Space taxi being developed by Nasa contractors

12 , May , The Telegraph

A space taxi is being developed by Nasa contractors and European space agency Astrium using a prototype spaceship originally designed as an alternative to the deep-space Orion capsule.Since the retirement of Nasa space shuttles last year, the United States has been dependent on Russia to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, a $100 billion laboratory that circles about 240 miles above Earth.

The fare is more than $60 million per person.Nasa hopes to swap the Russian ride to the station with a ticket aboard a space taxi developed by US companies. The earliest it could begin will be 2017.The US space agency is funding space taxi design work at four firms - Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies, Sierra Nevada Corp, and Blue Origin, a start-up owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.Nasa is reviewing bids for at least two, 21-month integrated design contracts, valued at $300 million to $500 million apiece

ATK, which built the space shuttle booster rockets, teamed with Astrium, an EADS company that is one of the manufacturers of Europe's Ariane 5 rockets, to bid for Nasa space taxi development funds last year but was not selected. The company continued to work on the project with its own funding, said Kent Rominger, a five-time shuttle astronaut who now serves as an ATK vice president and Liberty programme manager.ATK's new proposal adds a composite seven-person capsule, a launch escape system, propulsion module, avionics, an operations plan and other components for a complete space launch system.Mr Rominger said Liberty could be ready to fly crew to the station in 2015 for less than what Russia charges for rides in its Soyuz capsules.

The Liberty rocket's first stage would be an extended space shuttle booster rocket, a design originally developed under Nasa's now-cancelled Ares 1 rocket programme.