
NASA is going back to the future with $6.8 billion in backing for Apollo-style spaceships designed by Boeing and SpaceX. Both companies have been given the go-ahead to build, test and fly their gumdrop-shaped “space taxis,” with the aim of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station starting in 2017.
“Today, we’re one giant leap closer to launching our astronauts from the U.S. on American spacecraft,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Tuesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA has had to rely on the Russians for rides to the station, at a cost topping $70 million per seat. Tuesday’s award is the latest phase in a years-long commercial effort aimed at fixing that situation — an effort that already has cost NASA $1 billion.
