NASA Opening Competition for Space Taxi Development

Florida Today reports on NASA plans to begin the third round of Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) competition.

NASA in February plans to open competition for a third round of funding to further development of private spacecraft that could taxi astronauts to the International Space Station later this decade.

The request for proposals will reflect the revised contracting strategy announced in December. NASA changed its approach to account for the $406 million its Commercial Crew Program received this year — less than half what NASA requested from Congress.

The article notes that NASA's proposed FY 2013 budget also will be released in February. It should be interesting to see if they ask for another CCDev funding increase — or simply give up and assume that Congress wants us flying on Russian Soyuz capsules for the foreseeable future.