SpaceX, Boeing win $900 million to develop spacecraft for human space flight

NASA has awarded Boeing (not to be confused with "Boing Boing," you guys), SpaceX, and a Colorado-based systems integration firm more than a billion in contracts to develop spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts. The Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing gets $460 million. Elon Musk's space transportation startup SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, CA, gets $440 million. And Sierra Nevada Corp. in Colorado gets $212.5 milion. NASA's press release is here.

Above: NASA Astronaut Rex Walheim stands inside the Dragon Crew Engineering Model at SpaceX headquarters, during a day-long review of the Dragon crew vehicle layout. (Photo: SpaceX)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: boeing • Business • NASA • Science • Space • space flight • spacex

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http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

A space capsule designed by BoingBoing would be awesome. For one thing, the interior would be all polished wood and brass, with wheels and levers and gears (except for the parts that were made out of artfully-folded paper). For another, the design would be available free online, so anyone with a 3D printer and basic soldering skills could build their own. The exterior would be laser-etched with images by Amy Crehore, and it would be powered by kittens and unicorn poop.

I’m not sure I’d want to fly in it, though.
- stillcantfightthedite
  
  Also the capsule’s thrusters could play the Super Mario tune.
- awjt
  
  I would, because I’m confident that the most extreme assholes would get ejected from the capsule, due to the superb moderation present at all times. Plus, all the fresh outrage.
  - Culturedropout
    
    awjt, bud – you’ve got something on your nose there…
- vonbobo
  
  Every morning the mutanauts would be awoken by Die Antwoord covers being performed on ukulele.
ComradeQuestions

Oh man, that $200m to Sierra Nevada is gonna buy a lot of beer.

(Also, that adds up to more like $1.1bn.)
- http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin
  
  sorry, fixed the math. Added that third party in and flaked on updating the total amount.
mikeconwell

Ugh – Sad to see Boeing considered necessary and included in this with a sizable chunk of the money.
IamInnocent

$900K for Boingboing ! Imagine the iPhone and iPad budget !
tomrigid

Boeing hits for Jesus!
Mike Norman

Almost as great as the news that SpaceX got funded is that Alliant TechSystems (ATK) was passed over. Their proposed system–clad in red, white, and blue in company imagery–used a modified solid rocket death-pencil^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hbooster for the first stage.

Silly ATK, solid rockets are for fireworks, not launch systems!
- TheMadLibrarian
  
  Aren’t solid rocket boosters the same thing that Space Ship One used for its initial stages after White Knight got it to sufficient altitude?
  - Mike Norman
    
    Not quite. SS1 used a hybrid motor, which has a solid fuel grain but liquid oxidizer. You spray oxygen onto the grain to keep it lit. It’s completely throttleable and can can be shut down if a problem is detected.
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

> Boeing (not to be confused with “Boing Boing,”

And then there’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boeingboeing.jpg
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

> Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing

Two million Seattleites just let out a collective rueful sigh.
- GlenBlank
  
  Boeing’s space craft, the CST-100, will be built in a converted shuttle Orbiter Processing Facility, OPF-3, in Florida; the rocket that launches it will be manufactured in Decatur, Alabama, with upper stages built in San Diego, California and payload fairings built in Harlingen, Texas, by United Launch Alliance (ULA), whose headquarters are in Denver, Colorado.
  
  ULA is a joint venture between Lockheed-Martin, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, and Boeing, headquartered in… yes, Chicago.
  
  So I can see why Seattleites would be sighing. :-)
Woody Smith

“…capable of carrying astronauts,” WHERE? If this is just another version of the Vomit Comit, training them to cope with zero-G, who needs it? Can it reach the ISS? The Hubble? High Orbit? Can it reach Luna? Specifics, please.
- Culturedropout
  
  Well, considering that SpaceX’s contribution is probably going to be a human-rated version of the Dragon that recently launched, docked with the ISS, delivered cargo, and returned safely to Earth, I would imagine that it will almost certainly reach the ISS (as NASA no longer operates the shuttles, and is probably tired of paying Russia for rides). Beyond that, I imagine the range is limited more by the type of boosters and the amount of fuel loaded than anything else. I don’t think a mission to the moon would be the least bit unlikely either.
pjcamp

Not enough to design a human capable space toilet, let alone an entire spaceship.