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NASA Administrator Bill Nelson shared four key reasons why his agency will continue to work with Boeing for crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS) despite issues with the latter’s spacecraft’s thrusters. These issues forced NASA to err on the side of caution and decide to bring the crew back on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in February next year.
Administrator Nelson shared the reasons during yesterday’s media call announcing NASA’s decision. He said the need to have two separate spacecraft to carry astronauts and the structure of NASA’s contracts with Boeing are among the main reasons the pair will continue to work together in the future.
NASA continues to fund Boeing for different redundancy, ‘arm in arm’ contract and long history with Boeing, including work on SLS, says Administrator Nelson
During yesterday’s call, when asked why his agency continued to fund Boeing, Nelson began by sharing that NASA needs to “two spacecraft. To, uh, have redundancy in case there isn’t one available to take the crew to and from the International Space Station..” This redundancy, also called disparate redundancy, is intended to ensure 24-hour access to the station for astronauts, since failures or problems with one spacecraft do not require NASA to ground the other due to safety considerations.
For the second reason, Nelson stated that NASA’s work with Boeing “is according to a market contract. And a contract that is a fixed price contract.” These contracts lock in the amount NASA pays its contractors over their lifetime, with any overages or additional payments requiring approval. In contrast, traditional contracts are typically cost-plus, which is a pay-as-you-go model that bills the contract winner throughout the life of the contract.
The third reason for NASA’s continued partnership with Boeing is the extensive work they have done on various projects. Nelson shared that “Boeing has been a great partner of NASA over the years. In fact, uh, the, the big, uh Space Launch System, the SLS rocket is managed by Boeing. And, there’s been a long history with Boeing.”
The SLS is the world’s most powerful operational rocket, and its first successful test flight in November 2022 sent NASA’s Orion spacecraft into orbit around the Moon. Orion is designed to carry the first crew into lunar orbit before docking with SpaceX’s Starship and returning America’s presence to the Moon after the Apollo program.
Although he initially planned to list three reasons, the Administrator ended his response with a bonus reason. He stated that “fourth reason is that they [Boeing] were the winning bidders, along with, uh, uh, SpaceX. Because we wanted two. So for all those reasons, that’s why I wanted to say that NASA does business with Boeing.” Starliner was initially scheduled to launch in 2017, but several setbacks led NASA to stick with Boeing to reap the benefits of having two different vehicles capable of carrying crew to the ISS.
NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free added that “Boeing operates the space station for us, as well as the prime contractor for the space station. And this is in its 25th year. So we have a long and storied history with them there as well.“He was joined by Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for space operations.
Bowersox went on to say that “Boeing has been a great partner with us on the space station. And, and, and I think the key word is partner. A lot of people want to focus on the contractual relationship where we’re buying something from the company. That’s not entirely true, right. I mean, we have a contract with Boeing, but it’s to work together to develop this capability for our country.“said Bowersox.”And we’ve had two good partners, Boeing and SpaceX, when it comes to commercial crew. And when they have problems, we don’t just, uh, throw rocks at them, or tell them we don’t like them. We work with them to overcome those problems..”