The Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser. Image source: Sierra Nevada Corp. via NASA.gov.
Space.com reports that companies vying for NASA's commercial crew contract believe they can begin flying in as soon as three years.
"We believe we'll be ready in three years," said Gwynne Shotwell, president of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (also known as SpaceX) ...
Shotwell's estimate of three years before the first manned flight of SpaceX's Dragon capsule was the most aggressive, but her colleagues laid out similar timeframes.
Sierra Nevada Corp. chairman Mark Sirangelo, for example, said his company's Dream Chaser — which looks a bit like a miniature space shuttle — should be ready for crew-carrying operations by 2015. Boeing's John Mulholland also marked 2015 for the operational start of that firm's CST-100 vehicle.
Blue Origin, which was set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, has been pretty tight-lipped about its plans. But the company's Rob Meyerson gave some specifics today.
"In our proposal, with the government funding that we laid out, we believe between 2016 and 2018," Meyerson said.
Shame NASA doesn't agree.
ReplyDeleteReally?!
ReplyDeleteBecause Charlie Bolden said 2014-2015 in an interview he gave last July to CNN:
http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2011/07/charlie-bolden-on-state-of-nasa.html
"So between 2014 and 2015, I am very hopeful that you will see American astronauts climb back aboard American-produced spacecraft to go to the International Space Station, and not very long after that start flying some test hops on a NASA-led effort to explore beyond low Earth orbit, go to deep space."
Charlie is about as NASA as they come.