NASA relaunches with Boeing and SpaceX – Computer Point

Rome – Topped with a self-celebratory banner with the words “Launch America,” the long-awaited announcement of NASA has finally arrived: the agency has selected SpaceX and Boeing as business partners intended to restore the ability to fly astronauts to the ISS from American soil International (ISS) encouragement of larger companies and interplanetary travel that will wait for a few more luster.
With each of the two private companies – the glowing forge of new technologies created by Elon Musk and the giant government contractor – signed a contract type Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract that provides for the achievement of the certification required to carry humans to the ISS and then the launch of a minimum of two, a maximum of six manned missions to return from the station in orbit around the Earth.
Boeing (CST-100 capsule, now under construction) has been out a check for $ 4.2 billion while SpaceX (Dragon capsule, already in service) is “satisfied” 2600000000 ; However, while the goal is the same for both, and that is to achieve the same standard of safety of the Space Shuttle and starting with the first operational flight by 2017
then opens the long-awaited era of the space race of the entrepreneurs Private imagined by countless film productions of the recent past, back to the future, which coincides, openly and according to the exact words of former astronaut and NASA administrator Charlie Bolden, with the return to independence of the space program of the United States (“the greatest nation on Earth, “said Bolden) from Russia is no longer a” friend “after the outbreak of the diplomatic-military crisis in Ukraine.

The contracts signed with Boeing and SpaceX are based on the proposals of the two technology companies written on paper proposals much less “virtual” in the case of the corporation of which Elon Musk has launched its space program years ago and is already docked to the ISS (in 2012 and 2013) for unmanned resupply missions.

The initiative Launch America is not, of course, the abandonment of the ambitious space exploration plans recently hatched from NASA, as the agency will continue to work on projects of super-rocket SLS (Space Launch System) and Orion capsule for bring the first man on Mars by 2030 Seen from this perspective, the role of private contractors in the coming years should be to carriers to and from the Earth’s atmosphere, while the federal agency will take care of the most ambitious (and predictably expensive) interplanetary travel.

Alfonso Maruccia

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