WSJ reports Blue Origin and Boeing will beat SpaceX for Space Station Crew Delivery
NASA is scheduled to make an announcement today about the competition for the Commercial Crew program, the space vehicle that will handle the delivery and return of crew members to the International Space Station and other orbital destinations. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Boeing and partner Blue Origin LLC have the inside track on a contract win.
Blue Origin had been a relatively low-profile space startup. Founded and funded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, the company has been focused on developing spacecraft with a vertical takeoff-vertical landing first stage—similar to the technology that SpaceX has been working on with its Grasshopper and Falcon 9 launchers. But Blue Origin hasn’t published any information on further developments of its “New Shepard” suborbital vehicle for nearly two years while the company focused on development of its BE-3—a low-cost, reusable liquid hydrogen rocket engine.
It is the engine technology that attracted the attention of Boeing. In July, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announcement said that Blue Origin was part of a Boeing team that entered a competition for an unmanned “space plane” launch system. Its low-cost engine addresses the competition's focus of dropping the cost of putting large satellites into orbit to under $5 million per launch. SpaceX was not included in the teams selected for the first phase of the program, called XS-1, by DARPA.
The Boeing partnership with Blue Origin will apparently also extend to Boeing’s joint venture with Lockheed Martin, called the United Launch Alliance. The Wall Street Journal reports that Bezos or a representative will be on hand for a press conference on Wednesday in Washington to announce that Blue Origin is joining that venture in an effort to domestically produce rocket engines for the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rockets—replacing Russian-made engines.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/jeff-bezos-space-startup-partnered-with-boeing-for-crew-delivery-bid/
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