NASA to hire space taxis

But NASA is well aware that American astronauts can’t keep hitching a ride on Russian spacecraft for the rest of the ISSs projected 9 year lifespan. In a draft solicitation issued by the government on Monday, NASA announced that the agency will be accepting bids from private companies to act as extraterrestrial taxis.NASA is offering $1.6 billion in federal funding to help the company or companies develop a complete system, from mission control to launch structures to the vehicles themselves. Currently NASA funding helps support four privately-owned companies: Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corp, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos company, Blue Origin.At the moment, the Russian spaceflight program is a glaring single point of failure for the ISS, as highlighted last month when a cargo ship failed to reach orbit in a launch accident. Such incidents cause NASAs commercial spaceflight development director Phil McAlister to worry “Every year we do not have a commercial crew capability, the station is at risk.”