NASA Contracts With Boeing, SpaceX For Next-Gen American Spacecraft Will Move Forward

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
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UPDATE: October 9, 2014 (3:15 p.m.)
An official statement posted on Thursday, October 9 by NASA confirms the agency plans to move ahead with its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts.
“On Oct. 9, under statutory authority available to it, NASA has decided to proceed with the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts awarded to The Boeing Company and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. notwithstanding the bid protest filed at the U.S. Government Accountability Office by Sierra Nevada Corporation. The agency recognizes that failure to provide the CCtCap transportation service as soon as possible poses risks to the International Space Station (ISS) crew, jeopardizes continued operation of the ISS, would delay meeting critical crew size requirements, and may result in the U.S. failing to perform the commitments it made in its international agreements. These considerations compelled NASA to use its statutory authority to avoid significant adverse consequences where contract performance remained suspended. NASA has determined that it best serves the United States to continue performance of the CCtCap contracts that will enable safe and reliable travel to and from the ISS from the United States on American spacecraft and end the nation’s sole reliance on Russia for such transportation.”
redOrbit will continue to provide updates as they become available.
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UPDATE: October 6, 2014 (3:50 a.m.)
According to a brief announcement by Steven Siceloff of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, “While NASA has awarded this contract, NASA has instructed Boeing and SpaceX to stop performance on the contract while the GAO resolves a protest.”
redOrbit will continue to provide updates as they become available.
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ORIGINAL: September 16, 2014 (17:01 a.m.)
Boeing and SpaceX have been chosen as the companies that that will build vehicles to ferry American astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) in the years ahead, NASA officials announced on Tuesday.
According to the US space agency, it is hoped the domestically-built Boeing CST-100 and the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will end the country’s dependence on Russian Soyuz rockets starting in 2017.
“From day one, the Obama Administration has made it clear that the greatest nation on Earth should not be dependent on other nations to get into space,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said during a presentation at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday afternoon.
“Thanks to the leadership of President Obama and the hard work of our NASA and industry teams, today we are one step closer to launching our astronauts from US soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia by 2017,” he added. “Turning over low-Earth orbit transportation to private industry also will allow NASA to focus on an even more ambitious mission – sending humans to Mars.”
Kathy Lueders, the program manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told ABC News that Boeing’s deal with NASA could have a value of $4.2 billion, while SpaceX’s deal is valued at $2.6 billion. She added that having two companies under contract will help the agency meet its goal of manned spaceflights by the end of 2017.
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Under the terms of those agreements, each company will provide at least one crewed flight test with at least one NASA astronaut on board to verify that the respective rocket and spacecraft systems are capable of launching, maneuvering in orbit and docking at the space station. Those test flights will also ensure that all of the CST-100 and Crew Dragon systems perform as expected.
Once each company successfully completes those trials and achieves NASA certification, both SpaceX and Boeing will conduct at least two, and as many as six, crewed missions to the space station, the space agency said. Those spacecraft will also serve as a lifeboat for astronauts stationed on board the ISS.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the companies are entering into a public-private partnership, under which NASA engineers and specialists will be “facilitating and certifying the development work of industry partners to ensure new spacecraft are safe and reliable,” and missions to the space station “will allow the station’s current crew of six to grow, enabling the crew to conduct more research aboard the unique microgravity laboratory.”
“We are excited to see our industry partners close in on operational flights to the International Space Station, an extraordinary feat industry and the NASA family began just four years ago,” said Lueders. “This space agency has long been a technology innovator, and now we also can say we are an American business innovator, spurring job creation and opening up new markets to the private sector. The agency and our partners have many important steps to finish, but we have shown we can do the tough work required and excel in ways few would dare to hope.”
SpaceX, which is officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is located in Hawthorne, California and is owned by PayPal and Tesla Motors executive Elon Musk, while Boeing is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
SpaceX currently has a $1.6-billion contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the space station, according to the Los Angeles Times, while Boeing is responsible for nearly every manned spacecraft ever used by the US space agency. Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp. was also in the running for one of the contracts awarded Tuesday, the newspaper added.
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