Commercial Space Flight is Coming

As of 2011, the United States has no manned space vehicle. The only way we can send astronauts to the International Space Station is by hitching a ride on a Soyuz, and seeing that tensions with Russia are kind of high, this is not a brilliant situation.  NASA is focused right now on Orion and the Space Launch System, a big giant rocket meant to send astronauts past low Earth orbit. However, low Earth orbit operations are obviously not going to stop, and so, NASA has turned to commercial space flight and ships built by private companies.

There won't be just one, SpaceX and Boeing will each build, launch, and maintain their own spacecraft, operating out of Cape Kennedy Space Center. They will be reusable, and meant for travel to and from the ISS. While this won't be happening tomorrow, space flights should commence in 2017. This is fantastic news for manned space flight, getting more and more ships out there will bring the cost of space flight down, and it allows NASA to devote more money and resources into manned flight to the Moon, to asteroids, and to Mars.