{"id":15379,"date":"2016-07-11T21:24:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T13:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/last-shuttle-commander-back-in-the-fight-with-boeing\/"},"modified":"2016-07-11T21:24:15","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T13:24:15","slug":"last-shuttle-commander-back-in-the-fight-with-boeing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/last-shuttle-commander-back-in-the-fight-with-boeing\/","title":{"rendered":"Last shuttle commander \u2018back in the fight\u2019 with Boeing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/173697331\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When Chris Ferguson climbed into the commander\u2019s seat of the shuttle Atlantis five years ago Friday for the spaceship\u2019s final flight, he didn\u2019t know what turn his career would take when he returned to Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Like many space shuttle workers, Ferguson had to decide what to do next. Atlantis\u2019 final flight, which lifted off July 8, 2011, was Ferguson\u2019s third space mission and capped a nearly 30-year flying career with the Navy and NASA.<\/p>\n<p>He reminisced about Atlantis\u2019 13-day mission in 2011 last month during an informal meeting with reporters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn the last day, I tried to make it a point to say goodbye to every shift (in mission control) because I knew when they left the control center it was never going to be the same for them, so we tried to make it special for them,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cAfter the last goodbye, I thought, you know what? I have no idea where I\u2019m going to be in a month. I knew we had all the post-flight stuff to do, but I had no idea what my future held. Am I going to go teach at college? What am I going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The shuttle\u2019s retirement drastically cut flight opportunities for NASA\u2019s astronaut corps, who now ride to the space station one at a time on Russian Soyuz capsules.<\/p>\n<p>After joining Boeing in late 2011, Ferguson helps lead the company\u2019s development of the CST-100 Starliner space taxi, one of two U.S.-built commercial spacecraft selected by NASA to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow I find myself right back in the fight again, right back in the fight as a stakeholder in making sure that we\u2019re successful,\u201d Ferguson said.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16827\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16827\" style=\"width: 675px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16827\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/5973993429_0c186076b5_b.jpg\" alt=\"Chris Ferguson, in blue, walks around the shuttle Atlantis shortly after its landing in July 2011 to conclude the last space shuttle flight. Credit: NASA\/Bill Ingalls\" width=\"675\" height=\"542\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/5973993429_0c186076b5_b.jpg 675w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/5973993429_0c186076b5_b-300x241.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 675px) 100vw, 675px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16827\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Ferguson, in blue, walks around the shuttle Atlantis shortly after its landing in July 2011 to conclude the last space shuttle flight. Credit: NASA\/Bill Ingalls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Five years after the space shuttle\u2019s swan song, two vehicles are racing to be the first to restore U.S. human spaceflight capability.<\/p>\n<p>Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon capsules are&nbsp;the contenders, with Boeing aiming for a first orbital demonstration flight with two test pilots in February 2018. SpaceX says the Crew Dragon is set for its first crewed test flight, also with two astronauts, in late 2017.<\/p>\n<p>NASA\u2019s contract with Boeing has a maximum value $4.2 billion. SpaceX\u2019s commercial crew deal with the space agency is worth up to $2.6 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Both companies say their schedules are success-oriented, and officials from Boeing, SpaceX and NASA acknowledge the timelines are tight to meet those dates. Safety is also paramount, managers said, and supersedes any schedule commitment.<\/p>\n<p>Atlantis\u2019 last crew left a small U.S. flag aboard the space station to be returned by the next American crew transport that reaches the complex.<\/p>\n<p>Ferguson is often asked whether he will fly on the first CST-100 Starliner test mission. Boeing plans to send a company test pilot and a NASA astronaut on the demo flight to the space station in early 2018, but managers have not selected the crew members.<\/p>\n<p>NASA has assigned four astronauts \u2014 Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Douglas Hurley and Sunita Williams \u2014 to train for the initial CST-100 and Crew Dragon flights. A decision on crew for the first demo mission is not expected until next year.<\/p>\n<p>Boeing\u2019s CST-100 program is headquartered at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center, a few miles from the Atlas 5 rocket\u2019s launch pad where they will blast off to the space station. Ferguson now has an office at KSC, where he oversees crew and mission operations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was standing at my office desk looking out the window, and I saw the last Falcon 9 launch,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cThere are worse office desks in the world. We see the SLS (Space Launch System) platforms going together. There\u2019s a lot of activity at KSC.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16832\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16832\" style=\"width: 675px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16832\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/cst100_highbay.jpg\" alt=\"Artist's concept of the CST-100 Starliner assembly and refurbishment facility at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Boeing\" width=\"675\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/cst100_highbay.jpg 675w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/cst100_highbay-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 675px) 100vw, 675px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16832\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist\u2019s concept of the CST-100 Starliner assembly and refurbishment facility at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Boeing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Boeing leased a former shuttle hangar at the spaceport to assemble CST-100 Starliners, and the company transferred management of the commercial crew program to Florida to be near the capsule\u2019s launch facility.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Air Force\u2019s reusable uncrewed X-37B space plane, also built and refurbished by Boeing, is housed at a modified shuttle processing building a few hundred feet from the CST-100 capsule assembly line. Inside the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building, workers are building up platforms inside High Bay 3 for the Space Launch System, a super-heavy-lift rocket NASA plans to use for human expeditions into deep space, starting with piloted flights around the moon in the early 2020s.<\/p>\n<p>Launch pads at Cape Canaveral are also seeing changes.<\/p>\n<p>The historic launch complex used for the Apollo 11 moon landing mission \u2014 and last used on the final shuttle flight in 2011 \u2014 is now under SpaceX management. The California-based company, led by Elon Musk, will base all of its Crew Dragon launches on Falcon 9 rockets from launch pad 39A, which workers are now outfitting with infrastructure to support astronaut flights.<\/p>\n<p>Construction cranes built up a crew access tower last year at Complex 41, United Launch Alliance\u2019s Atlas 5 launch pad, to allow astronauts to board Boeing\u2019s CST-100 Starliner. A crew access arm and white room will be added in the coming weeks, Ferguson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s&nbsp;a far cry from where it was four-and-a-half years ago at this time,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cThere are a lot of cars in the parking lot, a lot of different activities, three different spacecraft that will carry humans in various stages of development, whether it\u2019s the pad, the VAB platforms for SLS, our spacecraft, and X-37 is right across the aisle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sort of a hopping place. For each one, it\u2019s like are we all going to live in this symbiotic relationship where we\u2019re all providing reliable inexpensive transportation to low Earth orbit,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cThat, to me, is sort of like nirvana.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Chris Ferguson climbed into the commander\u2019s seat of the shuttle Atlantis five years ago Friday for the spaceship\u2019s final flight, he didn\u2019t know what turn his career would take when he returned to Earth. Like many space shuttle workers, Ferguson had to decide what to do next. Atlantis\u2019 final flight, which lifted off July [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[670,2051,524,1565,428,1390,1306,3659],"class_list":["post-15379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing","tag-chris-ferguson","tag-commercial-crew","tag-cst-100","tag-kennedy-space-center","tag-space-shuttle","tag-starliner","tag-sts-135"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}