Boeing, SpaceX land NASA craft contracts
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA on Tuesday signaled the end to the long drought of sending astronauts into space from the U.S. by announcing that the next generation of America’s manned spacecraft will be produced and operated by private companies Boeing and SpaceX.
“I am just giddy today, I admit,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “I couldn’t be happier.”
NASA announced a set of multiyear contracts worth $6.8 billion to hire Boeing Space Exploration of Houston and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., to finish developing their spacecraft and have them ready to taxi astronauts to and from the International Space Station by 2017.
When the spacecraft are operating, they will provide the first American-based space rides to astronauts since NASA ended its space shuttle program in 2011. Both companies will launch from Cape Canaveral, though likely from pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, rather than from the NASA facilities at Kennedy Space Center.
NASA officials announced the deals while describing a future in which lower-Earth flights will be expanded to private companies, and therefore eventually to private-citizen astronauts.
Boeing will be using its CST-100 vessel, a traditional capsule reminiscent of the Apollo days.
SpaceX will use its Dragon V2, a more modern capsule design based on the Dragon capsule that has been ferrying NASA supplies to the space station for the past two years.
The two-company arrangement means NASA is turning to an old-school aerospace giant, Boeing, and the most prominent of a booming set of 21stcentury entrepreneurial space companies, SpaceX, founded by Internet billionaire Elon Musk.
SpaceX is getting a contract worth $2.6 billion, and Boeing will get a contract worth $4.2 billion, NASA said.
The contract amounts were based on the companies’ proposals, but both have the same requirements, the agency said.
NASA’s decision means Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev., and its spaceshuttlelike Dream Chaser vessel are out.
Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada were the finalists in NASA’s four-year, $1.55 billion competition to see which private companies could best develop spacecraft to transport astronauts into lower Earth orbit.
While NASA’s commercial crew program could use the taxi service as early as 2017, the space agency’s budget challenges make it unlikely that it will actually be able to use the private taxi before 2018 at the earliest. The space station is expected to remain in use through 2024.
Tribune Newspapers’ staff in Los Angeles contributed.