In September, NASA will decide which private company will build its next generation vehicle that will take astronauts to the space. NASA says the contract is worth $4 billion and is very important.

The space agency announced that the contract has led to strong competition among many contenders. One of the three companies in the competition is Boeing. The company is expecting that its CST-100 capsule will emerge out as a winner to take American astronauts to the International Space Station.

John Mulholland head of Boeing program knows the competition is intense, but is confident. "We've got an incredible team. Human space flight has been at our core since day one, all the way back to Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the

shuttle, the station - all Boeing products developed in partnership with NASA", affirmed Mulholland.

Second company in the competition is Sierra Nevada. Their design has a lot of similarity with the space shuttle and is known as Dream Chaser. Sierra Nevada's spacecraft is the company's first manned spacecraft. Mark Sirangelo was of the view that it is very difficult to predict the winner. Mark further stated it would be like you have started in a small town and could not be noticed, but then all of sudden you are on Olympics stage.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is also competing. In fact, it can be said that it is the front-runner in the competition with its Dragon 2. Space X is already flying its unmanned mission to the space station.

NASA pays $80 million to the Russian space agency to get American astronauts to the ISS. The first flight for the space station is scheduled for 2017. NASA stated that they are quite confident they have the ability to launch their astronauts from the US soil using American-made systems in the near future.