United Launch Alliance (ULA) President and Chief Executive Michael Gass believes NASA shouldn’t waste time awarding its contract for private companies to deliver astronauts to the international space station, saying a speedy decision would provide much-needed budget certainty, Florida Today reported Dec. 7.
Three of the four companies in the competition — Boeing, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin — have proposed using ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket. (The fourth, Space Exploration Technologies, is building its own.) That means ULA, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture, can’t favor one partner and doesn’t have a motive to invest in a single entry, Gass said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
“Why would you continue to invest when one of three of your investments could only be the potential winner?” he said. “So making a decision earlier is really helpful.”
