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I can only imagine it is related to this announcement from SpaceX... http://www.spacex.com/press/2012/12/19/nasa-selects-spacex-return-americans-space http://w

I can only imagine it is related to this announcement from SpaceX... http://www.spacex.com/press/2012/12/19/nasa-selects-spacex-return-americans-space http://www.spacex.com/press/2012/12/19/nasa-selects-spacex-r... "Hawthorne, CA – Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) today won a $440 million contract with NASA to develop the successor to the Space Shuttle and transport American astronauts into space." "SpaceX expects to undertake its first manned flight by 2015 – a timetable that capitalizes on the proven success of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft combination. While Dragon is initially being used to transport cargo to the International Space Station, both Dragon and Falcon 9 were designed from the beginning to carry crew."

Shivetya 12y ago
there were numerous stories submitted here today that point to Boeing winning
- adam_klein 12y ago
  There is a good chance for a joint award (SpaceX/Boeing).
adam_klein 12y ago
This is related to Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) phase of Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development
Mvandenbergh 12y ago
That announcement is from 2012 so I think that's unlikely.
washedup 12y ago
These were awards handed out to a few companies in 2012 so that they could develop their capsule technology. After a couple years, NASA planned to select one of the companies (out of SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and Boeing) to fully test and eventual use their capsule. The winner(s) of the next contract is being announced today.