NASA Awards SpaceX Additional Crew Flights to Space Station
WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA has awarded three additional missions to Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, for crew transportation services to the International Space Station as part of its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract. The CCtCap modification, following the agency’s notice of intent to procure the flights in December 2021, brings the total missions for SpaceX to nine and allows NASA to maintain an uninterrupted U.S. capability for human access to the space station.
This is a firm fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract modification for the Crew-7, Crew-8, and Crew-9 missions, bringing the total contract value to $3,490,872,904. The period of performance runs through March 31, 2028. The current sole source modification does not preclude NASA from seeking additional contract modifications in the future for additional transportation services as needed.
In 2014, NASA awarded the CCtCap contracts to Boeing and SpaceX through a public-private partnership as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Under CCtCap, NASA certifies that a provider’s space transportation system meets the agency’s requirements prior to flying missions with astronauts.
SpaceX was certified by NASA for crew transportation in November 2020, and currently its third crew rotation mission for the agency is in orbit. As part of the missions, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket transport up to four astronauts along with critical cargo to the space station.
For information about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew.
29 responses to “NASA Awards SpaceX Additional Crew Flights to Space Station”
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With Crew 3 currently at ISS, Crew 7-9 seems so far away. Crew 4 and 5 are scheduled to fly this year, Crew 6 early next year. So Crew 7 would not be needed until late 2023. But I can see where they want to get this all lined up with plenty of time, especially since they can’t place Starliner into the schedule until it has flown a successful crewed test flight, which in theory could happen this year if OFT-2 goes smoothly. Which somehow seems hard to imagine it will go smoothly but hopefully it will.
Even if Russia abandons and quits flying Soyuz to ISS I would think the U.S. crew flight schedule would remain the same. Unless there is some type of maintenance that needs to be done on the Russian side, but you would think they would just power it down and close the hatch, but I don’t know.
The next Soyuz flight is scheduled for later this month. It will be interesting to see if it’s launched on schedule.
Deleted due to brain fart.
Cool down, Lee. You are talking about Starship, not Starliner – the subject of this article.
He has such a hard on for Elon that’s all he sees.
No, the damn names are so similar, it’s an easy mistake to make.
Ah, Starship. What’s in a name?
To me it shall ever remain the Big Effing Rocket!
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Meanwhile SpaceX is preparing to move beyond Boca Chica. The Deimos just left Brownsville for a shipyard in Mississippi to be outfitted for offshore launches while work moves at flank speed on the launch tower at Cape. We may well see Starship/Super Heavy and SLS on their respective launch pads at the same time given the latest delay for the SLS.
I think SLS isn’t going to launch until July. If it delays past that point all bets are off because that means some new problem cropped up that NASA wasn’t expecting. First launch then might not be until 2024!
Starship on the other hand I expect will launch in May. That gives SpaceX plenty of wiggle room for preflight testing and getting Stage Zero built up to launch readiness.
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If SLS misses a July date, the “new” problem may be one that NASA would be expecting – the fuel grains in the SRBs going out-of-spec from having been stacked for too long.
We may be finding out just how much Waver NASA is willing to use vs. its absolute safety requirements.
Considering agency history, it might be should, not would, be expecting.
Yes, NASA has along history of defining deviance down.
It seems wise given how no one knows when, and if, Boeing’s Starliner will be able to serve the station. Hopefully they will finally have the software problems fixed this year and try again to pass their test flight.
Does software fix those busted valves?
The only thing they seem sure of is that water contamination in that area reacted with a small amount of leaked NTO, which led to corrosion which led to stuck valves. Small leaks of NTO is apparently not unusual, however they had not anticipated moisture being able to get into that area, which is how they got bit by it. They apparently have come up with some possibilities for how the moisture got in, and will be taking mitigation steps that are supposed to cover any of the possible causes for it.
I do not speak for TBC on social media, but they understand it pretty well. I should add I am told
That’s the impression that I get, and the fact that NASA apparently accepts their rationale seems to agree with that. Especially since NASA is no longer hands-off like they were before OFT-1, they are now scrutinizing Boeing on everything Starliner.
And Boeing needs to be scrutinize given their past performance in space and in aircraft.
Good snarky answer! 😉
How about that!
That brings the average price of each crewed Dragon mission to $390 million. I presume that is the entire program cost, including all development costs?
Meanwhile the ESA is apparently spending $300 million each, just for the service module of each Orion spacecraft!
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To me this seems much higher than it should be. I was more disturbed by the $2.6B that SpaceX got for crew Dragon development than I was about the $4.2B that Boeing got for Starliner development. Seemed to me at the time that SpaceX just had to tweak cargo Dragon and fly. Seems that I was off all the way around. Considering the problems with Boeing and Russia, it’s the only game in town.
Then I read about the SLS and accessories hitting $4.1B per flight per congressional testimony and it starts to sound like a bargain.
It’s important keep price categories accurate.
The 2.6 vs 4.2 billion dollars for Commercial Crew program was the whole cost, including the development costs plus the costs of half a dozen manned flights to the ISS.
The 4.1 billion cost of each SLS/Orion flight does not include the billions of development costs. That’s extra!
So yeah, even the Boeing Starliner is a bargain compared to normal NASA standards.
I call the high cost of NASA manned spaceflight, the Curse of the Space Shuttle. NASA just can’t seem to escape the curse.
The whole point of the Space Shuttle was to reduce costs, yet it ended up costing at least a billion dollars per flight. The International Space Station was a primary goal for the Space Shuttle program, and the ISS ended up costing about a $100 billion dollars to build. The SLS is a Shuttle derived super-heavy-lift launch vehicle, and it’s costing $3 billion every year, whether it flies or not, as long as the program lasts.
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Depends on how you define bargain. Crew 1-9 is 36 seats. Demo-2 was 2 seats, for a total of 38 seats. Divided into the contract cost above, I get about $91.86M/seat. No cheaper than the last Soyuz seats, which were I think $90M. I’m not implying we still should be using Soyuz, but this whole program isn’t on average cheaper, which I had thought was one of the goals. Likely Boeing’s cost/seat will be even higher. What am I missing?
That SpaceX is not a charity but a business. If NASA is willing to pay that price for the only option it has at the moment for American access to the ISS why should SpaceX leave money on the table? When, and if, Starliner starts flying than SpaceX will just slide down the demand curve and lower its price to stay competitive in serving the ISS.
I see no reason SX would lower their price once Starliner comes online. The Starliner price per seat is likely to be much higher.
I’m not saying SX should be a charity. I’m pointing out that Crew Dragon was supposed to be cheaper than Soyuz. It apparently isn’t. You think that is SX doing good business. I think it is because that is about what it costs per seat to do this. I think SX is making far less profit per seat than the Russians did on a Soyuz seat.
But the fact remains that a major justification for the whole CC program never materialized.
It could be $90 million a seat, or only $30 million a seat, or even less. The only way to know is to have access to SpaceX’s financials which are confidential since it is a private firm. Surely NASA was not so naive to think a private firm would pass the savings on…
You’re missing a supplemental payment to Boeing of $287.2 million added on to the original $4.2 billion. Given how late Starliner will be entering service, the original 6 missions may well prove to be all it ever gets. So that’s 24 seats for six full missions plus 3 more seats occupied on the CFT test flight. That makes the price of Starliner seats work out to a bit over $166 million each.
Nope, not missing anything. As I said in the post you replied to, Boeing seats are much more expensive than SX. Just as SX seats are slightly more expensive than Soyuz. At least the last Soyuz seat we bought, which IIRC was $90 million. Again, I’m not advocating at all that we should still be buying Soyuz seats, even without the current Ukranian war. I’m just pointing out that neither commercial provider seems likely to best that price, which as I understood it was a main driver for the whole program. That’s it.
The last seat we bought from the Russians cost $92.5 million. But I think Commercial Crew was always more about restoration of U.S. access capability to ISS than about cost. Yes, the Russian seat prices were going nowhere but up, but, by way of comparison, a Shuttle seat cost over $228 million, given a seven-person crew and an average all-up cost of $1.6 billion per mission flown. That makes even Starliner a comparative bargain. CC seats are a lot cheaper than what NASA was paying before the end of Shuttle operations. Crew Dragon 2 seats for NASA missions are only on a rough par with what the Russians were charging NASA at the end because of all the mission assurance stuff NASA still insists on. Mission prices for Axiom and Jared Isaacman are much lower.