proprietary or Confidential" will be kept confidential. Comments and suggestions for improving the requirements documents are always encouraged and solicited.