Boeing considers increase in commercial crew investement

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Boeing considers increase in commercial crew investement

November 25 2012 05:05:20 PM | by NSG Analysts

It's been mentioned here a few times that Boeing's winning proposal for the next phase in NASA's commercial crew program (referred to in NASA-speak as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability or CCiCap) included minimal investment by the company. The company is now thinking about increasing that contribution in hopes of speeding up the program:

From the FT article:

The Boeing and SpaceX spacecraft both ranked high on their technical merits. But NASA raised concerns about Boeing’s financial commitment to the public-private sector partnership.

Ferguson said Boeing is thinking about upping its corporate ante, aiming to advance the date of its first piloted test flight.

“We’re looking heavily into getting some additional Boeing investment to move that (late 2016) date to the left significantly, which we think we need to do to keep pace with SpaceX,” Ferguson said.

Comments (12)

Roga

I've come to see the CST100 as the required fat to keep the meat funded. Everyone in the program knows the SpaceX IS the program. Boeing was part of the sales pitch, without them it could have been Lockheed or Northrop or even Orbital. Sierra Nevada is the technology development program, without them it could have been XCOR or Virgin or some previously unheralded company with known technical chops (or no one). The only remotely plausible surrogate for SpaceX is Blue Origin, and they seem to Read More

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26th November 2012 9:04pm

Brian

Boeing's going to start spending its own money? Aww, isn't that cute?

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26th November 2012 4:34am

Harry Tallhat

Brian, that made me laugh on an otherwise dreary Monday. Unless BA invests its own cash, CST-100 ought to be re-named to BS-100.

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26th November 2012 7:40am

Robert Horning

While not Boeing's money, it seems as though Robert Bigelow was putting some money into the CST-100 as well. Did that ever happen, or was Bigelow Aerospace merely a prospective customer?

The point of going to Boeing was in part to have a second supplier for space transportation services, just in case SpaceX was having some problems.

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26th November 2012 7:26pm

Trent Waddington

Yep, other way around. Boeing was paying Bigelow.

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26th November 2012 9:25pm

Outsider

Its a clear attempt to stave off a downselect. SpaceX already has missions under its belt in a market where capsules are becoming common.

Boeing should be leveraging its experiences with the X-37 more. I wonder if this investment is coming too late.

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26th November 2012 3:02am

Coastal Ron

It's too late for Boeing to change vehicles for the CCiCap program. If they thought an X-37 derived vehicle was worth proposing, they should have done it two years ago. Now they are locked into the CST-100. If Boeing were to stop development of the CST-100, a good portion of their CCiCap money would go to Sierra Nevada for the Dream Chaser, which is already the upscale version of the X-37. Bottom line is that Boeing has to make the CST-100 work, or else they are locked out of the initial Read More

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26th November 2012 8:00am

Outsider

I'm thinking that round one is a battle they've already lost, assuming SpaceX's fortunes hold out. The dragon will have a number of missions under its belt before the first CST flight.
The fight should be for future opportunities and the X-37 is the most impressive product that is not on that market.
If they wait until more companies have flight time, it becomes a harder sell.

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27th November 2012 3:10am

Coastal Ron

Outsider said: "The fight should be for future opportunities and the X-37 is the most impressive product that is not on that market." - A human capable version of the X-37 is currently a myth, whereas the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser is at least a work-in-progress that NASA has already evaluated and found worth funding. The fastest path for Boeing to get a non-capsule entrant in the CCiCap program is for them to buy the Dream Chaser from Sierra Nevada and finish the development themselves. In Read More

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27th November 2012 9:41am

Charles Lurio

OK I might as well post the following here as well as at PA: I didn’t say it explicitly in my “Report” issue discussing the CCiCap decisions back on October 1, but my understanding was that Boeing had proposed contributing just about ZERO dollars to that effort. And I heard that ULA was not happy about the similar level of their investment in the Centaur/Atlas mods either. Given the next round of NASA budget crunches, putting some of their own money up after all may put them Read More

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25th November 2012 4:04pm

ElmarM

Thanks for the info, Charles! Glad to see you post here too!

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27th November 2012 10:45am

Martijn Meijering

It's interesting that Boeing will now have to lobby against a downselect and argue for a cancellation of Orion instead. And conveniently there are already moves afoot to outsource the most useful part of Orion (its SM and avionics) to ESA.

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27th November 2012 11:13am

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