Starliner: The US space industry's next big thing?

Astronauts are preparing for launch in Boeing's new Starliner. What does the spacecraft mean for the future of the US space programme? When the Space Shuttle Atlantis rolled to a stand on the runway at Kennedy Space Centre in 2011, ending 30 years of the manned shuttle programme, it left Nasa with a problem. Without enough government funding to build a replacement while the shuttle was still flying, the US had no means of launching its astronauts into orbit. The only way to fly a crew to its own orbiting laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS) was to pay some $80m (£64m) for a seat in a cramped Russian Soyuz capsule. It seemed extraordinary to many that the nation that had landed men on the Moon, built and serviced – in orbit, no less – the Hubble Space Telescope and assembled a giant space station was now relying on a 45-year-old spacecraft built by its Cold War rival. As relations deteriorated following Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, the embarrassment was further compounded by tweets from Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.Responding to the introduction of restrictions on US technology exports he wrote: "After analysing the sanctions against our space industry I suggest the US delivers its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline." In case that message was too subtle, he also posted a picture of a trampoline with a Nasa badge.