波音公司计划研发“太空出租车”

Boeing has announced that it is to launch its CST-100 "space taxi", from the Orbiter Processing Facility used by the Space Shuttle at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

The company's CST-100 spacecraft can carry up to seven passengers to destinations such as the International Space Station.

Boeing hopes the craft will be in orbit within four years - and start a new era of cheap, manned, commercial space flight.

NASA is counting on companies like Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and others to ferry cargo and astronauts to and from the International Space Station in three to five years.

Until then, the space agency will continue to shell out tens of millions of dollars per seat on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The Soyuz is the only way to get astronauts to and from the space station, ever since Atlantis returned from the final shuttle flight in July.

A Soyuz rocket failure in August highlighted the risk of relying on just one type of craft.

Boeing expects to start removing shuttle platforms and modifying the hangar to suit its own purposes in the next few months.

Boeing wants to ferry astronauts not only to the International Space Station, but to a commercial scientific outpost planned for orbit by Bigelow Aerospace. Each capsule will hold seven people. A test flight is planned by 2015.

NASA wants to turn the space center - long a government-only local - into a multi-user spaceport. Other buildings are also up for grabs.

Tourists, meanwhile, are about to gain entry into areas that were once strictly off limits.

On Tuesday, the Vehicle Assembly Building - where fuel tanks and booster rockets were attached to space shuttles - will open its doors to public bus tours for the first time since 1978.