The United States took its first major step to returning to manned space flight as NASA awarded up to $6.8 billion to aerospace giant Boeing and California-based SpaceX to launch astronauts into space.

In a throwback to the golden age of space flight, the contracts call for Apollo-like capsules that would ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. The space agency chose not to return to the winged space shuttle design, electing instead to build vehicles that would be lifted into space atop a rocket, travel to the space station, and then splash down in the ocean.

The contracts one to an aerospace stalwart and another to an upstart also reflect new realities of funding space missions: They must be affordable.

NASA, which has preferred in the past to own and operate spacecrafts, will now rely on commercial vehicles that it will essentially rent.

"Turning over low-Earth orbit transportation to private industry will also allow NASA to focus on an even more ambitious mission sending humans to Mars," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Tuesday at a news conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The contracts return Southern California, once the epicenter for Apollo and space shuttle development, to a prime role in space flight.

It was a major announcement for NASA, but even bigger for SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk.

The company is only 11 years old, with more than 3,000 employees, most building rockets, engines and the Dragon spacecraft at its Hawthorne factory. SpaceX, short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., had already won a NASA contract to ferry cargo to the space station.

But this is another mark in Musk's favor as he lobbies to level the playing field of governmental space contracts, which have long been dominated by Boeing, Lockheed and other aerospace powerhouses.

For Boeing, hundreds of employees in Huntington Beach and El Segundo will be involved in designing and testing the spacecraft it has proposed to NASA, said John Mulholland, vice president of the company's commercial programs for space exploration.

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NASA contracts with SpaceX and Boeing for space transport