NASA will increasingly look towards assistance from private companies to help it bring down the cost of space travel, the head of the space agency said at the weekend.
NASA\'s administrator has called for the assistance of the private sector in bringing down the cost of space travel. Photo: International Space Station. Credit NASA
Speaking in Cape Town at the launch of a science research centre for young African minds, the agency's administrator, Michael Griffin, said in an interview with Reuters that NASA wanted the private sector to develop the next series of shuttles to the International Space Station (ISS). He said the agency is prepared to contribute $500 million in "seed funding" to begin the venture.
"The cost of space transportation even 50 years into space flight is very high. We wish it were lower. It isn't yet," he said to the news agency.
Griffin's comments come amid escalating concerns in the space agency over the rising costs of space transport to and from the orbiting Space Station with the current shuttle craft nearing the end of their useful life. NASA has said its astronauts will be relying on Russian space craft once NASA vehicles are decommissioned in 2010.
"I am hopeful that opening up the space station to more commercial activity will spur the development of enough traffic to and from the station; that commercial space transportation entities may be induced to develop a more accessible, cheaper capability than we have today," said Griffin.
The main private companies the space agency is looking to enter into partnership with are Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co., reports the Guardian, with other companies such as the Orbital Sciences Corp and the Space Exploration Technologies Corp also possibly ready to deliver crew vehicles to the ISS by around 2012-13.
Griffin added NASA wanted to establish a permanent outpost on the Moon saying, "This time (we would like to do it) with the establishment of a permanent outpost, much like the multi-national outposts that you see in Antarctica today."
Following that, the next important step was to send a manned space mission to Mars, he said.
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