Aerospace
heavyweight Boeing is advancing plans for its new capsule-based spaceship, designed
to ferry people to and from the International Space Station and future private space
stations. The capsule design is part of an effort to fill the void that will be
left by the 2011 retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet.
The
new Crew Space Transportation-100 spacecraft (CST-100) is part of the company's
$18 million award from NASA under the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) Space
Act Agreement. The award aims to advance the concepts and technology required
to build a commercial crew space transportation system.
Boeing's capsule design is one of several efforts by different U.S. companies
to develop the first private spaceship capable of flying humans to space. The
push fits in with President Barack Obama's new plan for NASA, which calls for
commercial spacecraft to take over the role vacated by the space shuttles of transporting astronauts to the space station.
Taking
cues from the past
New
artist's renderings of Boeing's CST-100 capsule were unveiled July 19 in a
media briefing at the Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough,
England. [Video: Boeing's New Spacecraft]
Boeing's
new spaceship design will look similar to NASA's cone-shaped Apollo and Orion spacecraft.
The
Apollo capsules were built to fly astronauts from Earth to the moon in the late
1960s and 1970s. The larger Orion vehicles were part of NASA's Constellation
program to return astronauts to the moon, which was cancelled by President
Obama as part of his new proposal. The Obama administration did resurrect
Orion, though, to serve as a space station lifeboat.
The
CST-100, which can carry up to seven people, will be bigger than the Apollo
spacecraft but smaller than the Orion capsule. It is designed for short
missions to space, and the "100" in the name stands for 100
kilometers (62 miles) – the distance from the ground to low-Earth orbit that it
will travel.
Boeing
plans to launch the CST-100 capsule from Florida, but has yet to determine
which rocket will carry it into space. The spacecraft is being designed for
compatibility with a variety of different rockets, including United Launch
Alliance's Atlas and Delta boosters, and SpaceX's Falcon rockets.
Multiple
customers
While
NASA could be the main user of the CST-100 capsule, the space agency is
certainly not the only customer that Boeing has in mind. The company has teamed
up with Bigelow Aerospace, a Las Vegas-based company that joined the Commercial
Spaceflight Federation in June.
Boeing
hopes to use the CST-100 capsule to take people to and from the Bigelow
Aerospace Orbital Space Complex – a commercial space station the company is
building.
Bigelow
Aerospace is developing private inflatable space habitats with the goal of launching the first private space
station in 2014. The company has already launched two prototype modules into
space.
For
the new CST-100 spacecraft, Bigelow Aerospace will assist with demonstrations
and design work in areas where they have cultivated experience from the design
and construction of their orbital facilities and commercial space complex,
according to officials at Boeing.
The
partnership between Boeing and Bigelow Aerospace also represents an important
stepping stone toward creating a robust commercial spaceflight industry, the
companies said.
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