On Tuesday afternoon, NASA administrator Charlie Bolden announced that SpaceX and Boeing would be testing a manned spacecraft by the end of the year, a vehicle capable of delivering humans to the International Space Station or any other point within low-earth orbit. SpaceX’s Dragon 2, or Boeing’s CST-100, would be the first American-developed manned space vehicle since the space shuttle, which had its first test-flight in 1977 and was retired in 2011. This apparently twice-a-century event of a new American spacecraft has an important political context to it. Since the shuttle fleet’s retirement, American astronauts have had to depend …read more
Source: Business Insider
