After the retirement of the Shuttle program, NASA will begin flying along with - and funding - multiple "commercial crews" including Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin group and Elon Musk's SpaceX. NASA is paying out $270 million to SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada (not the beer) and Boeing. This program, begun in 2009 and is now vitally important as it pairs NASA's scientists and astronauts with commercial crews to perform spaceflights. 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/tehz17XFMpM/
