FYI,

Wouldn't this be better spend on a prize to do the same? NASA still
in the game of picking winners. Then again Obama's had such a great
record of improving the economy by giving select companies your hard-
earned tax dollars so far. /sarc

"NASA Wants Proposals for Space Taxis"
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE57944520090810

: NASA plans to use $50 million of federal economic stimulus funds to
: seed development of commercial passenger transportation service to
: space, agency officials said on Monday.

: Aspiring spaceship operators will have 45 days to submit proposals,
: which will be competitively evaluated. Awards for the Commercial
: Crew Development program are expected to be announced before the
: end of September.

: The United States is retiring its fleet of space shuttles next year
: after seven more missions to complete construction of the
: $100 billion International Space Station, which orbits about
: 225 miles above Earth.

: After that, the United States plans to buy rides for astronauts to
: and from the station from Russia, one of the 16 nations involved in
: the station program.

: NASA is spending $500 million to help two U.S. firms, Space
: Exploration Technologies, a privately held company known as SpaceX,
: and Orbital Sciences Corp, develop rockets and capsules to deliver
: cargo to the station.

: SpaceX's contract includes an option to upgrade its Dragon cargo
: ship for passenger service. The company has said it needs
: $300 million, most of which would be used to develop a launch
: escape system for the crew.

: "It's a little disappointing that (the new program) is only
: $50 million," SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk told
: Reuters. "Fifty million is what it costs for one seat on the
: (Russian) Soyuz."

: Nevertheless Musk hailed the move as a step in the right direction.

: "The main thing that the public should be taking note of is that
: right now we are (solely dependent) on the Russians (for space
: transports) after 2010," he said.

: The White House has convened a panel, headed by former Lockheed
: Martin chief Norm Augustine, to review NASA's human space program.
: The current plan is to finish the station next year, retire the
: shuttles and develop new vehicles that can travel to the space
: station as well as to the moon and other destinations in the solar
: system.

: Funding for the follow-on program has been scaled back to
: $81.5 billion from $108 billion between 2010 and 2020, the year
: pegged for the first post-Apollo moon landing.

: Members of a presidential panel reviewing the country's human space
: program said last week that given current budget forecasts and no
: changes in the program, a moon landing would not occur until the
: mid 2020s at the earliest.

: The panel, which is scheduled to make its report by August 31, also
: has been mulling extending the life of the space station beyond its
: projected shut-down date of 2015.

: In addition to scientific uses, having a station in orbit will
: serve as a market to stimulate commercial space development, said
: board member Jeff Greason, the co-founder and head of XCOR
: Aerospace.

: NASA plans to hold a workshop in Houston on Thursday for companies
: interested in partnering to develop commercial passenger service to
: space.

: Firms expressing interest in the program include Ball Aerospace and
: Technologies Corp., Airborne Systems, SpaceX, Boeing Co, Tether
: Applications, Retro Aerospace, Emergent Space Technologies,
: Davidson Technologies, and Paragon Space Development Corp.

: The competition is only open to U.S. firms.

Mark Reiff