WASHINGTON, D.C. - NASA has chosen Boeing to build two composite cryogenic fuel tanks for testing as possible ways to save weight on future spacecraft. The tanks will be tested at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center, which is leading the test program.

The two tanks, 5 meters wide and 2 meters wide, will be built at Boeing's Seattle facilities and transported to Huntsville testing starting in late 2013. The project is a $24 million contract for Boeing.

"The goal of this particular technology demonstration effort is to achieve a 30 percent weight savings and a 25 percent cost savings from traditional metallic tanks," said the Director of NASA's Space Technology Program, Michael Gazarik at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Weight savings alone would allow us to increase our upmass capability, which is important when considering payload size and cost. This state-of-the-art technology has applications for multiple stakeholders in the rocket propulsion community."

"This technology demonstration effort is different in the fact that we're focused on affordability concurrently with performance," said John Vickers, NASA project manager for the Composite Cryotank Technologies Demonstration effort at Marshall. "This technology has excellent transition potential for NASA and commercial product lines. Critical technology advances such as out-of autoclave composites are being matured, and when demonstrated in an operational environment will let us go well beyond the state-of-the-art."