Boeing bests Lockheed Martin for Ares contract

The Boeing Co. will manufacture the upper stage of the Ares 1 rocket that will launch U.S. astronauts on missions to the International Space Station, the moon and Mars, NASA officials announced today.

The company beat Lockheed Martin for the third of four major contracts involved in the effort to design, develop and test the Ares 1, the first stage of which will be a five-segment solid rocket motor built by Utah-based ATK.

The second stage will be powered by a J2X engine made by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

The $1.1 billion contract award was good news for the people who work at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, which suffered significant damage during Hurricane Katrina two years ago Wednesday. About 250 jobs will be created there as a result.

Lockheed Martin now builds shuttle external tanks at the government-owned, contractor-operated factory.

Some design work will be done at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and ground testing of the J2X engine will be done at Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss. It's unlikely that the contract will bring new jobs to the Kennedy Space Center area.

"Our intention is to ship the completed stage to the launch facility pretty much ready for stacking," said Danny Davis, NASA's Ares 1 upper stage element manager.

The first test flight of the Ares 1 is scheduled to blast off from Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B in April 2009. The first piloted flight of an Ares 1 with an Apollo-style Orion space capsule will be in March 2015.

The project eventually will bring work to Kennedy Space Center.

"It's much like the space shuttle," said Jim Chilton, vice president of Boeing's Exploration Launch Systems. "It'll be stacked in the Vehicle Assembly Building and rolled to the pad."

United Launch Alliance workers from the Delta V probgram could work with the upper stage program, said Chilton.

"They've been working with us, and they'll begin working with us on day one," said Chilton. "Some will relocate to do the job. some people are already here."

Most ULA employees, however, drawn into the Ares program, will likely come from Decatur, Ala.

"That's likely where we'll get the bulk of them," Chilton said.

IMAGE NOTE: Click to enlarge the NASA artist's concept of the Ares 1 launch vehicle and its different stages.