Oui, c'est triste, la fin d'une grande epoque. Les gens qui ont devoue leurs vies a ce projet se sentent perdus,
pas enormement de demande pour ce genre d'ingenieur.
C'est un peu comme les contrats de la ville de Chicago. Pour des raisons budgetaires, pas mal d'employees
gouvernementaux s'en vont, et on cherche a privatiser leurs boulots.
Nasa restera le client, et certaines entreprises feront l'equivalent de AF Cargo
, ou Fedex,
et se faire payer pour la livraison des colis ou meme des astronautes. Ils arriveront a le faire beaucoup moins
cher:
"SpaceX appears to be leading the pack. Right behind it is Boeing, a giant in aerospace, which hopes to launch astronauts using its capsule as early as 2014. A third company, Sierra Nevada Corp., is taking a different route, proposing a shuttle-like spaceplane instead of a capsule. It is hoping to launch around 2015. And Amazon's Jeff Bezos is heading a fourth company, Blue Origin, that is much more circumspect about its plans for a gumdrop-shaped ship.
A fifth company, United Launch Alliance, just signed an agreement with NASA. It hopes to get its Atlas V rockets eventually approved for use in launching humans. Normally, Atlas rockets are used to put satellites in orbit. SpaceX is building its own private rockets, the Falcon series.
The crew of the final shuttle flight, Atlantis, left on the space station a small U.S. flag that flew on the inaugural shuttle voyage in 1981. The flag is the prize for the first rocket maker that brings Americans back to the station on a mission launched from the U.S.
President Barack Obama described it last week as "a capture-the-flag moment here for commercial spaceflight."
For these companies, it's also about capturing the cash. NASA will soon be paying the Russians about $63 million for each U.S. astronaut who flies on that country's Soyuz rocket to the space station. "
Je ne sais pas si je serais volontaire sur les premieres expeditions..
Privatized Space Companies
