NASA

Among the spaceship projects receiving NASA support are Boeing Co.'s CST-100 capsule (left), Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser space plane (middle) and SpaceX's Dragon capsule (right).

Americans could be flying into orbit on U.S.-built spaceships again as early as 2015 — but the first fliers won't be NASA astronauts or millionaire space tourists. Instead, they'll be commercial test pilots, employed by the Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp., SpaceX or maybe even a dark-horse company like Blue Origin, the venture funded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Those four companies provided updates on their efforts to build new spaceships capable of carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station during a Wednesday news briefing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. One of the companies, Blue Origin, is wrapping up its work for NASA and is no longer receiving money through the Commercial Crew Program, or CCP. But SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada are splitting more than $1 billion that's to be paid out through 2014.

NASA's manager for the Commercial Crew Program, Ed Mango, said the agency and its commercial partners are already talking about "Phase 2" for the program. The certification requirements and timetable for Phase 2 are expected to be set this year, with contracts awarded by May 2014, Mango said. "We believe that there’ll be more than one, probably two, three, maybe others, that will be ready to compete for Phase 2," he said.

That phase would move the program forward to 2017, by which time NASA expects to be flying its astronauts on U.S. launch vehicles for the first time since the shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. In the meantime, NASA will be paying the Russians more than $60 million per seat for round trips to the space station.

"Our target was to repatriate that industry back to the United States, and that's what we're doing," said Mark Sirangelo, chairman of SNC Space Systems at Sierra Nevada.

Here's how the companies' plans are shaping up:

SpaceX: Former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, SpaceX's commercial crew project manager, said his company is working toward a launch pad abort test by the end of the year at Kennedy Space Center. An in-flight test that would demonstrate the ability to abort a launch safely during ascent, "at the worst possible moment," is planned for April 2014, he said. If SpaceX sticks to its schedule, it would use its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for a manned test flight in mid-2015, and would send test pilots to the space station by the end of 2015. "We're not selling tickets. Don't call our toll-free number," Reisman joked.

Sierra Nevada Corp.: Sirangelo said his company was planning to drop its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle from a carrier airplane for its first autonomous, free-flying glide test in the first quarter of this year. That would be followed by a series of autonomous and crewed aerodynamic test flights, similar to the tests conducted by NASA using the prototype shuttle Enterprise in the late 1970s. Then Sierra Nevada's team would launch the Dream Chaser into space — first on suborbital test flights, and eventually into orbit. Last year, the company said manned orbital flights could begin in 2016.

The Boeing Co.: John Mulholland, vice president and program manager for Boeing's commercial crew program, said his company proposed conducting a three-day orbital spaceflight with a Boeing crew in 2016. The head of Boeing's flight test program is former NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson, who commanded Atlantis' crew during the final flight of the shuttle program. "He is defining crew requirements," Mulholland said. Before the test pilots fly, Boeing will conduct an unmanned orbital trial of its CST-100 space capsule, plus an altitude abort test.

NASA / Blue Origin

An artist's conception shows Blue Origin's orbital space vehicle.

Blue Origin: The company that Bezos founded in 2000 is not receiving NASA funding during the current phase of the agency's spaceship development program — but Blue Origin's president and program manager, Rob Meyerson, said he's still doing business with the space agency. "We're working with NASA to extend our Space Act Agreement in an unfunded manner," Meyerson said. The company is continuing to test its BE-3 rocket engine and work on its next prototype propulsion vehicle. Eventually, Blue Origin aims to launch crews on suborbital as well as orbital spaceflights.

The plans for future flights are dependent on continued NASA support — and Phil McAlister, NASA's commercial spaceflight development director, acknowledged that "the budget is going to be an extremely challenging topic."

If NASA's funding is reduced, Reisman said his company would continue to move toward manned flights, but at a slower pace. "Human spaceflight is our reason for being. We are in this for the long haul," Reisman said. "There will be impacts to cost and schedule, should funding dry up. But we're going to get there eventually."

More about the commercial space race:

• Blue Origin aces pad-escape test
• Boeing looks for test pilots
• Sierra Nevada's mini-shuttle passes first flight test
• SpaceX capsule splashes down after space station delivery

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

Among the spaceship projects receiving NASA support are Boeing Co.'s CST-100 capsule (left), Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser space plane (middle) and SpaceX's Dragon capsule (right).

NASA has committed $1.1 billion over the next 21 months to support spaceship development efforts by the Boeing Co., SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp., with the aim of having American astronauts flying once more on American spacecraft within five years. 

The lineup of companies matches what sources told NBC News on Thursday, but today NASA laid out the details, including the outlays for each of the teams involved. The space agency is setting aside $460 million for Boeing, $440 million for SpaceX and $212.5 million for Sierra Nevada.

The next phase of NASA's commercial spaceflight effort — known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or CCiCap — calls for these three companies to take their design and testing program through a series of milestones by May 2014. Optional milestones could lead to crewed demonstration flights in later years.

NASA wants to have at least one commercial space taxi carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station by 2017. The three companies say they can meet or beat that schedule, provided that they continue to receive NASA support.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told reporters that the space taxi program "is a top priority of the Obama administration." In the wake of last year's retirement of the shuttle fleet, the space agency has had to depend on the Russians to fly American astronauts at a cost of roughly $60 milllion a seat. Bolden said the move to U.S. commercial transport would guarantee "that we never find ourselves in the situation where we find ourselves today," at the mercy of a sole provider.

Flying crew by 2015, 2016, 2017?
This is actually the third phase of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. All three companies have received NASA support adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars during earlier phases. Boeing is working on a capsule called the CST-100, SpaceX is upgrading its Dragon capsule to be capable of flying astronauts safely, and Sierra Nevada is testing its Dream Chaser space plane, which looks like a miniaturized version of the space shuttle.

The CST-100 and Dream Chaser would be sent into orbit on United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket, while SpaceX would launch the crew-capable Dragon on its own Falcon 9 rocket. The Dragon and Falcon 9 are already being used for robotic cargo resupply missions to the space station. 

The three companies say their spacecraft will be capable of flying seven astronauts to the space station, at a per-seat cost that's less than what NASA is paying the Russians.

NASA and congressional leaders made a deal that called for two commercial partners to receive full funding, with one additional backup partner receiving half funding. That would imply that Sierra Nevada Corp. is the halfway partner, but Mark Sirangelo, chairman of SNC Space Systems, said he didn't see it that way.

"We're very happy with the award," Sirangelo told me. "Obviously more money would have been great." He said NASA's funding, plus Sierra Nevada's own resources, would keep the program on track for the start of operations in 2016 or 2017. Sierra Nevada's milestones stop just short of a critical design review, while SpaceX and Boeing could be funded through that phase.

In a statement, Elon Musk, SpaceX's billionaire founder, CEO and chief designer, hailed the CCiCap award as "a decisive milestone in human spaceflight" that would set "an exciting course for the next phase of American space exploration."

"SpaceX, along with our partners at NASA, will continue to push the boundaries of space technology to develop the safest, most advanced crew vehicle ever flown," Musk said.

Boeing also welcomed today's announcement. "Today’s award demonstrates NASA's confidence in Boeing's approach to provide commercial crew transportation services for the ISS," John Elbon, Boeing vice president and general manager of space exploration, said in a statement. "It is essential for the ISS and the nation that we have adequate funding to move at a rapid pace toward operations so the United States does not continue its dependence on a single system for human access to the ISS."

SpaceX projects being able to launch a crewed demonstration flight in 2015, and Boeing anticipates achieving that feat by late 2016, said Phil McAlister, director of NASA's commercial spaceflight development program. However, he said those timetables come with a "big asterisk": optimal funding from NASA, which McAlister said almost never happens.

Musk told me that the 2015 demonstration flight would go into orbit, but not to the space station. He estimated that the first space station flight could take place a year later. Getting to that point would require NASA funding to the tune of $1 billion, he said — which implies that SpaceX would be roughly halfway there with the CCiCap funding.

A PDF file from NASA summarizes the details for the CCiCap agreements.

Who didn't win?
Four other companies submitted proposals for CCiCap funding, said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations. Three of the also-rans — Space Operations, American Aerospace and Space Design — didn't meet the requirements for consideration, he said.

The fourth company was ATK, which has been working with Lockheed Martin and Astrium on the Liberty launch system. ATK has said that it will continue work on Liberty, which would use adapted versions of the space shuttle's solid rocket booster and a second stage from Astrium's Ariane 5 rocket. But without NASA support, the pace of development would be slower.

Gerstenmaier said ATK's development plan didn't come up to the level of the three companies that were selected, but held off on providing details about the decision process. "The stronger proposals were really the three that we talked about," he said.

Additional companies could negotiate unfunded agreements for NASA's advice, McAlister said. ATK and two other companies, United Launch Alliance and Excalibur Almaz, had such agreements during earlier phases of the commercial crew program. Another company, Blue Origin, has been received NASA funding for the development of its orbital space vehicle but did not apply for continued CCiCap support.

Looking ahead
NASA says the reliance on commercial transport to low Earth orbit would free up the space agency to concentrate on exploration beyond Earth orbit.

"For 50 years American industry has helped NASA push boundaries, enabling us to live, work and learn in the unique environment of microgravity and low Earth orbit," Gerstenmaier said in a statement. "The benefits to humanity from these endeavors are incalculable. We're counting on the creativity of industry to provide the next generation of transportation to low Earth orbit and expand human presence, making space accessible and open for business."

NASA is spending billions of dollars to develop the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle for deep-space exploration, as well as a heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System. Those spacecraft are being designed to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, and to Mars and its moons in the 2030s.

More about the space race:

• NASA backs Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada in space race
• Follow the money in the commercial space race
• Why SpaceX is setting the pace in the space race
• Cosmic Log archive on commercial space

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

Sources tell NBC News that NASA will provide further support for the development of the Boeing Co.'s CST-100 capsule (left), Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser space plane (middle) and SpaceX's Dragon capsule (right).

Update for 12:55 p.m. ET Aug. 3: Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada are due to receive up to $1.1 billion to continue work on spaceships that could be carrying astronauts to orbit in the 2015-2017 time frame. Check out today's updated story.

My earlier report from Aug. 2: Teams headed by the Boeing Co., SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp. will be receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from NASA over the next 21 months for further development of spaceships capable of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station, knowledgeable sources told NBC News today.

NASA is to make the official announcement of the winning commercial teams on Friday morning — but NBC News' Cape Canaveral correspondent, Jay Barbree, received word from two sources who were informed of the decision in advance, on condition of anonymity. The sources did not discuss how much money any of the companies would be receiving.

The coming phase of the spaceship development effort — known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or CCiCap — is aimed at producing the design for an entire launch system, including the "space taxi" capsule and launch vehicle as well as ground and recovery operations. The three companies tapped for future funding already have received hundreds of millions of dollars from NASA during earlier development phases. Boeing has gotten $131 million for work on its proposed CST-100 capsule, Sierra Nevada has been allotted more than $125 million for its Dream Chaser space plane, and SpaceX has won $75 million to upgrade its Dragon space capsule to carry crew.

SpaceX, known more formally as Space Exploration Technologies, has also received almost $400 million from a separate NASA program to support the development of the Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket for cargo deliveries to the space station. The successful flight of a Dragon to the station and back in May opened up the way for SpaceX to start regular cargo deliveries under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA.

Representatives of SpaceX and Sierra Nevada had no comment on the news. NASA said it would not announce the agreements until Friday morning, as scheduled. Efforts to contact Boeing were unsuccessful so far tonight. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, quoted industry sources as saying that Boeing and SpaceX were expected to share the bulk of NASA's CCiCap money, and that Sierra Nevada seemed likely to emerge with a smaller award.

NASA invited companies to submit proposals in the range of $300 million to $500 million for development of their spaceship designs through May 2014, with potential optional milestones as well. Under an agreement with congressional leaders, the space agency will provide the full negotiated amount for two companies, plus half of the requested funds for a third company. It's an arrangement I like to call "Two and a Half Spacemen," playing off the title of the popular CBS sitcom.

What about the also-rans?
Other companies sought unsuccessfully to win CCiCap funding — most prominently, a consortium that included ATK, Lockheed Martin and Astrium. The consortium's Liberty launch system would adapt the ATK-manufactured solid rocket booster that was used for the space shuttle and the now-canceled Ares 1 rocket. The second stage would be based on Astrium's Ariane rocket. The composite capsule would be provided by Lockheed Martin, which is the prime contractor for NASA's more capable Orion deep-space capsule.

Other contenders from previous rounds of development included Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos; and Excalibur Almaz, which is adapting Russian technology for its launch system.

NASA officials have said they'd be willing to continue advising the also-rans on an unfunded basis. On the other side of the table, all of the companies involved in the CCiCap competition have said they intended to continue spaceship development efforts even if they didn't win NASA's financial support, but at a reduced pace.

What lies ahead?
Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada have said their spaceships could be ready for NASA's use in the 2015-2016 time frame if they received adequate funding from the space agency. Last month, Ed Mango, NASA's manager for the Commercial Crew Program, told me that the middle of the decade seemed doable, but suggested that 2015 might be too soon.

"By the end of the base period, you need to have an integrated design that you have talked with the government about," Mango said. Actually launching a demonstration spaceflight with a crew might serve as an optional milestone, he added.

Boeing and Sierra Nevada are partnering with other companies to develop their launch system — and the most notable partner in both cases is United Launch Alliance, which could launch Boeing's CST-100 as well as Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser on its Atlas 5 rockets. SpaceX, in contrast, is pursuing its effort on a solo basis.

With last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet, NASA must depend on the Russians to transport U.S. astronauts to and from the space station, at a cost of around $60 million a seat. All of the companies involved in the Commercial Crew Program say they can do the job for less money than the Russians. In comparison, the cost of flying the space shuttle was estimated at $1 billion or more per mission.

Like the shuttle, the new space taxis are being designed to carry up to seven astronauts.

The commercial space taxis are an essential piece of the strategy worked out by the White House and NASA to free up money for the development of the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle as well as a heavy-lifting Space Launch System. The Orion and SLS would be used for exploration beyond Earth orbit, featuring trips to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and journeys to Mars and its moons in the 2030s.

Update for 11:15 p.m. ET: I want to emphasize that Jay's sources did not tell him which companies are getting more or less money than other companies. They only named the three companies. The Wall Street Journal's report suggests that Boeing and SpaceX will be getting more money than Sierra Nevada, but we don't have any information about that angle of the story. NASA promises that all will be revealed in the morning, and of course we'll pass that along. 

More about the spaceship competition:

• Follow the money in the commercial space race
• Handicapping the commercial space race
• Why SpaceX is setting the pace in the space race
• Cosmic Log archive on commercial space

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

SpaceX

An artist's conception shows astronauts inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

Several space ventures have reported a variety of seemingly small steps that are moving them closer to giant leaps in spaceflight — including the rise of new made-in-the-USA spaceships and commercial missions to the moon.

Here's a smorgasbord of space developments:

NASA is expected to announce sometime this summer which companies will go on to the next phase of its Commercial Crew Program, which is aimed at supporting the development of U.S.-made spaceships capable of carrying astronauts to the International Space Station. The way things are shaping up right now, two teams would receive about $200 million from the space agency to work on an integrated launch system over the course of 21 months, while a third team would be given about $100 million. Blue Origin, the Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX are receiving funding during the current phase of the program and are close to finishing up their milestones.

SpaceX has completed a concept baseline review for the crewed version of its Dragon spacecraft, NASA reports. A robotic Dragon had its first hookup with the International Space Station in May, and California-based SpaceX is working to upgrade the craft to fit NASA's safety standards for astronaut flights. SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, said the completion of the review places his company "exactly where we want to be — ready to move on to the next phase and on target to fly people into space aboard Dragon by the middle of the decade." (Details: NASA news release)

SNC

Artist's conception shows Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser landing on a runway.

Sierra Nevada Corp. has successfully tested the nose landing gear of its Dream Chaser prototype space plane, NASA says. That leaves one last milestone for the current phase of Sierra Nevada's agreement with NASA: an approach and landing test, which is due to take place later this year at NASA's Dryden Research Center in California. (Details: NASA news release and NASASpaceFlight.com)

EAI

Artist's concept shows Excalibur Almaz's spacecraft.

Excalibur Almaz Inc. has completed its unfunded partnership with NASA's Commercial Crew Program, involving the exchange of technical information but no exchange of money. The Houston-based company is developing a launch system that capitalizes on Russian-legacy space technology and would be capable of transferring astronauts and cargo between Earth and the International Space Station. CCP's manager, Ed Munro, said that during the partnership, "NASA learned valuable information about how the company plans to upgrade the existing capsule with modern flight capabilities." (Details: NASA news release)

ATK

The International Space Station's robotic arm extracts the Liberty Logistics Module in this artist's concept.

ATK, the company leading the development of the Liberty launch system, says it intends to offer an expanded crew and cargo capability — in the form of a pressurized pod that could carry up to 5,100 pounds of cargo to the space station. The pod, known as the Liberty Logistics Module, would ride into orbit along with the crew spacecraft, protected by a lightweight shroud. Once the launch vehicle gets beyond the atmosphere, the shroud could be jettisoned, and the LLM could be grappled by the station's robotic arm for a hookup to a docking port. ATK and its partners, including Astrium and Lockheed Martin, are aiming to get in on the next phase of the Commercial Crew Program. (Details: ATK news release)

Moon Express says former Google executive Jimi Crawford has joined the company as chief technology officer and software architect. Backed by dot-com entrepreneur Naveen Jain, Moon Express aims to put a lander and rover on the lunar surface by 2015 to win a share of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. Crawford has most recently served as Google Books' engineering director. Among the other lines on his resume is a stint as the leader of the robotics program at NASA's Ames Research Center. "With Jimi's combined space mission and software experience, our technical team just took another giant leap forward," Bob Richards, Moon Express co-founder and CEO, said in a news release. (Details: Space.com)

More about the commercial space race:

• NASA, FAA work out rules for spaceships
• Virgin Galactic rocket to carry satellites
• Private space travel's science benefits
• Cosmic Log archive on commercial space

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

If you think America's space effort is in a state of flux now, you ain't seen nothing yet: Just wait until billionaires Richard Branson and Robert Bigelow are vying to offer orbital hotels, or until there are as many brands of spaceships built in the United States as commercial jets.

Or not.

That's the curious thing about Space Race 2.0: It's definitely a marathon, not a sprint, and the field of contestants have had dropouts (like the bankrupt Rocketplane Kistler) as well as drop-ins (like the Boeing Co.).

If any of the racers make it to the finish line, NASA will once again be able to send U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station on U.S.-built spacecraft, ending the post-shuttle spaceship gap. There may also be opportunities for businesses and foreign governments to purchase their own presence in space, in the form of private-sector space stations. Regular folks may be able to buy vacation packages that include a quick up-and-down on a suborbital spacecraft, or even a stay on one of those space stations.

There'll be new opportunities for space research and manufacturing as well. Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institution as well as an adviser to the Blue Origin space venture, has called low-cost space research the "killer app" for the space travel industry — right up there with space tourism and space station resupply.

But what steps lie ahead for private space ventures, and what's the time frame for taking those steps?

A crucial year
For the companies seeking NASA's business, the next six months to a year will be crucial: Four companies — Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX — are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from NASA to develop spaceships capable of ferrying astronauts to the space station and back. SpaceX and yet another company, Orbital Sciences Corp., have already been receiving NASA funding to support the development of unmanned cargo spaceships.

In February, SpaceX is due to launch a test cargo shipment to the space station and bring the capsule back to Earth. Orbital Sciences, meanwhile, is gearing up for its first test flight of its Taurus 2 launch vehicle in the same time frame. By 2013, both companies should be cleared for orbital cargo deliveries as part of a $3.5 billion combined deal with NASA.

The development effort for crew vehicles is more complex, due to the higher safety requirements. Last month, Congress settled on an allocation of $406 million for the next phase of the commercial crew development program, or CCDev. That's less than half of the $850 million requested by the Obama administration, and NASA hasn't yet laid out a revised plan for the next development round.

Based on the space agency's previously announced plans, the money for the next phase would be given out starting next July, for the development of an integrated system that includes a space-taxi capsule as well as the rocket it rides on. SpaceX can already offer the full package, which combines its Falcon 9 rocket with its Dragon capsule. The other contenders will have to buddy up with rocket builders — either United Launch Alliance, which offers the Atlas 5; or ATK and EADS Astrium, which have proposed creating a hybrid rocket called Liberty. Right now, the Atlas 5 is the favored vehicle in the rocket race, but the next phase of CCDev provides an opportunity for dark horses like ATK to get back in the race.

As long as no one crosses the finish line, NASA is stuck in the position of paying the Russians $50 million or more for each seat filled by a U.S. astronaut heading to the space station. So the space agency has a powerful interest in making sure that at least one space-taxi operator succeeds. NASA expects that it'll be using U.S.-built space taxis in the 2017 time frame, but warns that reduced funding levels will slow down the timeline.

Suborbital space race
Meanwhile, additional companies are aiming for suborbital space business, either for research or tourism purposes. Among the major players in this particular race are Armadillo Aerospace, Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace,

Virgin Galactic says it's on track to begin powered test flights of its SpaceShipTwo craft early next year, with an eye toward offering suborbital trips at $200,000 a seat in 2013. Branson, the company's founder, is aiming even higher: "We're starting by suborbital trips, we'll then go to orbital trips, we're then going to look at space hotels. We're going to look at intercontinental travel at a speed much quicker than you can currently travel," he told me during an interview in October.

XCOR Aerospace plans to start testing its Lynx rocket plane in the air within a year, and wants to take on tourists starting in the 2013-2014 time frame.

Armadillo has partnered up with Space Adventures, the company that has sent seven paying passengers to the space station, to develop a suborbital launch system capable of carrying passengers or scientific experiments. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority says Armadillo ran a successful test of a reusable sounding rocket known as STIG A on Dec. 4. The rocket rose to an altitude of 137,500 feet (41.91 kilometers), and carried a scientific package from Purdue.

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, is also working on a suborbital spaceship project that's separate from the NASA-funded orbital effort. (The company is bouncing back from the crash of a suborbital test vehicle in August.)

Next giant leap
Of course, there's no guarantee that any of these companies will get off the ground on the timetable they expect. This space race is notorious for slowing down the pace: Spaceship builders have been predicting that the golden age of private spaceflight is just two years away for the past 15 years.

The interesting thing is that the different companies are coming together in combinations that make the space race look more like a square dance: Space Adventures is teaming with Armadillo on suborbital tourism, with Boeing on orbital tourism, and with the Russians on trips to the space station and even the moon. Sierra Nevada is relying on Virgin Galactic's help for atmospheric tests of its prototype orbital vehicle, while Virgin Galactic is relying on Sierra Nevada to provide the hybrid rocket engine for SpaceShipTwo. Boeing is a partner with Lockheed Martin in United Launch Alliance, which plans to provide rockets for Boeing as well as two of its CCDev competitors.

Bigelow Aerospace, which has already put two of its inflatable space modules into orbit on Russian rockets, could conceivably purchase launch services from SpaceX or United Launch Alliance to establish future private-sector space stations — and it's teaming up with Boeing and Space Adventures to make the arrangements for orbital trips by tourists and researchers.

Where could all this lead? Would you believe to Mars? At least that's what SpaceX founder Elon Musk expects. He's teaming up with NASA's Ames Research Center on a proposal for an unmanned Mars mission in the 2018 time frame, and he has said SpaceX's rockets could send humans to Mars in the next 10 to 15 years if that's what NASA wants to do.

"The reason to do space and to try to push the boundary of space is that it's one of the coolest things that humanity, or we as a country, can do," he told me. "We want there to be cool things. Life cannot just be about solving problems. If that's all it's about, why get up in the morning? There's got to be things that are inspiring and make life worth living — and I think pushing the boundaries of space and the outer frontier is one of those things."

More on the future of spaceflight:

• SpaceX chief aims for Mars
• Boeing runs hard in the new space race
• Future spaceflight goes virtual at Sierra Nevada
• Blue Origin spruces up its rocket report
• Slideshow: The making of SpaceShipTwo
• Gallery: Ten players in the commercial space race
• Cosmic Log archive on the new space race

This report draws upon videos that are part of a Future of Technology package produced by msnbc.com's Matt Rivera. Stay tuned for a new twist in the saga of future spaceflight on Tuesday.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Sierra Nevada Corp.

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser flight simulator shows the view that would be outside the cockpit windows during the mini-shuttle's approach to a landing strip.

Even though Sierra Nevada Corp.'s downsized space shuttle hasn't been built yet, future fliers can practice taking it in for a simulated landing. And among those future fliers is the boss.

Mark Sirangelo isn't just the head of Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Space Systems. He's also a licensed pilot, and he intends to take a ride on his company's Dream Chaser spaceship as early as next year during its atmospheric tests. Those tests are slated to begin next summer, with the stub-winged Dream Chaser being dropped from high altitude by Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane.

If the test flights go as planned, Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser could be carrying astronauts and cargo between Earth and the International Space Station in 2015 or 2016 — becoming the first winged vehicle to fly in Earth orbit since NASA's retirement of the space shuttle. By that time, there could well be other U.S. spaceships flying as well, courtesy of companies ranging from the Boeing Co. and Orbital Sciences Corp. to SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Those companies' pioneering efforts in commercial spaceflight will be among the subjects taken up this week during the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, presented in Las Cruces, N.M. This year's symposium is being held just a couple of days after the splashy dedication of Virgin Galactic's terminal building at Spaceport America, 45 miles to the north.

Sirangelo told me that this week's dedication served as another sign that the commercial space frontier was advancing. "This brings a certain reality to the idea," he said as he watched WhiteKnightTwo and its attached SpaceShipTwo rocket plane go through their maneuvers.

Sierra Nevada is Virgin Galactic's partner in more ways than one: In addition to using WhiteKnightTwo as a platform for its early tests, Sirangelo's company is manufacturing the hybrid rocket engines that are to be used in SpaceShipTwo. Those engines are now undergoing ground tests. The first in-flight tests are expected to begin within a year.

Meanwhile, the work on Dream Chaser is accelerating: This spring, NASA awarded Sierra Nevada $80 million to support the spaceship's development, and last month the space agency sweetened the deal with an extra $25.6 million for additional milestones. NASA's Kennedy Space Center struck yet another deal to make its facilities and its expertise available to Sierra Nevada.

During a recent visit to Sierra Nevada Space System's headquarters near Denver, I saw a few former NASA employees bustling through the halls, including five-time space shuttle fliers Steve Lindsey and Jim Voss (who are now executives at the company).

Another one of the ex-NASA types at Sierra Nevada is the company's simulation manager, Stokes McMillan, whoused to work on NASA's X-38 program at Johnson Space Center. "After that program was canceled, I always have looked for something like that — and here it is," McMillan told me.

McMillan's pride and joy is Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser cockpit simulator, a gizmo modeled after NASA's space shuttle simulator. It may not rock and roll like the space agency's motion-base machine, but it has big projection screens, computerized control dials and a joystick-based flight system that give you the feeling that you're actually flying. Even I was able to land the darn thing on a virtual Kennedy Space Center airstrip, with lots of coaching from McMillan.

Development of the simulator was one of the extra milestones that NASA added to Sierra Nevada's list. In the long term, the make-believe cockpit can be used to train astronauts to fly the real Dream Chaser. But in the shorter term, it will help the company's engineers fine-tune the way the spaceship handles itself and the way the instruments are arranged, with advice from the experts who'll be making all those virtual flights.

Sirangelo has flown the simulator many times, and he's looking forward to taking a seat on the real Dream Chaser in the not-too-distant future. He discussed his expectations as well as the company's aspirations during a wide-ranging interview this summer. Here's an edited excerpt:   

Cosmic Log: There are several vehicles that are being supported by NASA as part of the commercial crew development program. And I've seen one report about an Irish bookmaker who said the Dream Chaser had the best odds of flying first. How do you assess the field for this sort of market of providing NASA with these services?

Mark Sirangelo: Well, it’s not for me to comment on other people's work, but we look at the field this way: We think that NASA will have more than one provider. They have more than one provider to do cargo right now. There are two U.S. companies vying to do that, in addition to the Japanese cargo system and the Russian cargo system. There are multiple cargo systems out there. We think that, ultimately, there will be at least two, perhaps more U.S. systems brought for orbital transfer.

Very often we get asked, well, why us?  Well, if you look at space, why should space be any different from how we look at our navy or our air force or our army? There are different vehicles for different tasks. Having a lifting body capable of making a runway landing has certain attributes to it that are not present in capsules right now.

Those attributes include things such as being able to return to Earth at less than 2 G's and being able to land on a runway that's less than 10,000 feet long, being able to go right up to the vehicle after it lands to take off critical experiments, and take people off immediately.

The vehicle also has the ability to do other things in space. One of the reasons NASA got into this program to begin with was to enable commercial space, not just to provide a point-to-point solution for the space station. A lifting-body design like ours has the ability to do servicing, much as the shuttle serviced the Hubble Space Telescope. Our vehicle can stay in low-Earth orbit for many months unmanned if it needs to.  We can provide transportation to other destinations in a manner that’s very consistent with what non-professional astronauts might need.

Q: Of all the vehicles that are being funded in this phase, this is the only lifting-body, winged vehicle that looks anything like the shuttle. I've noticed that you've had former astronauts come through here - do you feel as if a lot of the people who have been involved in the NASA program have a soft spot for a winged vehicle like this?

A: We think that we’re getting an increasing amount of interest in our program for a variety of reasons.  I think the top reasons are that people with the retirement of the shuttle realized that there was a purpose for the shuttle, for its design, for what it did. I wouldn’t call it sentimental, but they realized that the people who designed that were pretty smart people.  They felt that there would be multiple missions this shuttle can do.

I think there’s also real interest in that we can make a very positive statement that many of the people who worked on the shuttle program can see those skill sets being accomplished on our program. We have to turn this around from one flight to the next, we have to do many of the same kind of things that the shuttle did, albeit in a smaller version. So some of those skill sets will transfer over.

We also think that when members of the astronaut corps look at this, they'll realize that they can still be piloting, they can still be flying a vehicle.  In the current scenario, where there are passengers on a Russian Soyuz, that skill set goes away. In our vision, we will have a commercial astronaut pilot sitting next to a NASA astronaut pilot on NASA missions.  So those people still have a place to fly, that skill set remains current within the U.S. space effort. And all that money spent to train those people continue to be relevant.

Q: There’s been some discussion about who would fly the vehicle in its operational phase. Of course, there will be test pilots who are employed by Sierra Nevada to make sure the vehicle fills the specifications. But once it enters service, who's in control of the vehicle?

A: It isn’t clear to any of us right now who’s going to fly and how it’s going to fly.  But I think there are three basic approaches to the problem.

One is that we build the vehicle, and NASA essentially leases it.  So they put NASA personnel on and NASA flies it. That certainly would be fine with us.

The second approach would be that we essentially pilot the vehicle.  We own it and we’re much like the Soyuz right now, where the Russians are in charge of the vehicle and they’re providing a seat. We provide a seat in a similar fashion to NASA. Instead of flying on a Russian vehicle, putting money into the Russian space program, we’re putting that money into the U.S. space program,  and we’re providing transportation underneath our own management.

We also have come up with a third approach, and it’s one that we particularly like. It’s taking the page out of the maritime industry, where large ships are often piloted across the waters by a captain who is employed by the company who owns the tanker or the cargo ship. When the ship gets to a major port, there’s a harbor pilot who comes out to take that ship in, who knows the harbor very well. Similarly speaking, we think the NASA astronaut pilots know the space station. NASA might feel more comfortable having a NASA astronaut pilot do the proximity operations around the space station, including docking. We might in fact have our pilot do the launch and take off and put it into orbit, and I believe NASA pilot take over when that ship needs to dock to the space station.  That would balance the skill sets on both sides and provide another level of safety, and another level of interaction with NASA.

Q: Interesting ... when you look at the stimulator that you have set up, it’s very similar to how a shuttle simulator looks. Is that intentional, in that you want to preserve the handling of the shuttle, or is it just an outgrowth of the design, because it’s a vehicle that’s designed similarly to the shuttle.

A: When you walk into the simulator, you’ll see that there are very similar aspects to what is going on with the space shuttle, and that’s not by chance. Many, many years of work has gone into how to lay out vehicles, and we are learning from that, we are absorbing that. We are adding significantly new technologies to the vehicle, so it has the blending of what’s going on currently in the field of aviation technology as well as some of the tried-and-true design methods that have been used before. Anyone who comes into that who has experience flying high-performance aircraft or flying the shuttle or flying modern commercial aviation aircraft will feel very comfortable behind the stick. And that is by intent.

We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here.  We are trying to take the best of the past and marry it with the best of the future, and put it together into one vehicle. ...

Q: I'm guessing that when you got started in business, you did not anticipate that you’d be working on a spaceship. Did you think that you would be working on this sort of vehicle?

A: It’s interesting. I think many of the people on the program, myself included, have always believed that we would do something in space. I have been a pilot for a long time, and I continue to fly. One of the jokes around my family was that the next thing we were going to be doing would be Mark going to space at some point in time. This is as much a passion for me as it is for anyone else. I hope to be in one of the first vehicles. We are going to be flying the vehicles before we ever put any NASA people onboard. And if there are something wrong, we’ll be the first ones to know about it.

This is not done merely as some business activity. This is done as a personal passion. Throughout the organization, the hundreds of people who are now working on this are doing it because they believe in this program, and they believe in the partnership with NASA that we have. Someday I’ll be flying the vehicle alongside, I hope, a number of people from NASA.

Q: When do you anticipate that day will come?

A: We will start doing our drop test of the Dream Chaser in 2012. First schedule is to start doing what we call an atmospheric drop test, taking it up to a high altitude and letting it go and then piloting it down to make sure that the vehicle has all the necessary characteristics to allow to act as a piloted vehicle. In the following year, we’ll begin doing our suborbital tests, and then starting in 2014, going into 2015, we’ll be doing orbital tests, first as an unmanned vehicle and then as a manned vehicle. I hope and I think many of us will be participating in that test schedule between now and then.

Q: So in the 2015 timeframe, once the manned orbital tests begin, is that when you would get your ticket?

A: I would expect that I would be part of the drop test program and the suborbital program. We have a small group of people who have experience in flying who are going to be part of that.

Q: So that could be next year?

A: It could be next year, or early 2013.

Q: So how do you feel about that? it sounds as if you’re looking forward to it.

A: Oh, yeah. I can’t say how excited we all are to be able to go back and see hardware, to touch the vehicle now that’s been on paper for so long. Seeing that the first vehicle is well into production really gets your heart going. It makes you realize why you are doing this.

Stay tuned for more reports about the space frontier from the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight on Wednesday and Thursday. We'll also be featuring some of the leaders of the private-sector space effort, including Sirangelo as well as SpaceX's Elon Musk and Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson, in an upcoming installment of our "Future of Technology" series.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA likes the idea of a mini-shuttle spaceship so much that they're paying Sierra Nevada Corp. $100 million to start developing it. The result is a case of deja vu all over again: Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser space plane is based on a design NASA considered more than 20 years ago.

Sierra Nevada is updating the HL-20 lifting-body design for the 21st century, using carbon composite construction techniques and state-of-the-art avionics. If NASA likes what it sees and provides further funding, the Dream Chaser could be ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station as early as 2015. Three other companies — SpaceX, the Boeing Co. and Blue Origin — are also receiving development money from NASA as part of the agency's commercial crew development program.

Sierra Nevada is the only company of the four that is working on a winged vehicle like the shuttle, and it plans to capitalize on the parallels. Just last week, Sierra Nevada Space Systems' chairman, Mark Sirangelo, signed an agreement with NASA to use facilities at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the development and launch of the Dream Chaser.

NASA

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Mark Sirangelo holds a model of the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle during a signing ceremony at Kennedy Space Center. Center director Bob Cabana is at left, and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is at right.

After the signing ceremony, Sirangelo said he hoped to hire shuttle workers to become part of a public-private team at the space center, starting out with dozens and eventually growing to hundreds. "We don't need as many people [as the shuttle program employed], but some of the people have the kids of skills that we would need," he told me.

Time is of the essence, however. And so is money. Sirangelo noted that Sierra Nevada's current timetable called for suborbital test flights starting in 2013 and orbital tests in 2014.

"We have to start now to get ready for that ... and having some predictability from NASA and Congress as to what this program is going to look like will help us hire sooner and more," he said. "If they come in and say the president's budget is accepted, then we're going to hire fairly aggressively. If they come in and say there's no money, then that's going to have an effect on us as well."

On the eve of the shuttle program's last launch, I sat down with Sirangelo at Kennedy Space Center to discuss Sierra Nevada's perspective on the post-shuttle era. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

Cosmic Log: One of the concerns that comes up is that commercial providers won't provide the level of safety and reliability that NASA has achieved, and the attention to safety is why spaceflight has been so expensive. How do you respond to that concern?

Mark Sirangelo: I'll respond by saying that NASA is creating the safety standard. We have to pass, otherwise we don't fly. It's like the FAA and its standard for commercial aircraft. If you don't pass it, you don't fly your new commercial aircraft. So the presumption is that if NASA creates the standard and we pass it ... we would have passed what they needed us to pass.

The second part of the answer is that we have a team of 10 companies, all of whom have been in human spaceflight almost from the beginning. This idea that this is a separate industry is really a misnomer. NASA has never built a vehicle on its own. It's always had commercial partners. The only difference is in the contract method — and the fact that we're investing alongside NASA. We have Boeing on our team, we have Aerojet on our team, we have Draper Lab. We're using Lockheed's rocket [the Atlas 5]. These are not novices building Tinker Toys. These are companies that have been in business for a long time.

What's different is that instead of NASA owning the vehicle, the company owns the vehicle, and NASA's getting a service. But that's exactly what they're doing right now. They're buying a service from Russia. NASA doesn't own the Soyuz, they're buying a seat. And they have less insight, less oversight, less involvement with the whole Russian space program than they have with our program.

Q: Why do you think it is that spaceflight has been so expensive? Why can the commercial sector do it for less?

A:I think the mission is simpler. The shuttle has a very complex mission. Our vehicle is shuttle-like, but we're one-fortieth the size. We're like an SUV as opposed to a big trailer truck. We have a purpose: We want to take seven members of your family on a trip with luggage, and we want to bring them home safely. That's a lot less complex to design than a big trailer truck with all the equipment that's required. With the shuttle, NASA had to have a program that could do everything. The shuttle had to take huge amounts of cargo, it had to take very complex modules, it had to transfer people. When you look at that, you understand why it was so expensive. But this is a very direct, point-based solution.

We're going to follow all the same safety requirements that apply to other NASA vehicles. Interestingly enough, those safety standards don't apply to the Soyuz. It's not a human-rated vehicle. There's not a human-rated vehicle in the world.

Q: When do you think the human-rating standards will be drawn up?

A: The important thing for all of us is that we work together to do that sooner rather than later. It's a big challenge, because this is not a cost-plus contract. If somebody makes a design change three years from now, there's not a pot full of money to go into and say, let's just keep going. What we're encouraging everybody to do is sit down and have those discussions today so we can all design what's necessary for safety into the vehicle, during the design phase rather than the production phase.

We've seen the draft safety standards. We're designing to those right now. There's nothing in them that we don't think we can meet.

Q: Do you have a fix on the per-mission cost for sending crew up to the space station?

A: We're not publishing prices, but we believe we can come in at less than the cost to the Russians. We think substantially less. [The Russian price per seat is rising to almost $63 million in 2014.] Part of it depends on how many flights there are. Our vehicle is a fully reusable vehicle. If we can look at 20 flights or 30 flights, it drops the cost down significantly. If it's two or three, then we'll have to deal with that. But because our vehicle reusable and because it's made of composite material, we've already got all the molds built and we can actually make additional vehicles.

Q: Is that where Virgin Galactic enters the picture? There might be flights outside the NASA contract that the Dream Chaser would be able to capitalize on.

A: There are three areas where we would work with Virgin Galactic. One is that we're working with them on potentially using the WhiteKnightTwo for drop tests of the vehicle, atmospheric testing.

They are a very good marketer, and we have a vehicle that has seats and can go to space. They have a big cadre of people who will fly suborbitally, some of whom want to climb the next, bigger mountain. That's human nature, and we're excited about that. If they have thousands of people who go suborbital, maybe 5 percent, 10 percent will want to take the next step and go orbital. That's a very natural progression. The vehicles are very similar, they're composite, and there would be a consistency of approach.

Q: And the third area?

A:We think that as we look toward other potential destinations beyond the space station, be it Bigelow Aerospace or someone else, there might be transportation systems necessary for that. So we could see a three-way partnership involving the station owner, Virgin Galactic and ourselves to market this experience.

Q: Is it possible that the Dream Chaser could just do several orbits and come back down without going to an orbital destination?

A: Yes, you could imagine an experience — it'd be a pretty cool experience  — where you get to spend a few days in space, and maybe you fly toward the space station but you don't go on it. For those who have that interest, it could be a pretty interesting trip.

And there are more practical things beyond space tourism. We built this big laboratory, the space station, but there's no way to get anything home. What people forget is that the shuttle was the return vehicle. The European or Japanese cargo transfer vehicles can't come home. The only vehiclethat comes home is the Soyuz, and if you've ever seen the Soyuz, you know that you can barely get three midsize people in there.

So we have a problem. We built this wonderful laboratory in space, and we didn't build it just to send a few humans to sit there, we built it to do work. To do science, and take that work home. That's what prompted me to get into this, actually. Beyond the work with NASA, there are all these other things that are necessary. If you are spending a lot of money doing bioscience with critical experiments in space, and you want to bring them home, would you rather fly them home with less than 2 G's, land on a runway and be able to walk up to the vehicle as soon as it stops, put the experiments in a refrigerated vehicle and get them to the lab ... or would you want them to go bobbing around in the Pacific Ocean somewhere?

We think that's a very important market. The more trips we make to the station, the more likely it is that more science gets done. And that's why we built the space station in the first place. We didn't build it to use as an observatory, we built it to do work.

Another way we see this vehicle is as a servicing vehicle. Personally, if I were writing a history of the shuttle program, one of the things I would put right at the top is the fact that it fixed the Hubble Space Telescope. We're getting so much value in science, and we're advancing our knowledge of the universe in ways we never thought possible. That's because the shuttle went up and fixed the mirrors, and it did the repair work that it needed to do. If we didn't have that, that whole telescope would have been toast. We would have had none of the knowledge we have now. We think that having a vehicle that could do servicing in space — moving satellites or fixing things in space — would be really useful.

Q: Do you have any aspirations beyond Earth orbit?

A: No, we don't. We've got a pretty big job in front of us. A lot of people don't know much about us. We have 2,200 people in our company. We've been around for 40 years. We're owned and run by the management of the company.  We don't have outside ownership. We've been growing every year for the last 14 years, and we're profitable. We've been in space for 400 missions now. All this is just to say that we know how hard it is to build a business. We've succeeded because we're disciplined. We know what we do well, and we know what we don't do well.

That's why we have such a big team. We looked around and said, "What are the things in this mission that we can do, what else needs to be done, and who do we find to do all these other things?" We went out and found the best companies in the space industry, and said, "Hey, this is what we're doing, we're leading it, do you want to come join us?" That's how we think space gets done.

Q: A lot of people look at the space effort nowadays and ask, "What's the point, when there are so many problems here on Earth?" Do you see any of that?

A: I hear that, but it doesn't manifest itself so much. I'll give you an example:We have a mockup of the vehicle on the campus of the University of Colorado, and people have told me that the most interesting thing is the ability to reach out and touch a space vehicle. Look at how many people see science-fiction movies, or space movies at an IMAX theater. People are given a passion — maybe it was a destination, or an experience, or seeing the Mars rovers. Something that people can relate to on a personal level.

What we have lacked is the emotion behind the space program. And what we're trying to do is put some of the emotion back. Let's say, for example, we have the ability to land this vehicle on any runway. That's a technical ability, but it could be a passion ability, too. Suppose we intentionally land in Denver, so that all those kids in Colorado can see a space vehicle land, and can come up and see it and touch it. Less than 1 percent of the people in this country have ever even seen a space vehicle in a museum. What would the kids of tomorrow think if we landed in 15 different cities around the country, and everybody got a chance to come and see a space vehicle at an air show? How many of those kids would go out and say, "I want to go to space, I want to be a designer, I want to be an engineer"? That's what our generation did. What we need is that kind of passion.

More perspectives on the post-shuttle era:

• SpaceX chief sets his sights on Mars
• Is the space effort dying, or evolving?
• After the shuttle lands, layoffs loom
• Shuttle's legacy: Soaring in orbit and costs 
• Gallery: Ten players in the commercial space race

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Sierra Nevada Corp.

In this artist's conception, Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser space plane is shown alongside a docking port at the International Space Station.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center signed a deal today to let Sierra Nevada Corp. use its facilities to develop and launch a mini-shuttle for servicing the International Space Station, beginning as early as 2015.

"This is a really great step toward a bright future for us," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at the signing, which took place in the Florida space center's briefing room.

Previous deals have awarded Sierra Nevada $100 million in NASA funds to aid in the development of the company's Dream Chaser, a winged space plane that's based on a design considered but rejected by the space agency in the 1980s. The Dream Chaser would launch on an Atlas 5 rocket and carry as many as seven passengers and cargo to the space station.

Sierra Nevada is one of several companies funded by NASA's effort to promote the development of commercial spacecraft that could fill in for many of the functions of the shuttle fleet, which is headed for retirement after Atlantis' upcoming station resupply mission. The Dream Chaser is the only proposed spaceship that has wings. The others — such as SpaceX's Falcon, Boeing's CST-100 and Blue Origin's OSV — are conical capsules like the Apollo command module.

Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, noted that the Dream Chaser's look was similar to that of the shuttle, though without the shuttle's commodious cargo bay. When one journalist made a remark about the craft's sleek design, Sirangelo joked, "We like the word 'sleek.'"

He said the design similarities suggest that the reusable Dream Chaser, which would land on a runway like a glider, might well be serviced like the shuttle. But when Sirangelo was asked exactly which facilities would be used at Kennedy Space Center, he said "we're still working out the details" on that issue. NASA said the space center would help Sierra Nevada "define and execute" activities for launch and for post-landing processing.

Last week, NASA reported that all of its partners for crew vehicle development, including Sierra Nevada, were meeting their specified timelines. Sirangelo said Sierra Nevada's schedule called for suborbital test flights in 2013, orbital test flights in 2014 and the start of space station operations in 2015.

Kennedy Space Center's director, Bob Cabana, joined Sierra Nevada in signing today's Space Act agreement. He said the venture was in line with NASA's efforts to give private companies a greater role in low-Earth-orbit operations, thus freeing the space agency to concentrate on beyond-Earth-orbit exploration.

"We are going to transform human space flight for future generations," Cabana said.

Today's Space Act agreement isn't the first of its kind: Sierra Nevada previously reached agreements with Johnson Space Center in Texas, Langley Research Center in Virginia and Dryden Flight Research Center and Ames Research Center in California. Among the other companies that have made Space Act agreements under the auspices of NASA's Commercial Crew Program are Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp.

"There are others in the works," Cabana told me after the signing.

Do you think such agreements point the way to the future of spaceflight? Or are you worried that private enterprise isn't up to taking a leading role on the final frontier, as some of the space effort's veterans fear? Either way, feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 6 p.m. ET: Sierra Nevada's Sirangelo discussed the deal in more depth with me during an interview this afternoon. Among other things, he told me that the Dream Chaser could be launched atop an Atlas 5 from California as well as from Florida, and it could land on any runway. If it happened to land in California, or anyplace else, that's no big deal. "It returns home in a cargo plane," Sirangelo told me. The mini-shuttle is compact enough to fit within a C-5 transport plane, he noted.

He suggested that  the Dream Chaser could touch down in, say, Madison to deliver fresh experimental samples to a lab at the University of Wisconsin — or make a landing at the EAA AirVenture air show to give the crowds a thrill. A spaceship coming to your hometown ... how's that sound as a way to build interest in the space program?

Stay tuned for more from Sirangelo and other players in the commercial space race next week, once I transcribe my notes.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

With the shuttle program winding down, the future of American spaceflight may well depend on how starry-eyed tycoons spend their money — and some of NASA’s money as well.

Three of the four companies that are in line to receive $269.3 million from NASA for building future spaceships are privately held, and what's more, they're led by well-off individuals who have at least a hint of intrigue about them. The fourth company, Boeing, is partnering with Bigelow Aerospace, which was founded by hotel-chain billionaire Robert Bigelow and has its own orbital aspirations.

NASA has laid out a plan for paying out the money over the next year or so, with the aim of promoting the rise of a new set of spaceship operators in the post-shuttle era.

In a commentary, George Washington University communication researcher Linda Billings picks up on the fact that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are going to ventures that are headed up by folks who already have hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Why do these 'commercial' space companies need government handouts?" she asks. "The awardees are not hard-up start-ups (and these government handouts are not their first)."

It's true that all four companies have received money from the federal government previously, but none of those companies would characterize the payments as "handouts" or "subsidies."

They'd see them instead as payments for services rendered, goods delivered, or milestones achieved along the path that NASA wants them to take. And the $50 million that's been paid out so far under NASA's Commercial Crew Development program, or CCDev, is dwarfed by the $9 billion paid to commercial providers such as Lockheed Martin for the development of NASA's now-canceled Ares 1 rocket and now-downsized Orion crew capsule.

Although the financial details are hard to come by, it's virtually certain that the four companies have already spent far more than they've received for their spaceship projects. It's also virtually certain that not all four projects will make it into orbit. Because NASA is spreading out its bets, failure is definitely an option.

Here's a recap on the four spaceship development projects that NASA will be supporting for the next year under the second phase of the CCDev program. I'll be focusing on these efforts on Saturday during a Second Life chat about the post-shuttle spaceflight era, presented by the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. SLT/PT):

Blue Origin

Blue Origin's orbital space vehicle is designed to take on trips to the International Space Station.

Blue Origin: The venture getting the least amount of money ($22 million) is arguably the most mysterious of the bunch. Amazon.com's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, set up Blue Origin in 2000 to follow through on his childhood dream of going into outer space. He has the country's only privately owned spaceport, nestled amid his 165,000-acre ranch in West Texas — and until CCDev came along, most people assumed he was targeting solely suborbital space tourism.

CCDev made clear that Bezos had higher ambitions: Blue Origin's agreement with NASA, made public in redacted form this week, shows that the company aims to build an orbital launch system capable of getting seven passengers to the International Space Station (or other destinations in low Earth orbit). Its space vehicle would initially be launched on an expendable rocket such as United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5, and eventually Blue Origin plans to field its own reusable rocket.

The suborbital effort is now seen as an interim step along the way to orbit. "The suborbital vehicle will be fully reusable and capable of flying three or more astronauts to an altitude of over 328,000 feet (above 100 kilometers) for science research and adventure," Blue Origin said. "The suborbital booster is currently undergoing integrated testing. ... The suborbital capsule will baseline key technologies for the orbital space vehicle, and is currently undergoing final assembly."

With rare exceptions, the only information publicly available about Blue's plans comes from government documents that must be made publicly available, such as the one released this week. Thus, it's hard to tell how much money Bezos has put into his rocket venture so far. But when you consider the construction costs for Blue Origin's production facility in Washington state, plus its facilities in Texas, plus all the testing it's done to date, it's unquestionably more than the $3.7 million the venture received under CCDev1 plus the $22 million it's due to get under CCDev2.

Blue Origin's partners include NASA's Ames Research Center and Stennis Space Center, United Launch Alliance and Lockheed Martin, Aerojet and the Air Force Holloman High Speed Test Track in New Mexico. The company's agreement with NASA says that Bezos "recognizes that successful development of an innovative space launch capability is a long-term endeavor and is committed to steady funding for development efforts to achieve a commercial orbital vehicle."

The company said NASA's support would "accelerate" the development of a reusable crew transportation system. "We are very pleased to continue working with NASA on development of our Crew Transportation System, and appreciate the confidence NASA places in Blue Origin," the company's program manager, Rob Meyerson, said in an emailed statement.

Sierra Nevada Corp.

An artist's conception shows Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser near a space station docking port.

Sierra Nevada Corp.: Sierra Nevada received $20 million during CCDev1 and is getting $80 million in CCDev2 to continue development of its Dream Chaser space plane, which is based on the HL-20 lifting-body design that NASA pioneered back in the 1980s. The concept was revived by high-tech entrepreneur Jim Benson at SpaceDev and inherited by Sierra Nevada when it acquired SpaceDev in 2008. (Benson had left SpaceDev two years earlier and came up with a different spaceship concept, but he passed away in 2008 before he could get very far with the idea.)

Sierra Nevada's top corporate officers are in the public eye far less than Jeff Bezos. After all, Bezos is still the head of a publicly traded company, but CEO Fatih Ozmen and his wife, company president and chief financial officer Eren Ozmen don't have much reason to go public. Three years ago, a story about Sierra Nevada in the Las Vegas Sun called Fatih Ozmen a "mystery man."

The Ozmens started out as employees at Sierra Nevada and acquired the Nevada-based company in 1994. Since then, Sierra Nevada has grown into a big-time defense contractor with 29 locations in 15 states. Inc. magazine listed its 2009 revenue at just under a billion dollars.

Sierra Nevada's website lists numerous awards, including recognition as "the top woman-owned company demonstrating excellence in applying innovative IT solutions to the federal government." But the company has also experienced the occasional hiccup, such as recent questions over the development of an imaging pod for the Air Force, called Gorgon Stare.

The company's agreement with NASA lists 11 partners, including Boeing, United Launch Alliance, United Space Alliance, Aerojet, Draper Lab, NASA's Langley Research Center, AdamWorks, SAS, the University of Colorado, the U.S. component of Canada's MDA robotics company and Virgin Galactic (which is working with Sierra Nevada on "global marketing, sales and commercial operation" of the orbital Dream Chaser).

SpaceX

An artist's conception shows SpaceX's Draco thruster engines firing to separate the Dragon spacecraft from the Falcon 9 second stage. Side-mounted thrusters could be used as a launch abort system and landing system.

SpaceX: This California-based company, founded by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2002, has notched a surprising number of space successes lately, including last December's launch-to-splashdown test of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule. NASA is supporting the development of the Falcon-Dragon system with $278 million under a separate program for cargo craft development, known as Commercial Orbital Transport Services or COTS. If SpaceX hits its marks, it will be in line for $1.6 billion worth of NASA contracts to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

Musk has said it would take $1 billion and three years of work to adapt the Falcon-Dragon system to carry crew, primarily because of the expense of developing an emergency launch abort system. This week, he said the $75 million in CCDev2 money would put SpaceX on track to meet that schedule.

"The award will accelerate our efforts to develop the next generation of rockets and spacecraft for human transportation," Musk said in a statement. "With NASA's support, SpaceX will be ready to fly its first manned mission in 2014."

Musk has made no secret of his long-term goal: to open the way for colonizing Mars and turn humanity into a multiplanet species. This week's statement referred slyly to those ambitions by noting that SpaceX's thruster system would "provide the capability for Dragon to land almost anywhere on Earth or another planet with pinpoint accuracy, overcoming the limitation of a winged architecture that works only in Earth's atmosphere."

A couple of years ago, Musk said that he invested $100 million of his fortune in SpaceX — but there have been more recent indications that the spigot has been turned down on his personal cash flow. SpaceX recently reported raising $50 million in additional funds, and Musk said an initial public offering may take place next year. Last year, there were a flurry of reports about Musk's financial straits, which led him to discuss the situation candidly in the Huffington Post.

SpaceX's agreement with NASA says the $75 million would accelerate crew-transport development by 50 percent compared to an internally funded baseline. So what does that say about SpaceX's investment? That figure is blacked out in the agreement posted online, but if time is money, that might imply SpaceX is bringing $75 million of its own to the project. The section listing SpaceX's partners and institutional investors is also blacked out, but the company notes that it works in "close collaboration with four NASA centers and eight leading aerospace companies."

Boeing

Boeing's CST-100 craft approaches the International Space Station in an artist's concept.

The Boeing Co.: This aerospace giant is something of an outlier. It's publicly traded, and has been involved in the U.S. space effort for decades. Among other things, Boeing served as the prime contractor for construction of the International Space Station. Billings' knock against Boeing was that with $3.3 billion in profit for 2010, the company didn't need a government "subsidy" for its spaceship-building operation.

However, Boeing's John Elbon repeatedly said in the run-up to the CCDev2 announcement that NASA had to serve as the anchor customer for the company's proposed CST-100 crew capsule. Without NASA support, the financial underpinnings of the project just didn't stand up. The $92.3 million in CCDev2 money, added to the $18 million from CCDev1, will keep Boeing on track to have the capsule ready for flight by 2015.

"By the end of CCDev2, our design will be firmed up and we'll have it synced up with NASA requirements so we understand our vehicle will meet those requirements," Boeing's John Elbon told reporters.

Boeing's go-ahead is also good news for Robert Bigelow, whose aerospace company has already put up two inflatable test modules into orbit on Russian spacecraft. Bigelow Aerospace is hoping that the CST-100 — perhaps launched on an Atlas 5, Delta 4 or Falcon 9 — can bring paying passengers to its future private-sector space stations as well as to the government-supported International Space Station.

In addition to Bigelow, Boeing's agreement with NASA lists Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Airborne Systems, ILC Dover, Spincraft, XCOR Aerospace, United Space Alliance and ARES Corp. as teammates and investors. Boeing also notes its agreements with Bigelow, Space Adventures and an additional blacked-out entity "to increase market growth."

Orbital Sciences Corp.

Orbital Sciences' Prometheus space plane, shown in this artist's conception, was one of the proposals that NASA passed up. Orbital is now reportedly planning to mothball the concept.

What separated the winners and losers: NASA has now released the full list of companies proposing CCDev2 spaceship projects, plus short rundowns on why particular proposals were chosen or eliminated. It's fascinating reading for space geeks.

The also-rans included alphaSpaces, Andrews Space, ATK Aerospace Systems, Excalibur Almaz, ILC Dover, Innovative Space Propulsion Systems, KT Engineering, Oceaneering International, Orbital Outfitters, Orbital Sciences Corp., Orbital Space Transport, Paragon Space Development Corp., PlanetSpace, Spacedesign Corp., TGV Rockets, Transformational Space Corp. (a.k.a. t/Space), United Launch Alliance and United Space Alliance.

Philip McAlister, acting director of NASA Headquarters' Commercial Spaceflight Development program, said Boeing and SpaceX were clear standouts from the rest of the pack. "They were the only ones to receive 'very high' confidence ratings, which I consider significant," he wrote.

ATK, Excalibur Almaz and United Launch Alliance were among the finalists, but McAlister said Excalibur Almaz was eliminated due to low ratings, especially on business considerations. He opted not to go with ATK and United Launch Alliance in part because of their lack of linkage to a crew-carrying vehicle. Those two companies were proposing only to build launch vehicles, and McAlister put somewhat less weight on that side of the equation.

"Within the U.S. industrial base, there is considerable launch vehicle development expertise, as many companies have successfully developed new launch vehicles over the last few decades," he explained. "In contrast, no U.S. company has successfully developed a crew-carrying spacecraft in over 30 years."

In other words, not since the space shuttle ... unless you count the private-sector SpaceShipOne rocket plane, which made three suborbital space trips in 2004. 

Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin's Space Operations Simulation Center in Colorado can simulate on-orbit docking maneuvers using mockups of the Orion spce capsule, left, and the International Space Station.

So what's next? The CCDev2 covers the development timeline through May 2012, but NASA is looking for another $850 million to cover the third phase of the program, CCDev3. Being a CCDev2 winner doesn't guarantee that you'll get CCDev3 funding, and it's possible that a company not receiving money in one phase of the program could be funded for a future phase. For example, SpaceX didn't receive any funding in CCDev1 but was awarded $75 million in CCDev2.

The agreements with NASA spell out milestones that must be met in order to receive incremental payments. It's not guaranteed that all the companies will meet all the milestones. For example, Rocketplane Kistler was awarded up to $207 million from COTS, NASA's cargo spacecraft development program, but the company couldn't reach its investment target and was cut off after receiving $32.1 million for hitting earlier milestones.

If the CCDev process is successful, NASA should be able to choose from new U.S.-built spaceships for launching astronauts to the International Space Station in the 2014-2015 time frame. In the meantime, the space agency will have to rely on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft for crew transport. NASA expects to begin sending cargo up to the International Space Station on remote-controlled craft provided by SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. as early as next year.

Separately, NASA is also funding Lockheed Martin's work of the Orion crew capsule, which is currently envisioned as a NASA-operated emergency crew escape vehicle. Such capsules would be launched to the space station without a crew, thus minimizing the flight risk.

The Orion may well turn into the multipurpose crew vehicle that Congress wants NASA to develop for trips beyond Earth orbit. Congress has set aside $1.2 billion in the current fiscal year for the Orion-based crew vehicle, plus $1.8 billion for a heavy-lift rocket capable of putting 130 tons of payload into orbit. Lawmakers want to see that mission accomplished by 2016, but NASA isn't sure the job can be done. 

Even if the beyond-Earth space transport system is ready by 2016, NASA is expected to use commercial transports to get astronauts to and from the space station. Using a heavy-lifter to send astronauts to low Earth orbit would be like using a semi to get from one end of town to the other. It's better to call a taxi ... which is exactly what NASA plans to do once its commercial "space taxis" are ready to fly. 

More on the space race:

• NewSpace Journal: Orbital may wind down commercial crew effort
• Aviation Week: Five vehicles vie to succeed space shuttle
• The Register: Millionaire's private spaceship 'can land on Mars'
• NewSpace Journal: Paul Allen considering new space projects
• Much, much more from RLV and Space Transport News 

If you're a Second Life user, please join me at the StellaNova Amphitheater on Saturday at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT/SLT) for "From the Shuttle to Mars," a talk about the post-shuttle era presented by the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics. If you miss the talk, you'll still be able to listen to the full hourlong podcast via MICA's audio archives. (You'll also find links to the archived podcasts from my three previous MICA talks.)

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