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NASA has chosen the companies which will receive cash in its second round of Commercial Crew Development contracts. The CCDev2 funding is intended to lead to viable commercial manned spacecraft, which NASA could then book seats on in order to keep the International Space Station crewed up in future.
Boeing concept of the proposed CST-100 commercial crew capsule
At the moment, once the Shuttles retire, there will be a period of some years before NASA can deploy a manned space launch system of its own: unless CCDev can step up, for that time the only way for US astronauts (or any others) to get to the Station will be aboard Russian Soyuz ships.
