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With Boeing\u2019s CST-100 spacecraft joining SpaceX\u2019s Dragon 2 (V2) as a winner of the multi-billion dollar Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) award, the company is technically NASA\u2019s main commercial partner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really cool that we have the ISS as a backdrop here,\u201d noted Mr. Elbon during this week\u2019s commercial crew update from the Johnson Space Center. \u201cThese programs are clearly intertwined.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-08_52_28-The-Plan-to-Launch-America-YouTube-350x231.jpg\")
Although Boeing is in competition with SpaceX to become the crew transport provider of choice for NASA crews heading to the ISS, both companies will soon combine on a key element of hardware.<\/p>\n\u201cThe International Docking Adaptor (IDA) was turned over (to NASA) last week,\u201d Mr. Elbon added. \u201cIt will fly on Gwynne\u2019s spaceship (referring to SpaceX President Ms. Shotwell and the CRS Dragon) later this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the ISS and our companies are really intertwined to make this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
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![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-11_12_56-Boeing-CST-100-HR-Updates-and-Images-350x239.jpg\")
In referencing the large role Boeing plays in NASA\u2019s human space flight programs, Mr. Elbon claimed the major impasse in NASA\u2019s current capability \u2013 one where a large chunk of the Agency\u2019s budget is being used to pay the Russians to ferry its astronauts to the Station \u2013 is actually a historic period, due to the amount of space hardware development taking place.<\/p>\n\u201cEven though we aren\u2019t flying the Shuttle, I don\u2019t think there is a time in history when there\u2019s been more development of space flight hardware ongoing, or exciting things that are happening,\u201d added the Vice President and General Manager of Boeing Space Exploration.<\/p>\n
\u201cISS is operating and returning incredible science. In addition to that, SLS is in the middle of its development activity \u2013 very significant for the technology needed to take us to Mars. Never before in the history of human space flight has there been so much going on all at once. I think there\u2019s more opportunities within our grasp to explore than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-11_04_15-Boeing-CST-100-HR-Updates-and-Images-350x250.jpg\")
In speaking about the Commercial Crew Program\u2019s importance to the Space Station, Mr. Elbon cited the need to reduce the Agency\u2019s budgetary impacts of Low Earth Orbit transportation, in order to liberate the finances required to allow NASA to explore deep space.<\/p>\nReducing the cost of LEO transportation also gained the analogy of the commercial airline market\u2019s evolution, mirroring comments made by other space industry leaders, such as SpaceX\u2019s Elon Musk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe (the commercialization of LEO) is beginning a whole new industry,\u201d Mr. Elbon continued.<\/p>\n
![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-11_47_26-William-Boeing-Air-Mail-Google-Search-350x237.jpg\")
\u201cThis year Boeing is celebrating its 100th year as a company. Bill (William) Boeing founded the company with a focus on flying air mail and establishing commercial air transportation through United Airlines.<\/p>\n\u201cIf you look at the company today, the commercial airline division of the company is a 70 billion dollar per year business.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe firmly that when the company celebrates its second hundred years, there will be a division of Boeing building commercial space vehicles that will be of that magnitude.<\/p>\n
![\"Z4\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Z41.jpg\")
The first new spacecraft of Boeing\u2019s commercial space transportation era is the CST-100, a vehicle which is configurable to carry up to seven crew\/passengers or an equivalent combination of passengers and pressurized cargo to LEO destinations, including the ISS and or even the BA-330 space complex.\n<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019re making great progress on the CCtCAP program that we started in September,\u201d added Mr. Elbon. \u201cThe first two milestones are completed \u2013 the certification baseline review and ground segment Critical Design Review (CDR).\u201d<\/p>\n
The latter heavily involves JSC, tapping into the former mission operations set-up, which already has Boeing involvement via ISS operations and was notably involved with Shuttle as part of the United Space Alliance (USA).<\/p>\n
![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-11_09_33-ccicap_render_2.jpg-Paint-350x212.jpg\")
The CST-100 capsule is compatible with multiple launch vehicles, as much as the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V is confirmed as the initial LV of choice, following their August, 2011 deal.<\/p>\nWork to upgrade the Atlas V pad \u2013 SLC-41 \u2013 at Cape Canaveral has now started, as preparations for the historic return of Atlas as a human rated vehicle continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve started construction on the crew access tower on the Atlas V launch pad, Mr. Elbon noted. \u201cThat will be assembled in-between launches of the Atlas V.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-11_12_06-The-Plan-to-Launch-America-YouTube-350x244.jpg\")
The extremely reliable Atlas V is continuing her role in launching flagship payloads into orbit, but now has a series of place holders on the schedule for the first launches with the CST-100, according to the Boeing head.<\/p>\n\u201cThe 52nd successful Atlas V flew a week or so ago, and our Orbital Flight Test \u2013 the uncrewed flight test to Station \u2013 will be the 74th Atlas V mission. The crewed flight test will be the 80th.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019ve got those flights on the manifest, which is exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CST-100\u2019s Florida home will be the former Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF High Bay 3) \u2013 which is deep into its transition, following the October, 2011 deal for a 15 year lease, agreed between NASA and Space Florida \u2013 the State\u2019s aerospace economic development agency.<\/p>\n
![\"C3PF\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Z35.jpg\" "\\"C3PF\\"")
The deal between NASA and Space Florida includes the use and modification of OPF-3, the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) Processing Facility and Processing Control Center (PCC).<\/p>\nThis resulted in OPF-3 changing call signs to the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF).<\/p>\n
The agreement between Space Florida and the Boeing Company will result in the creation of up to 550 much-needed jobs along the Space Coast, aided by Boeing announcing it would be locating its Commercial Crew Program headquarters at the world famous spaceport.<\/p>\n
![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-11_16_49-CST-100-OPF-3-Google-Search-350x232.jpg\")
Transitioning the facility has resulted in the removal of the platforms and orbiter-dedicated hardware, creating what is known as a \u201cclean floor\u201d workspace.<\/p>\n\u201cThe remodelling and modernization of OPF-3 at the Kennedy Space Center \u2013 which will be the manufacturing facility \u2013 is continuing and making great progress,\u201d Mr. Elbon noted. \u201cThe hardware is being delivered in February, which will form the structural test article of the vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be followed later this year by the delivery of the hardware that will be part of the crew flight test vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-11_15_42-Boeing-CST-100-HR-Updates-and-Images-350x257.jpg\")
Although NASA\u2019s internal schedules now show mid-2018 as the most likely date for the historic US Crew Vehicle -1 (USCV-1) mission, Boeing \u2013 and SpaceX \u2013 believe they should be capable of getting to that point by December, 2017.<\/p>\n\u201cTeams are working hard to finish the design via a very rigorous process where we decompose the requirements, lay out the certification plan \u2013 following a process very similar to Shuttle, Space Station and other commercial programs at Boeing \u2013 such as commercial planes and satellites,\u201d added Mr. Elbon.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll that leads into a Critical Design Review (CDR) in March, which will plot the design to allow us to move into manufacturing.<\/p>\n
![\"2015-01-30](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-30-11_14_48-The-Plan-to-Launch-America-YouTube-350x275.jpg\")
\u201cThe Flight Software will be delivered later this summer. We\u2019ll have a flight simulator running with this software, flight computers and 26 of the 34 flight displays will be part of that \u2013 so there will be a real opportunity for the crew to interact and understand how the vehicle is going to operate.\u201d<\/p>\nThis path has a schedule outlook involving a very busy 2017, with a pad abort test in February of that year, followed by the Orbital Flight Test \u2013 the uncrewed mission to the ISS \u2013 in April, 2017.<\/p>\n
The crewed flight test \u2013 with one Boeing astronaut and one NASA astronaut \u2013 is scheduled for July, 2017 \u2013 followed by the provisional USCV-1 mission to wrap up the year in December.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo lots of great progress,\u201d Mr. Elbon concluded. \u201cWe\u2019re on track and it\u2019s just as exciting as it can be to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Images: via NASA, Boeing and L2\u2019s CST-100 Section, including renderings created by L2 Artist Nathan Koga \u2013 these are not official Boeing images.)<\/p>\n
(Click here: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ \u2013 to view how you can support NSF\u2019s running costs and access the best space flight content on the entire internet)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boeing Vice President John Elbon believes the CST-100 spacecraft is part of an intertwined forward path for NASA, centralized around the International Space Station. Boeing is currently working towards launching American astronauts to the orbital outpost on its CST-100 capsule, in tandem with developing the Space Launch System (SLS) that will allow for a return […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30085,"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":[8996,4055,7893,3985,1565,233],"class_list":["post-39411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ccdev","tag-ccicap","tag-ccp","tag-cctcap","tag-cst-100","tag-iss"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39411"}],"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=39411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}