NASA announced new agreements with three American commercial companies to design and develop the next generation of U.S. human spaceflight capabilities, enabling a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil in the next five years.
The logo of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which is partnering with the commercial industry to develop America’s next human space transportation system to low Earth orbit.
Image credit: NASA
Advances made by these companies under newly signed Space Act Agreements through the agency’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative are intended to ultimately lead to the availability of commercial human spaceflight services for government and commercial customers.
CCiCap partners are:
– Sierra Nevada Corporation, Louisville, Colo., $212.5 million
– Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Hawthorne, Calif., $440 million
– The Boeing Company, Houston, $460 million
“Today, we are announcing another critical step toward launching our astronauts from U.S. soil on space systems built by American companies,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “We have selected three companies that will help keep us on track to end the outsourcing of human spaceflight and create high-paying jobs in Florida and elsewhere across the country.”
COMMERCIAL CREW PROGRAM
CCiCap is an initiative of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) and an administration priority. The objective of the CCP is to facilitate the development of a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost-effective access to and from the International Space Station and low Earth orbit. After the capability is matured and expected to be available to the government and other customers, NASA could contract to purchase commercial services to meet its station crew transportation needs.
The new CCiCAP agreements follow two previous initiatives by NASA to spur the development of transportation subsystems, and represent the next phase of U.S. commercial human space transportation, in which industry partners develop crew transportation capabilities as fully integrated systems. Between now and May 31, 2014, NASA’s partners will perform tests and mature integrated designs. This would then set the stage for a future activity that will launch crewed orbital demonstration missions to low Earth orbit by the middle of the decade.
An artist’s conception of The Boeing Company’s CST-100 atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Image credit: Boeing
“For 50 years American industry has helped NASA push boundaries, enabling us to live, work and learn in the unique environment of microgravity and low Earth orbit,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The benefits to humanity from these endeavors are incalculable. We’re counting on the creativity of industry to provide the next generation of transportation to low Earth orbit and expand human presence, making space accessible and open for business.”
An artist’s conception of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) phase of NASA’s
Commercial Crew Program.
Image credit: SNC
While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop commercial spaceflight capabilities to low Earth orbit, the agency also is developing the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion MPCV will expand human presence beyond low Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system.
An artist’s conception of Space Exploration Technologies’ Dragon capsule atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket for the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Image credit: SpaceX
Contacts and sources:
Candrea Thomas
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
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Privatisation invariably results in higher costs and lower standards of safety, and massively lower expenditure on R & D. Once these companies have a stranglehold on government activity in this area, they begin to ramp up the expected price for the services offered. Now they cannot be denied, because they are the only ones with any kind of expertise. The politicians who promote this strategy are paid off with a few million of the billions of dollars extracted from the taxpayer to pay for these “incalculable benefits” to society, which last time I checked boiled down to the widespread availability of pens that can write upside-down, and rockets that can be launched against foreign nations.
The reason for this somewhat bleak assessment is that the shareholders in these companies see the company not as the advance guard for a brave new world of technological innovation, but as a source of income, and the higher the income the better. So the space funds go not to space, but to providing for more mundane advantages such as a new car and several holidays per year in exotic locations. Additionally, the temptation becomes overwhelming to fabricate missions which are supposed to be to Mars etc, in regions such as Area 51 in Nevada. Much cheaper than the real deal, infinitely less hazardous, more spectacular ( witness the latest “sky crane” fantasies being attached to the supposed Mars Rover ) and bigger profits for all those shareholders. The problem is that once you start to fabricate these missions successfully, it is impossible to stop. The gullible public requires bigger fixes of excitement all the time, or they become restive, and start to question the multi-billion dollar price tag for these virtual missions.
The only answer to this dilemma is to increase your daily intake of Diet Coke and GM burgers. Death will come sooner, and with luck, you will never experience the final revelation about what has been occurring, all unsuspected, for these last 50 years..