NASA will pay Boeing more than twice SpaceX for crew seats

Enlarge / The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is seen after landing in White Sands, New Mexico. -Mexico, Sunday, December 22, 2019. NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA confirmed on Wednesday that it has awarded five additional crew transport missions to SpaceX, and its Crew Dragon vehicle, to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. This brings to 14 the total number of crewed missions SpaceX is committed to performing for NASA through 2030.

As previously reported by Ars, these are likely to be the last flights NASA needs to keep the space station fully occupied until 2030. Although no international agreement has yet been signed, NASA has signaled that it would like to continue flying the space station in orbit. laboratory until 2030, when one or more US commercial space stations should be operational in low Earth orbit.

Under the new agreement, SpaceX would fly 14 crewed missions to the station on Crew Dragon, and Boeing would fly six during the life of the station. That would be enough to meet all of NASA's needs, which include two launches a year, each carrying four astronauts. But NASA has the option of purchasing more seats from either supplier.

"NASA may need additional crew flights to the International Space Station beyond the missions the agency has purchased to date," agency spokesman Josh told Ars. Finch. "The current sole source change for SpaceX does not preclude NASA from pursuing future contract changes for additional transportation services, if required."

Price and performance

In its seat purchase announcement, NASA did not specify why it purchased 14 missions from SpaceX and only six from Boeing. However, this decision to buy all remaining seats from SpaceX is likely down to past performance and price. SpaceX began flying operational missions to the space station in 2020, with the Crew-1 mission. Although the Boeing Starliner will perform a crewed test flight early next year, likely in February, its first operational mission will not take place until the second half of 2023.

In addition, there are questions about the availability of rockets for Starliner. Boeing has purchased enough Atlas V rockets from United Launch Alliance for six operational Starliner missions, but after that the Atlas V will be retired. At a press conference last week, Boeing commercial crew program manager Mark Nappi said the company was considering "different options" for Starliner launch vehicles. These options include buying a Falcon 9 from competitor SpaceX, paying United Launch Alliance to humanely evaluate its new Vulcan rocket, or paying Blue Origin for its upcoming New Glenn booster.

Whatever NASA's ultimate reasons, it's clear in hindsight that the space agency got a much better deal from SpaceX in the commercial crew competition.

There are several ways to estimate the actual costs of the program to NASA, but probably the simplest way is to add up the money NASA gave each company for the development of its crewed spacecraft and for the flight of operational missions and divide it by the number of seats purchased during the entire duration of the program. Recall that each of the two spacecraft, the Boeing Starliner vehicle and the SpaceX Crew Dragon, is designed to carry four astronauts for NASA.

In 2014, NASA limited the crew competition to just two companies, Boeing and SpaceX. At that time, the space agency gave Boeing $4.2 billion in funding for the development of the Starliner spacecraft and six operational crew flights. Later, in a reward NASA's own inspector general called "unnecessary," NASA paid Boeing an additional $287.2 million. This brings Boeing's total to $4.49 billion, although Finch told Ars that Boeing's contract value as of August 1, 2022 was $4.39 billion.

For the same services, the development of Crew Dragon and six operational missions, NASA paid SpaceX $2.6 billion. After its initial award, NASA agreed to purchase eight additional flights from SpaceX—Crew-7, -8, -9, -10, -11, -12, -13, and -14—through 2030. This brings the total contract awarded to SpaceX at $4.93 billion.

Costs for NASA

Since we now know how many flights each company will provide to NASA through...