SpaceX thus became the first private company ever to launch a spacecraft to Earth orbit and bring it back to terra firma. Last December the firm blasted its Dragon capsule to orbit aboard its Falcon 9 rocket, then fished the Dragon out of the Pacific Ocean after it splashed down. Unlike the other grantees, SpaceX has actually launched its vehicle into space. The California-based Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, got $75 million during CCDev-2. However, Blue Origin is generally very tight-lipped about its plans, so it's tough to say for sure what the firm is up to. The company, which was established by founder Jeff Bezos, may use the money to further the development of its New Shepard vehicle. NASA gave Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., $22 million under CCDev-2. (Image credit: SpaceDev/Sierra Nevada Corp.) 'We'll be conducting our first orbital tests in 2014, with service in 2015.'Īn artist's interpretation of the Dream Chaser vehicle after spacecraft separation. It's under construction,' Sierra Nevada chairman Mark Sirangelo told reporters in Florida earlier this month. 'We are in the midst of our first build of the first vehicle right now. Like the CST-100, the Dream Chaser is coming along nicely, according to officials of its company. This winged vehicle, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, is designed to carry seven astronauts to low-Earth orbit and back. of Louisville, Colo., got $80 million to help its Dream Chaser along. 'We'll see how many others are successful at doing that as well.'Īnother of the CCDev-2 grant winners, Sierra Nevada Corp.

'I think we're on a low-risk path to get to those milestones,' Elbon told in Florida earlier this month, just before Atlantis' final liftoff. The company, one of four to be granted funds by NASA during CCDev-2, will use the money to keep developing its new crew-carrying space capsule, which it calls the CST-100.īoeing plans to hold a parachute drop test next spring and to start conducting uncrewed test flights in 2014 in the lead-up to manned missions with the CST-100 in 2015, according to Elbon. Maybe these guys, and fellow billionaire space enthusiast Elon Musk, ought to tuck their space phalluses away for a couple of decades and focus on some of our more immediate concerns.Boeing scored $92.3 million from NASA in April during round two of the space agency's Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev-2), which seeks to spur private spaceflight capabilities.

Mostly, though, this has proven an irresistible occasion to vent frustrations about billionaires doing billionaire things instead of focusing their resources on the pandemic, or climate change, or any of the other rolling crises here on Earth. Some have celebrated the engineering and persistence required to fly a bunch of humans into space and bring them back safely, or the wonder of pushing the boundaries of possibility. These two voyages have generated an awful lot of takes.

Individuals, if they’re wealthy enough, are no longer beholden to government craft when they want to leave the planet for a little while. Rich people have done this sort of thing before, but Branson and Bezos didn’t just pay for a ticket-they paid for the spaceships.

Race into space mini shuttle