The Russians want to build a huge MILITARY moon base.

It looks like, if the US does enter the race to the moon, we'll be doing it through private contractors.

NASA awards millions to four firms to privately develop rockets and spacecraft

On Monday, NASA handed out $269.3 million to four companies to privately develop rockets and spacecraft for what could be the next step in manned spaceflight.

The winners included Hawthorne-based rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and Boeing Co., which develops spacecraft in Huntington Beach and uses rocket engines made by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in Canoga Park.

The other two awards were $22 million to Blue Origin, a closely held space venture in Kent, Wash., that is owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and $80 million to Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev.

After the shuttle program is mothballed and before privately built space vehicles are astronaut-ready, the U.S. will have no way to travel to the International Space Station other than shelling out $63 million for rides on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

"We're committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

The new contracts awarded Monday "are significant milestones in NASA's plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit, so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration," he said.

LA Times


I guess NASA's new mission is deep space exploration now. It still seems pretty stupid to mothball all those shuttles before you have a replacement. I guess our astronauts will have learn to speak Russian for their trips into space until something gets built.

There was like an 8 year lag between the Apollo series and the Space Shuttle, this is not new NASA news to be without a manned platform. I don't think NASA intended to not have manned crafts ready by the time the Shuttle retires, but 9/11 and the new administration put pressure on NASA funding to have their plans come to fruition in time, they got whacked.

Nothing wrong with hitching manned rides with the Russian heavy lifters, I believe modifications have been being developed to man European Space Agency lifters as well as a consortium of private space agencies, as well as NASA's own Titan IV series derivative of the AFs Titans. We know the Shuttle is the least economical means of manning LEO missions, this has been on the table for quite sometime and with the lack of political and public interest in the space plane, money and the lack thereof it, is ruling the day. Nobody really cares as long as they have their TV and internet.

reply to post by XRaDiiX

The Military is "Only" 15% of the budget yeah only 15% of the federal budget....i want to just get that out there you said 15% "Only". Thats actually huge its not something u apply "Only" too when considering the federal budget.

That is while fighting three wars and having the most intensive deployments abroad since World War II.

Meanwhile, Medicare/Medicaid spending dwarfs the military budget by being over 1 Trillion dollars on its own. Annual estimated waste in Medicare fraud, alone, is estimated to be $60 BILLION. www.cbsnews.com...

Total spending on the military in the 2011 fiscal year is budgeted at about 750 Billion - roughly. NASA's budget is currently about 18 Billion or so.

Sure - the military budget is large. But stop being so damned tunnel-visioned. There are other things we are spending (an wasting) money on out there.