Boeing, SpaceX win US$6.8b Nasa deal to ferry astronauts

[WASHINGTON] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) on Tuesday awarded a pair of much-anticipated contracts, worth up to US$6.8 billion combined, to Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in a deal that will allow the United States to launch astronauts into space from American soil for the first time in years.

Speaking from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Nasa administrator Charles Bolden said that the contracts set the stage "for what promises to be most ambitious and exciting chapter in Nasa and human space flight". Relying so heavily on contractors to take astronauts to space would allow the agency "to focus on an even more ambitious mission - sending humans to Mars", he said.

The announcement of the "commercial crew" awards is a big step towards allowing the US to end its reliance on Russia, which has been ferrying American astronauts to the space station since the retirement of the space shuttle three years ago. The arrangement hasn't been cheap: The Russians charge US$71 million per seat, and Nasa has in a single year sent more than US$400 million to Russia for these taxi rides.