NASA gets rid of Russian ships to reach the Space Station – Express

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NASA has just funded the American builders Boeing and SpaceX with about 6.2 billion dollars (4.8 billion euros) for completing the development of new capsules can carry at a time, seven astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS acronym in English) from 2017

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The goal is to find an alternative to the Russian Soyuz, which have been used by the American space agency to transport astronauts to the ISS since the space shuttles were removed in 2011 .

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This alternative has become more urgent due to the differences between the USA and Russia over the war Ukraine, but also due to very practical issues: the price charged by the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) by American astronaut transported Soyuz reaches 70 million dollars (54 million euros) for each flight to the ISS, the sum of government USA considers excessive

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“The greatest nation of earth” can not depend on
Russia “The Obama Administration has made it clear that the greatest nation on earth not should be dependent on other nations to get to space, “he told reporters Charlie Bolden, NASA Administrator, adding that” dependence on Russia will end in 2017 “

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Two-thirds of funding approved by NASA intended to Boeing and SpaceX to one third. Boeing is developing the CST-100 capsule to be launched by an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral base in Florida, and return to Earth.

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SpaceX is developing the Dragon capsule and hopes that it will be cheaper than developed by Boeing. Incidentally, the company is already operating an unmanned capsule transport cargo to the International Space Station, and was now focusing on adaptation to spaceflight. So in the space market there was some surprise that the largest share of funding from NASA have gone to Boeing

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The strategy of the American space agency now spends to hire transport systems for the Space Station to the private sector, in order to free funds to finance more ambitious space exploration projects.

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This is the case of a new superfoguetão Space Launch System (SLS) and the respective manned Orion, that may travel to the Moon, Mars and throughout the solar system.

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