Boeing unveils 'Starliner' crew capsule at KSC
Within two years, a Boeing CST-100 Starliner could roll from a Kennedy Space Center hangar to a Cape Canaveral pad, ready to launch the first astronauts from U.S. soil since the final shuttle mission in 2011.
Boeing on Friday unveiled the new name for the capsule it is developing to fly crews to the International Space Station, during a "grand opening" ceremony for the renovated former shuttle facilities at KSC where the spacecraft will be assembled.
The “Starliner” name, echoing Boeing’s new Dreamliner jet, links the company's pursuit of success in commercial spaceflight to its century of experience in commercial aviation.
“For about 50 of those 100 years, we’ve been involved in the nation’s space program,” said Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg. “There’s nothing we do that’s more inspiring to the next generation of scientists and engineers and aerospace workers than the work we do in human spaceflight."
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Gov. Rick Scott and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden were among the dignitaries attending the ceremony, held inside a bay where space shuttle main engines were once refurbished.
Resting in a new stand there is the start of a test capsule service module, which will be joined with a crew module early next year before being shipped to California for structural tests.
That facility is next to a former shuttle orbiter hangar where the crew capsules will be processed once renovations are completed in December, with the help of $20 million from the state.
The hangar’s facade has been covered with a bright blue mural – composed of more than 250 pieces of vinyl wrap – depicting a CST-100 Starliner capsule flying high over Florida.
Guests on Friday were greeted by a sign that read, “Welcome to the next 100 years of flight."
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Boeing last year won a contract worth up to $4.2 billion to fly crews to the space station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which is led from KSC.
SpaceX also won a contract, worth up to $2.6 billion. Each company hopes to end the nation’s reliance on Russia to fly people to orbit. It has not been decided which will fly first.
If current scheduled hold, Boeing would launch a two-person test flight on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket by September 2017, and be ready for a first operational mission flying four astronauts by the end of that year.
NASA has warned of delays if next year’s Commercial Crew Program budget falls significantly short of the $1.2 billion it has requested, but Nelson offered a vote of confidence.
“We’ll get the funding that it needs so that we can get our American astronauts flying on American vehicles, and that’s what we come together today to celebrate,” he said.
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Boeing recently relocated its Commercial Crew program office from Houston to KSC and – as it announced nearly four years ago – plans to ramp up to 550 local jobs by the time CST-100 Starliner missions are fully up and running.
“Today, it’s exciting to celebrate this new capsule, this new facility, and most importantly for Florida and Brevard County, the 550 more jobs,” said Scott.
Though a first crew flight is at least two years away, speakers on Friday repeatedly celebrated what they said was the dawn of a new era in spaceflight, one that will blend commercial trips to low Earth orbit with deep space missions by NASA’s own Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule.
“You get a sense that at this point we are witnessing something that we’re all going to remember decades from now,” said Muilenburg.
The modernized former shuttle facilities also were lauded as symbols of KSC’s transformation in the more than four years since Chris Ferguson, now Boeing’s deputy Commercial Crew Program manager, landed Atlantis on KSC’s runway, ending the shuttle program.
“A visible sign of change here at KSC, our path forward,” said KSC Director Bob Cabana.
Ferguson remembered the hangar’s empty parking lot a couple of years ago, and said it was a “wonderful feeling” to see it full now.
Elsewhere, SpaceX has leased KSC’s launch pad 39A, Boeing operates two more hangars for a military space plane program and Space Florida has taken over operations of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Pad 39B and the Vehicle Assembly Building are undergoing renovations for NASA’s SLS rocket.
Bolden said Boeing’s state-of-the-art facilities and other activity at KSC showed that “the road to space still blazes through Kennedy.”
“It won’t be long before the smoke and fire you see here in Florida is from commercial rockets launching human beings once again to our future in space,” he said. “I can’t wait to see our astronauts boarding a Boeing spacecraft bound for space.”
Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace