Context
"Almost exactly two years ago, as it prepared for the next generation of human spaceflight, NASA chose a pair of private companies to design and develop new spacesuits. These were to be new spacesuits that would allow astronauts to both perform spacewalks outside the International Space Station as well as walk on the Moon as part of the Artemis program." - Eric Berger
Now, it looks like one of the two, Collins Aerospace (a subsidiary of Raytheon), is likely to exit the program (this market is inspired by and heavily based on this article by Eric Berger that was published today)
This market asks whether NASA will choose to provide a contract to a new company (other than Collins or Axiom) to develop a new spacesuit
Some additional history
In NASA's relatively limited history of fielding bids from companies to develop key technologies, they've generally given contracts to two providers for redundancy - the examples that come to mind are the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) which contracted SpaceX and Boeing; Artemis Human Landing System (HLS) which contracted SpaceX and Blue Origin; and the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) program that this market is about, which contracted Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space.
And in fact, when NASA initially chose only a single provider for the HLS (SpaceX) they received a significant amount of backlash and congress passed a law giving NASA $10B in additional funding and the requirement that they choose a second provider
Resolution criteria
This market resolves YES if NASA awards a contract to a company other than Collins or Axiom to develop a spacesuit designed for EVA use
If no such contract has been awarded by the 1st of June 2026 UTC (~2y from now and 4y after the xEVAS program begun), this market resolves NO
Clarifications
The contract does not have to be awarded as part of the xEVAS program, nor does the suit need to be designed for use on both the ISS and moon (it just has to at least be designed for EVA use of some kind)
Collins exiting the program is not a prerequisite for this to resolve YES
May resolve early if resolution is clear and there is no significant opposition from traders holding the loss position
1,000People are also trading
This feels more and more mispriced every day (imo)
Consider:
Collins' part of the contract (the one that's been cancelled) was a suit primarily designed for use on the ISS
The ISS is already set to be deorbited in 2030 which doesn't allow much time for a new suit to be developed and used
Trump has made it clear he isn't interested in funding science and the ISS is just very expensive science
NASA's proposed budget cuts are devastating, especially for anything not Artemis (eg a new suit for ISS spacewalks)
SpaceX receives funding from NASA for supplying the ISS, given Elon and Trump's breakup this puts even more of a target on the ISS
All of this also reduces chances of an ISS replacement during Trump's term, and thus further reduces the need for a new suit for spacewalks
Elon's ousting from the administration also reduces chances of space being a focus at all, and significantly reduces chances of SpaceX receiving an EVA suit contract, despite being one of the better positioned companies
And while it's hard to tell, Eric Berger has stated that Axiom still seems to be going strong with their moon-focused EVA suit
I'm not gonna bet in case the resolution is ambiguous but this feels super mispriced to me
Curious what others think
@Nat agreed.
I think there are better-than-even odds that Jared Isaacman will be confirmed as NASA administrator and that he'll let a new suit contract (which I expect SpaceX to win).
But not necessarily in the next 18 months, and not with 90% confidence.
How is it mostly the bot holding Yes? I don't think that's supposed to happen 🤔
I suspect it's the new limit order shenanigans
No:
"This market resolves YES if NASA awards a contract to a company other than Collins or Axiom to develop a spacesuit designed for EVA use
If no such contract has been awarded by the 1st of June 2026 UTC (~2y from now and 4y after the xEVAS program begun), this market resolves NO"
Though I definitely feel like that's a plausible outcome