NYT: Commercial Crew Taking Flight With Help from NASA

Kenneth Chang at the New York Times has an article today about commercial crew that focuses on Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser effort. It also mentions what Boeing, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are doing, but the article is mostly about the origin of the Dream Chaser design and Michael Sirangelo’s optimism about what it will take to finish development — “less than $1 billion” that would lead to an orbital test flight in three years. Sirangelo is chairman of Sierra Nevada.

One interesting quote in the article is attributed to an unspecified Senate staffer who says “They’re not getting $6 billion over six years for commercial crew. That’s never going to happen.” The staffer reportedly estimates that they will get half that much. President Obama proposed $6 billion over five years in his FY2011 budget request. The 2010 NASA authorization act covers three of those years, FY2011-2013, and authorizes a total of approximately $1.3 billion. How much the President will request for FY2012 and FY2013 and how much Congress will appropriate for any of those years remains to be seen.