NASA has $ 1.1 billion ge lwa country in SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada commercial lanceringsprogramma for astronauts to develop. Ultimately, should ensure that they are astronauts to go into space shoot.
SpaceX and Boeing get, respectively, 460 and 440 million dollars from NASA, while Sierra Nevada with 212.5 million dollars to do, according to NASA. The funding should enable companies to a private, commercial launch platform development, where they themselves for a launch site and rockets. For the development and testing they are given up to June 2014, the time, the ultimate goal is to within five years, astronauts to the International Space Station to shoot.
The funding programme is to ensure that commercial parties and their activities in the aerospace industry, able to expand. Then wants NASA services of these companies to decline, so that they no longer own astronauts need to launch that hopes the American space agency, its activities in the aerospace industry more cost-effective to make.
Previously launched SpaceX already is an unmanned rocket to the ISS was linked to inventories. It was the first time that a privately financed organization, a Nasa-mission accomplished. Boeing took already a hangar about after Nasa stopped its Space Shuttle program. In addition, in recent years, more ruimtevaartbedrijven appeared: the start-up Planetary Resources want resource mining on asteroids and Virgin Galactic plans to put missiles into space to shoot.