Boeing has now officially chosen the Atlas 5 rocket to launch is manned capsule.
The Atlas 5 is the rocket that Boeing, Blue Origin, and Sierra Nevada plan to use to get astronauts into orbit.
Chris Bergin at NASAspaceflight.com today wrote a report on the four companies NASA is subsidizing to build manned capsules. The status of each company tells us something of whether they can eventually provide the United States with a replacement for the shuttle, and do it soon. Let’s take a look at each.
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In picking the winners for its commercial manned space subsidizes, NASA gave more priority to the spacecraft — either capsules or spaceplane — above the rockets needed to launch it.
Government gone wild: The National Labor Relations Board wants to shut down a Boeing plant because it happens to be in a right-to-work state.
NASA has awarded the next set of commercial crew development agreements, giving contracts worth from $22 to $92 million to four companies, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, and Boeing. More here and here.
The amounts that NASA is giving these companies is minuscule, compared the monies spent on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Yet I bet they all get their rockets/capsules launched and in operation, supplying cargos and crews to low Earth orbit, before NASA even test fires its heavy-lift rocket.
Boeing moves forward on its commercial manned capsule.
Dreamliner: a nightmare for Boeing.
Boeing’s biggest-ever plane makes its maiden flight.
