Boeing gets part of moon mission

WASHINGTON – NASA awarded a contract worth up to $1.13 billion Tuesday to aerospace giant Boeing Co. to build a key part of its multibillion-dollar rocket system to send astronauts back to the moon.

The Chicago-based company, which had worked on every NASA manned spaceship in the past, had been shut out of three earlier large contracts for NASA’s new spaceship and its plans to return to the moon. The new base contract is worth $514.7 million with another $610 million in options.

The new contract is to build the Ares I upper stage of the rocket, which would take astronauts on a short but crucial second phase of their trip to the moon.

Most of the upper stage work will be done at the Michoud assembly plant in New Orleans and other work will be done near Huntsville, Ala. That will mean about 250 new jobs in the New Orleans area starting in late 2008, said NASA program manager Danny Davis. Boeing, in a press release, said the number of New Orleans production employees will be “several hundred.”

While Boeing declined to provide a specific number of jobs it expects to bring to both areas, Boeing vice president Jim Chilton told reporters on a conference call local jobs would be geared toward manufacturing and engineering support.

Already 600 people throughout NASA are working on the program, and the entire project will employ anywhere from 1000 to 1500 people, Davis said. Another 100 employees will be hired in Huntsville, where the program will be designed and managed, for a total of 700 in Alabama, he said.

“NASA is committed to staying in the New Orleans area,” NASA Ares project manager Steve Cook said.

This is the fourth of the giant contracts handed out by the space agency in its multibillion-dollar plan to return astronauts to the moon by the end of the next decade. NASA has already promised up to $10.5 billion in work to aerospace companies. A fifth large contract, for shuttle electronics, will be awarded in December.

The upper stage contract is only the second one put up for public bidding.

Two teams, one headed by Boeing Co. and the other by shuttle booster maker Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis, competed for this contract. Both teams were headed by veteran NASA shuttle program managers.

The biggest chunk of money – up to $7.5 billion – last year was promised to Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Md. It is to build the Orion capsule and the service module.

Earlier this month, NASA announced it was giving Alliant a $1.8 billion contract to build the Ares upper stages. The contract was given to Alliant without bidding because the company already makes the space shuttle boosters, which is what the first stage is based on.

In July, NASA announced a $1.2 billion contract for $1.2 billion to Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif., to build the Ares rocket engines.

The future moon mission calls for the upper stage of the Ares I rocket to power the rocket and crew capsule for 147 miles. The 84-foot-long upper stage of Ares I would take over about 150 seconds after launch, flying the astronauts from 38 miles above Earth into orbit.

Those first 38 miles, the heavy-lifting part of the launch, would come from the first stage of the Ares I rocket, the part of the system awarded to Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis.

Once in orbit, the Orion crew capsule and a service module would take astronauts to the moon and back to Earth.