Teams compete to build stage of NASA rocket

By Brian Berger

Staff Writer

updated 2:45 p.m. ET April 2, 2007

WASHINGTON - The competition is on for two aerospace industry teams vying for the contract to build part of NASA’s next astronaut-launching rocket.

Boeing unveiled its team March 28 in the competition to build upper stages for NASA’s planned Ares I crew launcher, a program that represents the company’s last chance for the next several years to win a major hardware-building role in the emerging U.S. human space exploration program.

Bids are due April 13 for the estimated $900 million contract, scheduled for award late this summer, to produce the hardware based on NASA specifications. The competition pits Boeing’s team, which includes Northrop Grumman, against one led by Alliant Techsystems.

“We intend to have the upper stage award by late August,” Steve Cook, NASA’s director of exploration launch projects at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said in a telephone interview.

The Ares I upper stage contract will be followed by one other award to build the rocket’s avionics system as NASA works towards the first test flight, dubbed Ares I-X, in April 2009.

“Two of our main objectives for the calendar year are to complete those two acquisitions,” Cook said.

Boeing weighs in
Boeing built NASA’s fleet of space shuttles and is prime contractor on the international space station. But the company has yet to land a big piece of Project Constellation, which encompasses the hardware NASA will use to ferry astronauts and associated cargo to low Earth orbit starting in 2015, and to the Moon by 2020.

“It’s very important for Boeing to be a part of Constellation, we’ve been part of human spaceflight since the beginning,” John Elbon, vice president for Boeing’s Constellation program, in a telephone interview. “Constellation is the next chapter in NASA’s story.”

In August, a Boeing-Northrop Grumman team lost out to Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver in the competition for Project Constellation’s biggest plum so far, the $4 billion Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) contract. Orion capsules will be launched by the Ares I expendable rocket, whose main stage is being developed by Alliant Techsystems Launch Systems Group based on the space shuttle solid-rocket motors that the company builds.

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“We were of course disappointed that we were unsuccessful with our teammate Northrop Grumman in winning CEV,” Elbon said, adding that the Ares I upper stage is NASA’s last major exploration procurement in the near-future. “After that there won’t be procurements for three, four or five years.”

Boeing and Northrop Grumman billed themselves as a team of equals in the Orion competition. For the Ares I upper-stage work, Boeing is clearly the team leader, with Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman identified as a supplier responsible for producing the composite interstage hardware.

“We are the low-risk offer as everyone on this team has the experience in the jobs we’re going to do on Ares I, so we’re keeping the risk to NASA low and we think we have a very competitive offer,” Jim Chilton, vice president of Boeing Exploration Launch Systems, Huntsville, Ala., said. “Our team was built around NASA’s requirements.”

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