Commercial Spaceflight Federation, Space Florida Offer Congratulations

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation issued a statement Friday congratulating NASA and the winners of the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCICap) competition. This announcement is the latest stage in NASA’s innovative Commercial Crew Program, which is designed to return American astronauts to American space vehicles as soon as possible.

“Our congratulations to the winners of this round of competition,” said Michael Lopez-Alegria, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. “The Commercial Crew Program is a public-private partnership that provides big benefits for government, industry and the American people. With these awards, NASA gets an important service for significantly lower cost, the commercial spaceflight sector gets an anchor tenant, and Americans get our astronauts flying to space on American vehicles again. The last round of awards has been a big success, and I’m confident that the next two years will see great accomplishments as companies achieve the milestones announced today.”

“These awards are the next step in bringing human spaceflight back to America,” said Eric Anderson, Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. “Through this competitive program, American companies will provide safe, reliable and routine flights to low-Earth orbit, allowing NASA to concentrate on deep space exploration.”

“It is important to keep in mind that the commercial space industry is much larger than just one NASA program. I anticipate that companies who did not compete or receive an award in this round will continue to pursue other markets for their services,” continued Mr. Anderson.

Competitors submitted bids in March and NASA has announced today three agreements totaling approximately $1.1 billion, with Sierra Nevada Corporation, Space Exploration Technologies, and The Boeing Company.

"We are pleased to see that NASA has named Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada to support U.S next-generation human spaceflight initiatives," said Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida. "We look forward to working with each of these companies and their Florida-based operations to lead the private sector into the future of human spaceflight."

The Commercial Crew Program is a competitive public-private partnership, in which the companies develop and build vehicles to meet NASA’s stringent requirements for human spaceflight, including safety requirements, and NASA provides funding as fixed milestones are met. The awards announced today were for the third round of this program, the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCICap), which will continue to use Space Act Agreements to procure development of a complete Crew Transportation System to low-Earth orbit. Unlike in standard procurements, these agreements fix cost ahead of time, providing fiscal certainty to the government in difficult economic conditions.  The costs associated with any delays due to the technical difficulty of the job are borne by the contractor.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/