In the meantime, the world’s astronauts fly to the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz spaceships at a cost of $70-million per seat.
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“These distinguished, veteran astronauts are blazing a new trail – a trail that will one day land them in the history books and Americans on the surface of Mars”, said Nasa administrator Charles Bolden.
Veteran Shuttle Astronaut, FIT Class of “95, Among Four ‘Space Pioneers” .
AFP Doug Hurley, 48, a retired Marine colonel, has piloted two space shuttle missions, including the final one, STS-135, in July 2011.
The four will train on the Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, as part of NASA’s contract with each company. Their first public appearance was Friday, a series of televised news interviews from Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The other goals behind these kind of missions would be to create a good job revenue for American people and offer them more chances at great employment opportunities. Each wants to be first to fly.
To meet this requirement, the companies must provide the necessary training for the crew to operate their respective vehicles. NASA is extensively involved with the companies and reviews their training plans.
In September 2014, Boeing and SpaceX, both were granted permission by NASA to develop and operate spacecrafts that would ferry astronauts to and fro from the global Space Station.
Despite two recent commercial rocket explosions, private space companies are essential to NASA’s future space explorations.
“There are real economic benefits to bolstering America’s emerging commercial space market”.
SpaceX has said that the safety system would have ensured a manned crew would have survived such an incident. NASA requires the flight test program include a crewed flight to the worldwide Space Station.
NASA also said that the four were chosen for their spaceflight experience. NASA chose Williams for the astronaut program in 1998.
Behnken is an Air Force colonel who was with the Endeavour missions in 2008 and 2010 as a specialist. Behnken, also an Air Force colonel, served as NASA’s chief astronaut for the past three years. He has flown two Space Shuttle missions, both as pilot, and delivered the ISS’ infamous water recycling that turn’s yesterday’s coffee into today’s cappuccino.
An astronaut and ex- Navy SEAL from Maine has been appointed chief of the astronaut office. “And so, yeah, who knows, it might happen”, Hurley said. He also logged more than 37 hours of spacewalk time helping build the global Space Station. Hurley was most recently on a shuttle mission, STS-135.
SpaceX has not released any more information about the event, but Musk has indicated that whatever caused the failure was complicated. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1988.
Williams, a U.S. Navy captain, was born in Euclid, Ohio, but considers Needham, Massachusetts, her hometown.
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Preceding her selection into the astronaut program, Williams earned her advanced degree at Florida Tech’s Patuxent site in Maryland in 1995. Williams actually holds the record for most spacewalking time by a woman.
