NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says that NASA will be able to free itself from this current mission and engage in more ambitious missions such as sending humans to Mars.
NASA announced that the companies Boeing and SpaceX will provide it with astronaut flight services for the International Space Station ("commercial crew"), in a program worth 6.8 billion dollars.
The companies will deliver passenger spacecraft starting in 2017, thus returning the US to space after a long absence since the shutdown of the shuttles in 2011. By then, Boeing will complete the development of the SCT-100 spacecraft and SpaceX the Dragon version 2 spacecraft. Currently, the US is focusing on Russia for flying its astronauts to the space station, for all that this implies in this tense period against the background of the crisis in Ukraine.
Sierra Nevada, which is also currently flying cargo to the International Space Station in a NASA tender at the same time as SpaceX, is out of the race.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at a press conference that NASA held this evening to mark the decision that the new contracts set the stage for what promises to be the next chapter of NASA and the field of manned flights. "Relying on subcontractors to fly the astronauts will allow the agency to focus on more ambitious missions - such as sending humans to Mars." said.
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The SpaceX spacecraft is actually an enlarged Apollo spacecraft. As for the Dragon spacecraft, if we add a working cell to it, it will look like an enlarged Soyuz spacecraft. Beautiful, but not inspiring. In both cases, how can you say? More of the same. There is no vision or breakthrough concept here. They won't get far. Very typical of NASA's shuffling within itself. One could expect private companies to come up with what is new.
But President Obama canceled the Atlas launchers intended for the mission.
It probably means when he gets to the US, because right now he's under pressure. No criticism here. Everything used to be produced in the USA.
Today much has been taken from it, and even in development the Chinese have pretensions.