Space Consortium Awarding Big Money For Prototypes.

* The Space Enterprise Consortium--created to bridge the cultural gap between military buyers and commercial space startups and small businesses through other transaction authority agreements--is on track to award nearly $1 billion for prototyping efforts in 2021, according to a program executive officer.

Other transaction authority agreements, also known as OTAs, are an increasingly popular acquisition tool diat enables officials and industry to cut through bureaucratic red tape associated with traditional Pentagon procurement processes and move faster.

The Space Enterprise Consortium, or SpEC, was stood up in 2017 with a $100 million OTA ceiling and only a couple dozen members, Program Executive Officer for Space Enterprise Col. Timothy Sejba noted at the recent annual Defense News Conference.

"Last count we were just shy of 600 companies" that are now part of the consortium, he said. The organization is being leveraged by Space Systems Command as well as other Defense Department organizations such as the Missile Defense Agency and the Air Force Research Laboratory, he noted.

Tech areas of focus run the gamut and include: ground segment; launch segment; spacecraft; electronics; payloads; communications; mission operations and architecture; and artificial intelligence and machine learning.

"It's a foundational tool for how we are rapidly being able to put request for prototype proposals out to industry and awarding them almost 40 percent faster...