Blog Post Outlines Progress, NASA Adminstrator's Vision

In an entry posted on a NASA blog, Administrator Charles Bolden says NASA and its industry partners make tremendous progress on the commercial capability for delivering cargo and transporting crew to low Earth orbit (LEO). He says it’s a path that will stop the out-sourcing of our missions to the space station and bring that work back home here to America by relying on U.S. companies to get the job done.

"Our initial investments with the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program had two participants -- SpaceX and Orbital Sciences -- and our investments are paying off," Bolden writes. "From SpaceX's launch, orbit, and successful recovery of a Dragon capsule in December 2010 to this year's planned berthing of capsules at the International Space Station (ISS) by both SpaceX and Orbital, the milestones have been nothing short of historic.

Bolden says the commercial approach to space transportation has grown and now features partnerships with a diverse array of companies, both large and small, each with their own expertise and innovations. "With the first two Commercial Crew Development rounds of awards, we've moved forward with partners who are working on different kinds of space transportation systems technologies -- all with the aim of providing future robust crew transportation capabilities for our nation to reach low Earth orbit. We look forward to more outcomes from these partners and others in the future.

"Now, we've launched our call for the next phase of our ambitious program to develop an integrated system for transporting crew to LEO and potentially astronauts to the ISS. Earlier today, we released an announcement for proposals that asks U.S. companies to bring us their best plans to achieve a crewed orbital flight demonstration by the middle of the decade. The resulting space act agreement awards will range from $300 - $500 million, and we anticipate multiple awards.

"Since the dawn of human space flight, private industry has been a critical partner in building the rockets and spacecraft that have helped NASA reach higher. But no longer can NASA afford to own and operate these expensive systems for travel to low Earth orbit. By handing this work off to U.S. industry, we are freed up to focus on the more difficult destinations including new missions of the future to asteroids and Mars. Also, we keep the work of transporting our astronauts to the ISS here in the United States and stop the outsourcing of this work to foreign providers.

"The base period of the funded space act agreements of this next phase of our commercial space program are planned to start in August of this year and run to May 2014. Along with our ongoing work on a heavy lift rocket and Orion crew capsule to reach deep space, a recently graduated class of astronauts and a future class that has just submitted their preliminary applications, America's human space flight aspirations - and the hardware to make them reality -- are going strong."

FMI: http://commercialcrew.nasa.gov/index.cfm