Kistler Fully Reusable Launch Vehicle, a Space X Competitor

An early design concept sometimes referred to as the Bedpost Rocket the Kistler K1 was a twostage, fully reusable launch vehicle design created by Kistler Aerospace. It was to accommodate a wide range of missions, including payload delivery to low Earth orbit (LEO), payload delivery to highenergy orbits with a K1 Active Dispenser, technology demonstration flights, microgravity missions, and commercial cargo resupply, recovery, and reboost services for the International Space Station (ISS). In 2004, the company won a NASA contract to fly supply missions to ISS. At the time, Kistler claimed that the design of the K1 was 75 complete, and the 227 million NASA contract would be used to complete development and the first flights. SpaceX protested, suggesting that the presence of wellknown former NASA engineers biased the decision in favor of Kistler. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) sided with SpaceX and NASA suspended the contract in favor of a new process, the Commercial Orbital br, br,