NASA Wants Space Taxis, and Wants them Now

With the retirement of the Shuttle, NASA has no craft capable of ferrying astronauts to and from space. This is the first time we’ve had that problem since, well, we first launched a man into space. But NASA isn’t sitting idly by, waiting for the taxis to come to them.

Instead, they are proactively trying to make them happen. NASA wants space taxis. As soon as is humanly possible, please.

NASA revealed a few days ago that they were looking for at least two firms to build new astronaut-ferrying crafts. They are willing to pay a lot for these crafts, too: they plan on investing $300 through $500 million into each firm. All the winning firm would need to do is have a craft ready by 2014. They don’t even need to design their own rocket, nor do they have to have to test it--that can be done past the deadline, though NASA wants a solution carrying astronauts by the middle of the decade.

This isn’t the first time that NASA has invested money into private companies to foster space technologies. SpaceX, who has been testing the Dragon capsule atop their Falcon series of rockets, have also seen government money from NASA. That relationship has seen the creation of a new rocket that was cheaper to design, cheaper to build and launch, and significantly safer than the shuttle. But SpaceX still hasn’t fully tested its Dragon module, much less ferried a crew on it.

All in all, this is an exciting time in space, even with NASA mostly out of the space launching game, there have been so many developments recently that I can’t help but be excited.

Reuters Photo by : NASA