Boeing and SpaceX Share $6.8 Billion in NASA Contract

[rhoenix]

NASA has awarded Boeing Co. a contract worth as much as $4.2 billion and rival Space Exploration Technologies Corp. a separate pact valued at up to $2.6 billion to develop, test and fly space taxis to carry U.S. astronauts into orbit.

The American-built rockets and spacecraft would replace the Russian systems that currently provide the only access to the international space station. The space taxi is slated to transport its first astronaut to the orbiting laboratory by 2017.

Tuesday's long-awaited announcement by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration marks a milestone for commercial space ventures, partly because both companies will own and operate the equipment while experiencing significantly less day-to-day federal oversight than previous manned space programs.

The final value of the contracts, which likely will run past the end of the decade, depends on each of the contractors meeting specified timetables and obtaining NASA certification of their rockets and capsules for safety and reliability. Assuming the companies win those approvals, the contracts will cover as many as a dozen missions overall to shuttle astronauts and limited amounts of cargo to and from the space station.

The awards highlight the challenges of stretching limited federal dollars—and trying to meet aggressive schedules—while supporting two separate, full-fledged contractor teams.

Lawmakers and some outside space experts have repeatedly warned NASA's leaders that funding levels of roughly $700 million a year might be inadequate for the project, particularly to cope with unexpected engineering hurdles or test failures.

NASA chief Charles Bolden said the awards set the stage for "the most ambitious and exciting chapter in the history of NASA and human space flight."

If the programs are successful, NASA officials believe some of the hardware eventually could be used to offer rides to space tourists. Other technology could be adapted in separate NASA efforts to develop a deep-space rocket and more-capable capsules intended to take astronauts to Mars in coming decades.

Reflecting NASA and White House policy goals, NASA opted for two contractors to spur competition, cut overall technical risk and hopefully keep a lid on prices.

Even if NASA's plans work out, lack of international support may end up creating a new problem: the space station, or at least parts of it, could be closed as early as the middle of the next decade if various countries cut off financial support. That would leave the nascent space-taxi program looking for new destinations.

For now, though, Mr. Bolden told reporters the contracts fulfill President Barack Obama's pledge to end NASA's dependence on Russia and return to using U.S.-built boosters and spacecraft to achieve orbit. The last U.S. space shuttle, which fulfilled that role, was mothballed three years ago.

Boeing's larger share of the project, which had been expected, stems partly from the higher operating costs and larger overhead it has built up over decades as a NASA contractor, government and independent space experts said. But, according to these experts, Boeing's award also reflects the higher score it garnered in some of NASA's technical rankings.

Boeing's proposed technology met all of the agency's design review requirements, the experts said, while the system proposed by SpaceX, as the Southern California company is known, fell short in some areas.

NASA officials emphasized that the size of the awards underscores SpaceX's reputation as a nimble, low-cost supplier. Founded by former Web entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX has grown rapidly and proven itself as a reliable shipper of cargo to the space station. The manned capsule it plans to use to carry astronauts is an upgraded version of its Dragon cargo capsule, already in use.

In previous commercial development efforts, NASA ended up awarding SpaceX basically the same amount as it did the company's chief rivals. In those instances, the gap amounted to between 3% and 10% less for SpaceX. This time, the difference was close to 25% of the total.

In a statement, Boeing stressed its work for NASA stretching back to the dawn of the space age. "Boeing has been part of every American human-space-flight program, and we're honored that NASA has chosen us to continue that legacy," said John Elbon, general manager of the Chicago-based company's space exploration unit.

Mr. Musk, who is SpaceX's chief executive and chief designer, said the company accepted the award with "gratitude and seriousness of purpose." In a statement, he described the contract as "a vital step in a journey that will ultimately take us to the stars" and other planets.

Prior to the announcement at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA faced conflicting pressures from the White House and senior House Republicans. From the time the Obama administration shook up NASA's bureaucracy by proposing commercial space taxis, the agency has been keen to maintain competition. But over the years, congressional leaders have crafted legislative language and otherwise urged Mr. Bolden and his top managers to pick just one contractor for this phase of the effort, to avoid redundant spending.

In the end, NASA opted for competition but devised a series of reviews and procedures enabling it to withhold funds from either contractor if agency officials determined progress was flagging.

NASA invested close to $1.5 billion in seed money before making the latest awards, and both winners are subject to fixed-price contracts.

But throughout the news conference, and in the comments of some lawmakers reacting to the awards, much of the emphasis was on NASA's plans to go beyond low-Earth orbit and ultimately to other planets. Robert Cabana, director of the Kennedy Space Center, described the new industry-government partnerships being forged as the "first step from planet earth to going on to Mars someday."

In the same vein, Mr. Bolden devoted a large portion of his remarks to discussing future launches and tests of NASA's Orion capsule, designed to explore the solar system beyond the space station. But unlike the commercially driven contracts for space taxis, Orion and the boosters that are intended to blast it into space are being developed by NASA under more-traditional contracts mandating closer agency oversight. Boeing has a major role in that effort.

And thus, hopefully a new chapter in space exploration is being written now. Mars is definitely the short-term goal, but the technologies and knowledge required to make it a full reality will go far in other areas as well.

[Josh]

What will NASA’s $6.8 billion space taxi contracts really buy?

NASA’s $6.8 billion dollar deal with SpaceX and Boeing buys the US space agency a lot more than a few taxi rides to the International Space Station. From new independence from the Russian space program to the drive of competitive innovation, the private contracts promise to open new doors for US space exploration.

NASA administrator Charlie Bolden announced Tuesday that the space agency will contract with two private agencies to transport US astronaut crews to the International Space Station. The contract with the Houston-based Boeing Company is valued at $4.2 billion. California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp., more commonly known as SpaceX, has been awarded a $2.6 billion contract. Under the contracts, each company will pilot between 2 and 6 ferrying missions.

NASA deactivated its own space shuttle in 2011 and has since relied on Russian vessels to transport US astronauts to the space station. Given mounting tensions between the two nations, Congress has been keen to minimize such reliance on the Russians.

The removal of NASA astronauts from the drivers' seats drew some criticism from some astrophysicists who expressed concerns that the move was the first step in a more systematic defunding of the US space program.

However, noted astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. sees the shift as a worthy reallocation of limited resources.

“It makes sense to me that NASA’s role should be at the frontier. Trucking astronauts and their food and supplies and so on is no longer the frontier,” Dr. McDowell tells the Monitor. “NASA astronauts shouldn’t be truck drivers. That’s not what they’re for. They’re for being the first people on Mars, or on an asteroid.”

Outsourcing NASA’s short-range transportation needs to private industry could also lead to innovations that ultimately reduce shuttle costs, McDowell says. Already, SpaceX has hinted that it will charge just a fraction of the $71 million per seat ticket price offered by the Russians.

NASA operates firmly under the thumbs of Congress and other federal regulatory bodies and can be bogged down by the same managerial redundancies and cumulative regulations that plague other government agencies.

“Within the government, the drive to prevent anyone from doing anything wrong also stops people from having the flexibility to do what they need to do to get things right,” McDowell says.

SpaceX and Boeing will certainly be subject to government regulations regarding safety and control of space debris. However as private companies, they enjoy more latitude in how they explore and implement technologies than NASA has, he explains.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is the more adventurous of the two designs – and therefore the most risky investment. Boeing’s CST-100 design more closely resembles previous shuttles and the company has had a relationship with NASA for decades, making it the safer bet.

Between the two approaches, “we’ll really get to fly out that old space-new space dichotomy over the next few years and see which one really works better in practice,” McDowell says.

Having multiple options also provides some level of insurance in case one shuttle encounters technical difficulties and needs to be taken off line.

[Josh]

I like the trucking analogy a lot there. Basically we know Earth orbit by now, it's time to move that into broader hands than NASA and keep jetting our astronauts further and further out.

[White Haven]

If only they'd, yaknow, actually do any of that. It's been depressingly long since we so much as nudged a frontier gently.

[Josh]

If only they'd, yaknow, actually do any of that. It's been depressingly long since we so much as nudged a frontier gently.

No argument from this quarter. I'm the one who always points out we could've had astronauts on a permanent moon base that could've been established over thirty years ago.

But better late than never. What keeps bubbling up is more concern about potential asteroid strikes. That business in Russia was an eye-opener in some of the right places.