There are a lot of private companies trying to turn space travel and exploration into a profitable commercial business. These companies are making big strides, but it seems that Space X is getting ahead.
According to Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development said that in just a little over a year, we may see the first test crewed flight. He shared, "This is new, and not a lot of people have had a lot of experience on this," he said at the Advisory Council Human Exploration and Operations Committee Meeting.
NASA is working with SpaceX, which aims to use its Dragon Capsule as a mode for human travel. Boeing, another company that NASA is partnering with, has the same goal for its CST-100 StarLiner. According to Inverse, both companies already have strict schedules of milestones that they need to follow in order to launch astronauts onboard the vehicles and have them dock with the International Space Station.
In separate reports, Space News also reported that NASA will gain access to the data that SpaceX will collect during a landing attempt, as they would be using a new technique called supersonic retropropulsion, which the agency said will allow landing of larger spacecraft on the surface of Mars.
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