Russia boosts prices for space station trips

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The U.S. will pay Russia about $71 million a seat to fly six astronauts on round trips to the International Space Station in 2016 and 2017, an 11 percent increase over previous per-seat pricing.

Congressional funding cuts to the Obama administration's effort to seed development of U.S. commercial crew spaceships left no other alternative, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Tuesday.

"If NASA had received the president's requested funding for this plan, we would not have been forced to recently sign a new contract with Roscosmos for Soyuz transportation flights," Bolden wrote in an item posted on NASA's website. Roscosmos is the Russian federal space agency.

NASA recently signed the $424 million contract to ferry the half-dozen astronauts to and from the station on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. In 2011, NASA paid Rosmosmos $753 million to fly 12 astronauts to the station between 2014 and 2016 — about $63 million per seat. In 2010, NASA paid Roscosmos $335 million to fly six astronauts, or about $56 million per seat. Russian Soyuz spacecraft have been the sole means of flying astronauts to the station since the 2011 retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet.

President Barack Obama in 2010 directed NASA to invest in the development of U.S. commercial rockets and spacecraft to fly astronauts to the station. The Obama Administration and NASA had hoped to start launching American astronauts aboard U.S. commercial spacecraft by 2015. Bolden blamed Congressional funding cuts for a slip to 2017 and warned that additional cuts would result in additional delays. The administration requested $821 million for NASA's Commercial Crew program in its proposed fiscal 2014 budget.

SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada are developing commercial spacecraft with NASA's latest round of seed money. The three companies are leading candidates for future NASA commercial crew transportation contracts. The agency plans to procure seats on U.S. commercial spacecraft once development and testing is complete and the vehicles are certified for flight.

SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract to launch 12 unmanned cargo resupply missions to the station. A second company, Orbital Sciences Corp., holds a $1.9 billion contract to launch eight unmanned cargo resupply missions to the station. The first of those is expected to be launched late this year or early 2014.