NASA looks to private sector help for next shuttle

By Wendell Roelf

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - NASA wants the private sector to help develop the next generation of shuttle craft to serve the International Space Station and is providing $500 million in "seed" money to kick start work, its chief said on Sunday.

"The cost of space transportation even 50 years into space flight is very high. We wish it were lower. It isn't yet," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told Reuters in an interview.

The escalating cost of cargo and crew transport to and from the $100 billion low-orbiting space station worries NASA, which will be without crew transport capacity once its current shuttle craft reach the end of their working lives in 2010.

The station is a research facility being assembled in space and counts among its partners the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and 11 European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Griffin said NASA had budgeted $500 million in "seed funding" over several years to help develop private transportation capability for cheaper space travel.

In South Africa to attend a science research centre launch, Griffin said private companies would not only provide the transport, but would be able to conduct experiments and use lab facilities at the space station if the plans work out.

"I am hopeful that opening up the space station to more commercial activity will spur the development of enough traffic to and from the station that commercial space transportation entities may be induced to develop a more accessible, cheaper capability than we have today," he said.

The major players include Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co, with smaller companies such as the Orbital Sciences Corp and the Space Exploration Technologies Corp showing early promise to deliver crew vehicles, possibly by 2012-13.