WASHINGTON
-- NASA announced Friday that it has picked El Segundo, Calif.-based Space
Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Rocketplane
Kistler of Oklahoma City to share $500 million the U.S. space agency
intends to spend through 2010 to stimulate the development of new
commercial delivery services for the International Space
Station.
NASA made
the awards under the Commercial
Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration program. SpaceX and
Rocketplane Kistler beat out four other finalists for the awards: Seattle-based
Andrews
Space; Poway, Calif.-based SpaceDev;
Houston-based SpaceHab;
and Reston, Va.-based Transformational
Space Corp.
The larger
of the two COTS awards went to SpaceX, which will receive $278 million in NASA
seed money to help fund the development and flight demonstration of Dragon,
a ballistic capsule launch atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
currently in development.
Rocketplane
Kistler, meanwhile, would receive $207 million to help complete the K-1
reusable rocket and develop a cargo module that, like Dragon, could later be
modified to carry astronauts to the space station.
"Getting to
and from space is difficult," Scott Horowitz, NASA associate administrator for
exploration systems, said Friday in making the announcement. "Doing it safely,
reliably, and cost effectively is even more difficult and that's what we are
asking our partners to do."
Horowitz
said both SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler are expected to conduct three flight
demonstrations before 2010 to prove that they have what it takes to safely
deliver pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the International Space Station.
At that point, NASA intends to conduct a second open competition for service
contracts to supply the space station.
That
competition, Horowitz said, will be open to all comers, not just SpaceX and
Rocketplane Kistler.
With the space shuttle due to retire by
late 2010, NASA would like to find U.S. alternatives to European, Japanese and
Russian systems for delivering supplies to the space station. While the Crew Exploration Vehicle
now in development is being designed to carry cargo and crew to the station,
the new system may not be in service until 2014.
NASA officials
have also said the agency would buy space station logistics services from the
U.S. private sector if it can get the job done cheaper than the
government-owned-and-operated Crew Exploration Vehicle.
"We are a
customer that needs, after we retire the shuttle, to supply the International Space
Station," Horowitz said. "If the commercial sector can do it safely and
reliably and more cost effectively than it is in our best interest to buy that
service."
Both SpaceX
and Kistler are expected to combine the NASA money with private capital to
complete development of their cargo delivery systems and conduct three flight
demonstrations beginning as soon as 2008.
Horowitz
declined to say how much money each of the companies intends to bring to the
table. "They each have significant skin in the game," Horowitz said, deferring
to SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler for further details.
SpaceX was
founded in 2002 by technology entrepreneur
Elon Musk with the goal of fielding a $6 million-per-launch rocket within two
years. The Falcon
1 finally made its launch debut this past spring, but failed
shortly after liftoff. The next Falcon 1 launch, a demonstration flight
sponsored by U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is slated for late
this year from the company's Omelek Island launch complex in the Pacific
Ocean's Kwajalein Atoll.
Rocketplane
Kistler was formed in late 2005 but the company's K-1
rocket has been in development well over a decade. The company is
headquartered in Oklahoma City.
Rocketplane
Kistler executives have said in recent interviews that they would conduct the
first K-1 flights out of Woomera, Australia, but could eventually relocate
operations to the United States, either in Nevada or Florida's Kennedy Space
Center.
Earlier
this summer, the firm also announced that Orbital Sciences Corporation would
take over as the K-1's prime contractor in the event of a COTS win. The Dulles,
Va.-based company builds satellites and small rockets and is one of NASA
Administrator Mike Griffin's former employers.
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