Similar Stories to Nasa May Pay Boeing As A Middleman To Launch 5 Astronauts On Russian Spacecraft on Bing News

NASA/Joel Kowsky NASA, already in a serious financial pickle with the Russians, may soon look to Boeing for help. When the space agency retired its last space shuttle in July 2011, it expected commercial carriers like SpaceX and Boeing to launch its astronauts into space by 2015. But both SpaceX and Boeing hit snags with the development of their rockets and spaceships, slipping that schedule by at least 3 years, according to a September 2016 audit by NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG). This left NASA with one option for getting astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) through 2018: a Russian spacecraft called the Soyuz. Russia has taken full advantage of its temporary monopoly by charging NASA ever-more-exorbitant sums for those Soyuz seats — yet the problem for NASA might soon get worse. As Eric Berger reported at Ars Technica, NASA issued a new solicitation on January 17 to buy two more Soyuz seats from Boeing, plus "an option to acquire crew transportation from Boeing for three crewmembers on the Soyuz in 2019." In other words: NASA may end up buying five tickets aboard the Soyuz from Boeing. If that sounds a little convoluted, particularly since Boeing's spacecraft development delays helped drive NASA to this conundrum in the first place, welcome to the current state of human spaceflight. As Berger notes at Ars Technica, RSC Energia — the Russian entity that makes and launches Soyuz rockets and spacecraft — recently settled a $320 million lawsuit with Boeing.