The Dream Chaser — the space shuttle craft of Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Louisville-based operation— was left out in the cold Tuesday when NASA awarded contracts for a new space taxi.
NASA awarded a $6.8 billion contract to Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, headed by Elon Musk.
Sierra Nevada was in competition with Boeing and SpaceX to provide NASA a transport for astronauts to and from orbit.
Since the space shuttle program shutdown in 2011, American astronauts have hitched rides on Russian transports to the space station- at $71 million a seat.
Sparks, Nev-based Sierra Nevada’s Space Systems unit is based in Louisville and the company employs about 1,000 people in Colorado.
“There is still an opportunity for Sierra Nevada,” said Peter Arment, an aerospace analyst with Sterne, Agee & Leach. “Sierra has worked with SpaceX before.”
Small, high-skilled engineering firms have repeatedly show themselves to be nimble and competitive in aerospace, Arment said.
In 2012, Sierra had received about $220 million from NASA to help develop the fixed-wing Dream Chaser — a mini-shuttle.
Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon are both capsules.
SpaceX is, already delivering space station cargo.
Boeing, the veteran of the group would assemble its crew capsules at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA has set a goal of 2017 for the first crewed launch under the program.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
