SpaceX in 4-way rivalry for NASA contract

Less than a decade after its first rocket launch, Elon Musk’s SpaceX finds itself in an unfamiliar position.

The upstart venture is the incumbent vying to win the bulk of a $3.5 billion U.S. contract renewal while facing rivals that include Boeing Co., whose spaceflight roots date to the 1950s. At stake: a sevenyear agreement to haul supplies and experiments to the International Space Station.

SpaceX is pushing the only made-in-the-USA entry in a four-way derby with Boeing, Orbital ATK Inc. and Sierra Nevada Corp., each of which relies to some extent on rockets with Russian engines. NASA will award the work as soon as today as it juggles support for commercial missions while Congress clamors to end U.S. dependence on the imported engines.

“This bodes well for SpaceX because they’re the only company I can see that’s completely independent of Russia,” said Marco Caceres, director for space studies at consultant Teal Group.

NASA split the initial $3.6 billion cargo-flight contract between SpaceX and Orbital in 2008, two years after Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. sent its first rocket aloft. The win helped establish SpaceX as a competitor to United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin Corp. rocket venture whose work includes military missions.

SpaceX and Orbital each has a setback on its commercial-cargo records. An October 2014 explosion just after liftoff destroyed an Orbital Antares rocket laden with space station cargo. In June, a SpaceX Falcon 9 blew up en route to the orbiting lab.

The station’s reliance on Russian and Japanese spacecraft while the U.S. craft have been grounded highlights the “immediate and urgent need for appropriate oversight and corrective action,” Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and David Vitter of Louisiana said in a Sept. 1 letter urging the Government Accountability Office to review NASA’s contracted launch services and capsules.

Increased political scrutiny may provide an incentive to NASA to add more contractors to provide “backup options” and avoid protests by losing bidders, said Nick Taborek, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.

NASA isn’t expected to gain additional funding from Congress, however, so adding new participants would probably mean less money for the current cargo haulers. “There’s certainly a good chance the pool of bidders will be expanding, which means less revenue for Orbital and SpaceX,” Taborek said by phone.

Boeing’s entrant is a reusable cargo version of the Starliner capsule being developed for manned NASA orbital missions later this decade. It would be carried by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. “NASA can take advantage of all the work and taxpayer dollars spent for the Commercial Crew program and re-use it for cargo,” Boeing spokesman Kelly Kaplan said by email.

Sierra Nevada proposes a freighter variant of its Dream Chaser, a reusable orbiter that looks like a miniature cousin of the space shuttle and is designed to land on airport runways. It would ride atop an Atlas V or a rocket from Europe’s Arianespace SA.

SpaceX, Sierra Nevada and Orbital declined to discuss their cargo proposals. NASA had no comment this week about details of the next commercial-resupply contract.