Boeing doesn’t mind its competition — in fact, the company welcomes it.

That was the message from Ted Goetz, a chief engineer with Boeing’s Commercial Crew who spoke today at Spacefest, a three-day event organized by the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

After describing the development of Boeing’s CST-100, Goetz was asked about SpaceX, the Elon Musk-led company that is sharing a $7 billion NASA contract with Boeing to help send astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

“With SpaceX in the picture, it’s actually pretty cool,” Goetz said. “They drive us to be better. It helps us sharpen our skills, and re-examine some of the things with how we’re doing business. It’s made a difference, for sure.”

Both Boeing and SpaceX will send U.S. astronauts to the ISS starting in 2017. NASA made its decision in September, awarding the bulk of the contract to Boeing ($4.6 billion), and the rest to Space X.

“This will relieve NASA of the job of [sending astronauts to the ISS], or paying the Russians to do it,” Goetz said. “It will allow NASA to focus its resources on the other great things we want to do in space, like research on the Space Station, going to Mars, or maybe going back to the moon.”

The contracts include certification, development, and a maximum of six missions. The CST-100 can transport up to seven passengers — or a mix of people and cargo — and three capsules will be built at Boeing’s Commercial Crew Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin — the space venture backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — isn’t quite as friendly. SpaceX recently challenged Blue Origin’s rocket-landing patent, and the companies previously battled over a contract to control and operate NASA’s historic Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center.

Here’s a video from Boeing showing off the CST-100: