Boeing wins “space taxi” contract worth $4.2B, partners with SpaceX. Meanwhile, Boeing teams with Jeff Bezos(!) to compete with Elon Musk and SpaceX. Should be epic.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other senior officials gathered today at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to announce that NASA will resume human space flight in the United States– Boeing and SpaceX will be the commercial partners to help transport astronauts to the International Space Station, and they will launch from Cape Canaveral.
The total contracts are valued at $6.8 billion: Boeing gets $4.2 Billion, SpaceX 2.6 billion. Crew will fly on Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon.
A joint venture of Boeing Co (BA.N) and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) plans to announce on Wednesday that it will team up with Blue Origin, a company run by Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos, to develop a new rocket engine, a source familiar with the plans said.
Officials at Boeing and Lockheed declined comment. No comment was immediately available from Blue Origin or United Launch Alliance (ULA), the Boeing-Lockheed venture that uses Russian-built engines to power some of its rockets.