Congratulations to SpaceX and Boeing!

NASA selects the winners of its Commercial Crew program.

by Rod D. Martin
September 16, 2014

Congratulations to Boeing and SpaceX for winning the biggest prize yet on the new frontier:  NASA's Commercial Crew contract to provide what the media is calling "space taxi" service between Earth and the International Space Station (and other low Earth orbit, or LEO, destinations such as the planned Bigelow Aerospace space station).

It's not that shocking that a company like Boeing would be successful, even though its CST-100 spacecraft is a new design.  But SpaceX is quite another matter. Only founded in 2002 by my former PayPal colleague Elon Musk -- post-IPO but even before the sale to eBay -- SpaceX is a marvel, a true triumph of entrepreneurship and brilliance like few ventures in history.  Elon's achievement goes far beyond becoming the primary means by which American astronauts will enter space, at least for several years.  But even that much is more than anyone could have reasonably dreamed only a few short years ago.

The SpaceX Dragon v2 and t…