US Privatizes Cosmic Exploration

Privatization fever in the United States also took possession of the cosmos, and the U.S. space agency NASA announced that Boeing gave companies SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp. a total of $1.1 billion for space development in the private sector for the next 21 months.

The contradiction is that the U.S. ended its space shuttle program, and now relies on Russian spacecraft to send astronauts to the International Space Station. But it now gives funds to these consortia in order to ensure that it can resume manned missions to the American flag in the next five years.

According to EFE, the aerospace giant Boeing will receive $460 million, while SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, cofounder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, will be endowed with $440 million. In the case of Sierra Nevada Corp., it will have access to $212.5 million. The three companies will design and develop a means of transporting astronauts to the space station by 2017, while the first operational tests must be completed in May 2014, the deadline for the funds pledged on Friday.

The goal is that “we are not in the situation where we are today,”* NASA administrator Charles Bolden told a news conference, referring to the need for a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to travel to the ISS at a price of around $63 million per seat.

Each of the three U.S. companies have long been active in new commercial space programs and have been supported by funding from NASA before, but this announcement opens a third stage on the way to finally having a replacement for the space shuttle.

Boeing is currently working on the CST-100, a capsule capable of carrying seven people, like SpaceX’s Dragon project, which in May made history by being the first commercial vessel that was coupled to the ISS, this time without a crew.

Sierra Nevada is conducting preliminary tests to operationalize the Dream Chaser, a space glider like a smaller version of the retired ferry.

*Editor’s note: the original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.