Judge: NASA can move forward with Boeing, SpaceX

A judge today allowed NASA to move forward with new contracts to develop private space taxis despite a legal challenge to the deals worth up to $6.8 billion.

The ruling was a setback for Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp., developer of the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle, which has protested NASA's award of the contracts last month to Boeing and SpaceX.

Sierra Nevada's bid protest initially triggered a stop-work order pending a U.S. Government Accountability Office review that will be completed by Jan. 5.

But NASA earlier this month took the unusual step of directing Boeing and SpaceX to proceed with the contracts before the protest is resolved.

NASA claimed it "best serves the United States" to enable the commercial crew systems as soon as possible, and that delays to flights planned by 2017 would put the International Space Station at risk.

Sierra Nevada called that decision "arbitrary and capricious" and asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to overturn it.

But at a hearing today, Judge Marian Blank Horn "provided the parties with a verbal decision declining to overrule" NASA's action, court records show.

The GAO will continue to consider Sierra Nevada's bid protest.

Boeing and SpaceX both are developing capsules to fly astronauts, called the CST-100 and Dragon, respectively.

In a Sept. 16 announcement at Kennedy Space Center, which leads the Commercial Crew Program, NASA awarded Boeing a contract worth up to $4.2 billion and another to SpaceX worth up to $2.6 billion. The funding covers a crewed test flight and up to six operational flights.

Sierra Nevada claims its bid was nearly $1 billion lower than Boeing's, and that the Dream Chaser's technical feasibility ranked close to the other proposals.

NASA has not released the statement explaining its selections.

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