NASA has awarded four Space Act Agreements in the second round of the agency’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev-2), a commercial effort aimed to foster domestic crew transportation by the middle of the decade. The winners – ranging from lifting body to capsule spacecrafts – were Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Boeing.
Each of the companies will receive between $22 million and $92.3 million to advance commercial crew space transportation system concepts and mature the design and development of elements of their systems, such as launch vehicles and spacecraft. The funds will be paid on a pre-arranged milestone basis, covering a timeline which reaches out to May, 2012.
While the US will have to pay for seats on the Russian Soyuz after the Shuttle retires this summer – an undesirable scenario which will likely continue until at least the middle of the decade – the goal of CCDev2 is to accelerate the availability of US crew transportation capabilities – both commercial and government – to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) destinations, such as the International Space Station (ISS).
“The next American-flagged vehicle to carry our astronauts into space is going to be a U.S. commercial provider,” said Ed Mango, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager. “The partnerships NASA is forming with industry will support the development of multiple American systems capable of providing future access to low-Earth orbit.”
These awards are a continuation of NASA’s CCDev initiatives, which began in 2009 to stimulate efforts within US industry to develop and demonstrate human spaceflight capabilities. More rounds will follow, with one managerial memo speaking of the build-up towards CCDEV-3.
Two of the companies, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corporation, are planning to launch manned spacecraft in 2014, so we won't have to hitch rides from the Russians for long. Both are seven-person spacecraft, just like the Shuttle.
LinkFurther discussion
here and
here.(SLS stands for Space Launch System, the Saturn V sized rocket that has been mandated for NASA by Congress, despite the fact that there's no payload or mission for it--or money to fund them. Rand Simberg calls it the "Senate Launch System". Politicians: Is there
anything they can't do?)
Here's a neat video about Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "burning rubber":
http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/The-Dream-Chaser-Shuttle-from-S;National-Space-Symposium-2011-V
