By Irene Klotz
Cape Canaveral, Florida - Nasa plans to use $50-million of federal economic stimulus funds to seed development of commercial passenger transportation service to space, agency officials said on Monday.
Aspiring spaceship operators will have 45 days to submit proposals, which will be competitively evaluated. Awards for the Commercial Crew Development programme are expected to be announced before the end of September.
The United States is retiring its fleet of space shuttles next year after seven more missions to complete construction of the $100-billion International Space Station, which orbits about 360km above Earth.
After that, the United States plans to buy rides for astronauts to and from the station from Russia, one of the 16 nations involved in the station programme.
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Nasa is spending $500-million to help two US firms, Space Exploration Technologies, a privately held company known as SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences Corp, develop rockets and capsules to deliver cargo to the station.
SpaceX's contract includes an option to upgrade its Dragon cargo ship for passenger service. The company has said it needs $300-million, most of which would be used to develop a launch escape system for the crew.
"It's a little disappointing that (the new program) is only $50-million," SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk told Reuters. "Fifty million is what it costs for one seat on the (Russian) Soyuz."
Nevertheless Musk hailed the move as a step in the right direction.
"The main thing that the public should be taking note of is that right now we are (solely dependent) on the Russians (for space transports) after 2010," he said.
The White House has convened a panel, headed by former Lockheed Martin chief Norm Augustine, to review Nasa's human space programme.
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