When the Space Shuttle Atlantis landed in Florida on July 21, 2011, almost 40 years of space shuttle missions operated by NASA officially ended. After over three years of hitching rides on Russian Soyuz spacecraft at a price of $70 million per seat, NASA awarded contracts to The Boeing Company (Boeing) and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) to construct passenger spacecraft to carry astronauts through low earth orbit and to the International Space Station (ISS). These are officially named Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contracts, totalling up to a value of $6.8 billion. This partnership is important for the future of the American space program as NASA funding has stagnated at around less than half of a percent of the entire US annual budget over the past few years. This is a necessary step forward as collaborations between NASA and private corporations become more and more frequent. We can expect to witness astronauts manning these spacecraft into lower Earth orbit as early as 2017, if all goes according to plan.
Boeing’s $4.2 billion contract with NASA came as little surprise. Boeing has already received several hundred million dollars in funding from NASA to work on their space shuttle over the past few years. As one of the world’s largest aerospace companies, Boeing has manufactured parts for NASA for the past several decades, as well as been part of the construction of the International Space Station. Boeing’s space shuttle is called CST-100, or Crew Space Transportation, and has been in development in collaboration with Bigelow Aerospace. The shuttle has a seven passenger capacity and an estimated 60 hours of flight time, equating to 210 days in space when docked. Boeing’s design is considered to be the safer of the two choices by NASA, being similar to that of older NASA spacecraft in exterior appearance and the use of airbags and parachutes to perform landings. The CST-100 will be able to use the Atlas V, Delta IV, and Falcon 9 rockets for launch. Overall the CST-100 has been noted to be similar to the NASA space shuttle, Orion, set to be complete around 2020. The CST-100 shuttle is expected to be operational by 2015.
The SpaceX contract was awarded at a value of $1.6 billion. In 2012, SpaceX launched their Dragon spacecraft to deliver much-needed cargo to the astronauts stationed at the ISS. This was the first ever mission to involve the use of a commercial spacecraft to carry cargo to the ISS. The Dragon V2 shuttle is certainly the more innovative and risky of the two designs chosen by NASA. Where the CST-100 shuttle uses conventional landing methods, the Dragon V2 will do away with this completely over time in favor of propulsive landing with very high accuracy. However, in the early stages, parachutes will assist in the landing process. In addition, Dragon V2 will be a fully reusable spacecraft. The Dragon V2 will have a seven passenger capacity, and will have a potential of up to 1 week of flight time and 2 years of docking time. The shuttle will be launched with the Falcon 9 rocket and is expected to be completed in 2016. Both Boeing’s and SpaceX’s space shuttles will be good for ten space flights.
A third company, Sierra Nevada Corporation, lost out on the contract deal with NASA, but is still a part of the Commercial Crew Program. Their proposed space shuttle, Dream Chaser, also possessed an innovative design, being a winged spacecraft capable of flight in low earth orbit.
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