Blue Origin, an aerospace company based in Kent, Washington, and led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is working on a rocket-propelled vehicle called New Shepard to carry people and microgravity experiments on suborbital trips into space.



It will receive $3.7 million to help develop the vehicle's crew compartment and launch escape system, which would propel the crew to safety in case of a problem during launch. (Image: Blue Origin)

The Houston-based Space Exploration division of aerospace giant Boeing will receive $18 million to help it develop a crew capsule it hopes will one day carry NASA astronauts into space.



Boeing says it began work on the capsule with a view to ferrying passengers to the private, inflatable space stations that Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace aims to launch as early as 2014. A prototype space station launched by Bigelow in 2006 is seen here. (Image: Bigelow Aerospace)

Paragon Space Development, a small company that builds spacecraft hardware based in Tucson, Arizona, will receive $1.4 million to help it develop a life support system that scrubs out carbon dioxide and replenishes oxygen in the air.



The company has also used its air-regeneration expertise to design an advanced diving helmet, pictured here. (Image: Paragon Space Development) Advertisement

Sierra Nevada Corporation, an electronics and engineering firm based in Sparks, Nevada, will receive $20 million dollars to help its SpaceDev subsidiary develop a spacecraft called Dream Chaser.



A sort of miniature space shuttle, Dream Chaser is based on a plane-like spacecraft that NASA itself designed in the 1980s, inspired by spy photos of a Soviet prototype. Dream Chaser could carry seven people to low-Earth orbit. (Image: SpaceDev)