Winners & Losers From NASA’s Commercial Crew Awards

Today NASA doled out more than $1 billion to help propel a new pool of private companies into space. As part of the space agency?s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative, NASA split the money between three space companies?Boeing, SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada?hoping to give them a boost toward taking over the transportation of astronauts to and from orbit.

Originally, NASA was set to fund four contenders for the prize, but when Washington wanted to cut costs, there was some danger NASA would be able to fund only one company. After some negotiation they settled on giving out two and a half awards.

The Winners

Boeing: NASA awarded the aerospace giant the largest slice of the prize ($460 million) to build its CST-100 capsule. It?s the largest company on the list, which probably didn?t hurt, since one of the mandates of the CCiCap initiative. Boeing is also partnered with Lockheed Martin in United Launch Alliance; ULA builds the Atlas V rocket that will blast not only Boeing?s but also Sierra Nevada?s spacecraft into orbit.

SpaceX: No surprise that SpaceX got a big chunk of NASA dollars ($440 million); Elon Musk?s firm has been out ahead of the other private space companies. This year it became the first company to privately launch into space and dock with the International Space Station. It was also the first to put a capsule into orbit and then return it to the Earth.

Sierra Nevada: The firm behind the Dream Chaser space plane got the "half award," or $212.5 million. They should start testing it sometime this year.

The Losers

Blue Origin: The secretive company founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon had won NASA funding in previous rounds, but missed the cut this time.

ATK: The company is building a capsule based upon NASA?s Orion and powered by its own Liberty rocket, which is a take-off on the now-cancelled NASA Ares I rocket. But the company missed out on this round of NASA funding entirely.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/winners-losers-from-nasas-commercial-crew-awards-11314921?src=rss

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