Under its current arrangement, NASA has to shell out almost $80 million for every seat on the Soyuz rocket.
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The phrase “once in a blue moon” means something so rare you’d be lucky – or unlucky-to see in your lifetime, according to NASA’s National Space Science Data Center.
“Kirk brings considerable space station experience to this new leadership role”.
Human spaceflight and exploration are important activities for this Nation.
“During Mike’s tenure, the worldwide project successfully completed construction and transitioned into a fully functional microgravity laboratory”, Gerstenmaier said.
He was deeply involved with the major task of ISS assembly, working alongside both the Shuttle Program and global partners.
Suffredini joined NASA in January 1989.
However, SpaceX’s recent attempts to launch resupply vehicles to the ISS have not been entirely successful. With the political tensions mounting again between Russian Federation and the United States, it is understandable that NASA wants to find a replacement for the shuttle program, in order to ferry their astronauts back and forth between Earth and the global Space Station.
Since 2012, when NASA’s own program ended, the agency has been relying exclusively on Russian space shuttles.
Under Commercial Crew, NASA pays companies to achieve certain milestones but leaves details largely to the contractor. Only half of the proposed budget was allocated in its first year. “This has resulted in continued sole reliance on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as our crew transport vehicle for American and global partner crews”, he said. “Under this contract modification, the cost of these services to the U.S. taxpayers will be approximately $490 million”.
NASA isn’t just fighting a battle to keep the Commercial Crew Program funded. I urge Congress to provide the funds requested for our Commercial Crew Program this year, so we can prevent this situation in the future.
The Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts with Boeing and SpaceX each require at least one crewed flight test with at least one NASA astronaut on board. NASA says there was no request Wednesday for additional funding.
The U.S. space agency’s chief Charles Bolden said he was forced to extend the contract because of budget cuts that delayed efforts to revive a U.S. human flight program.
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(Images: via NASA, Boeing and L2 Sections, including renderings created by L2 Artist Nathan Koga.).
