NASA wants to use Boeing to help transport astronauts on an ISS Flight to and from the International Space Station. Last Wednesday, the space administration announced that it would be giving the task to Boeing as part of a 4.2 billion dollar contract the aerospace company drafted last September. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, also has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA for transporting people to the ISS. SpaceX’s 2.6 billion dollar contract was also signed in September, and future plans for the company are to send astronauts to the space station later this year for NASA. Both companies will have to pass tests for certification before the year 2017, though, before their spacecrafts are given the green light for this ISS flight and future flights.
Boeing will use the CST-100 craft for ISS flight.
Boeing will employ its CST-100 (Crew Space Transportation) spacecraft to fly at least two and up to six flights and fulfill its contract. The spacecraft has a capacity of seven crew members, as well as accommodations for cargo. The contract is an important part of the aerospace giant’s history.
SpaceX will fly astronauts to the ISS in its Crew Dragon.
SpaceX will be using the Crew Dragon craft to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The company recently successfully performed a pad abort test of its Dragon spacecraft, back in May.
The SpaceX Dragon has been on an ISS flight before as part of resupply missions, so hopefully everything will go equally well with humans on board.One of the cool things about these private companies being tasked with completing spaceflight missions to the International Space Station is that NASA will be more free to use its resources towards other awesome and necessary things like research and manned missions to Mars. The only really probably hiccup may be that funding issues push the missions further back, something which NASA warned could happen. NASA would then have to rely solely on Russia for access to the space station. This scenario could be quite unfavorable if political tensions between the west and Russia escalate.
