SpaceX's Dragon capsule sits on a barge after being retrieved from the Pacific Ocean. The recovery marks a successful end to the first mission by a commercial company to resupply the International Space Station.

The head of NASA's manned flights told a Senate committee Wednesday that future trips to the International Space Station operated by private U.S. companies would save NASA money and bring millions of dollars to American enterprises.

Since NASA ended the space shuttle program, its astronauts have been hitching rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, to the tune of nearly $63 million per seat. Last year, NASA struck a $753 million deal with Russia for 12 round trips to the space station. But the recent successful roundtrip flight to the space station by California-based SpaceX has given the agency hopes to resume flying aboard American aircraft as soon as 2015.

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William Gerstenmaier, head of human exploration and operations at NASA, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that the agency "expects a cost reduction" aboard American spacecraft, "but it's too early to say what the cost reduction is."

"I believe the prices will be cheaper than what we have to pay for Soyuz," he said. The agency has planned to begin flying aboard an American company's spacecraft by 2017, but "some think they can provide a crewed flight earlier, in 2015."

Crewed flights aboard American-operated flights wouldn't just be good news for NASA, it could also be a boon for American companies.

"Every seat on the Soyuz has been sold, even as the price has increased over the years," said Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former astronaut and president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. "The market demand for similar American seats could be five to 10 times that of the Soyuz."

As the Russian government does now, American companies could sell seats aboard their spacecraft to astronauts from countries that want to send manned missions into space, said Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Airspace, a company trying to develop crewed spaceflights.

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Excerpt from:

NASA: Private U.S. Spacecraft Could Save Agency Millions