NASA has signed on with SpaceX for five additional missions to transport crew to the International Space Station (ISS). The missions are a modification to NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with the company, which originally covered nine missions. The fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract modification is valued at $1.4 billion.
“The amount includes ground, launch, in-orbit, and return and recovery operations, cargo transportation for each mission, and a lifeboat capability while docked to the International Space Station,” NASA said. “The period of performance runs through 2030 and brings the total CCtCap contract value with SpaceX to $4,927,306,350.”
SpaceX launched its first crewed mission for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, noted for being the first operational crewed launch by a private company, in November 2020. The company’s fourth crew rotation mission launched on April 27 and is expected to return to Earth later this month. NASA also has a CCtCap contract with Boeing for six crewed missions to the ISS, the first of which is currently targeted for February 2023.
Bad news for Boeing. Obviously NASA has very little faith in the starliner program.
Artemis is a Boeing project
Boeing is Boeing’s own worst enemy, again. They over promised, over charged and under delivered from the jump. Space X has exceeded operational expectations at a fraction of the $$’s. It looks like NASA is following a logical path. Nice…
I hate Musk and Tesla but I have to admit Space X is a successful company that delivers better than Boeing at this point. Hopefully Boeing will regain their supremacy but now I think they are not in first place.
With that said Space X blows up often, but thank God has not killed anyone.
NASA awarded more manned missions to SpaceX because they EARNED them! Boeing can’t deliver any more than they are already contracted for without going back to the drawing board for another launch vehicle (booster).
As for SpaceX blowing up lots of rockets; they are test vehicles. Everyone seemed so concerned when they were doing testing at the Boca Chica site developing the flip and land procedure. When they finally got it right they scrapped the vehicle that survived the landing!
I don’t know if anybody can answer this for me, but why can’t SpaceX just launch their own rockets? Do they have to go through NASA because they’re the government and have rules and regulations on spaceflight?
This article is about Nasa launching via SpaceX’s rockets, not the other way around.
SpaceX has the capability to launch rockets to orbit from their Boca Chica facility in South Texas, and I believe they plan to send the starship up from there and land it there. However, when doing work for NASA, such as flights to the ISS, they use the launch facilities at Kennedy and NASA’s in-flight control system in Houston. Even in Boca Chica, SpaceX is controlled by the FAA as to when they can launch and must do an accident investigation each time they have a crash of a vehicle there. As for crashing rockets, their philosophy is to test full-up vehicles as a unit rather than testing individual components first. Some people regard that philosophy as reckless, but it allowed SpaceX to accelerate their booster development much faster than Boeing or NASA. All of their test vehicles are unmanned and they launched several delivery flights to the ISS carrying only supplies to demonstrate their capabilities before NASA allowed them to carry people. Their only accident in a commercial launch was a failure in one of the early ISS supply runs that caused the vehicle to come apart in the air. They completed several subsequent supply flights before NASA cleared them for a human launch.