I have previously mentioned that Boeing was awarded a contract by NASA for building their CST-100 spacecraft. (see Boeing and SpaceX Awarded NASA Contract for Reusable Manned Spacecraft) Now Boeing has renamed their reusable crewed spacecraft the Starliner. It will be built in a "repurposed" shuttle processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center. It will be used to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. NASA is contracting the building of reusable spacecrafts to end U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for access to the ISS.
Boeing has a four billion dollar contract to build and test the first Starliner at the KSC. There are future plans to build an additional three Starliners which will each be certified for ten flights. The Starliner will be able to carry up to seven astronauts or a smaller crew and some cargo. It will be carried into orbit by a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It will use a combination of parachutes and airbags to land somewhere in the Western U.S. Five potential landing sites are currently be investigated. Following landing, the Starliner will be transported back to Florida for refurbishment and reuse.
Boeing will pay for the training and use of NASA's mission control staff to handle flight operations. Boeing is also considering the possibility of transporting rich space tourists, university researchers or astronauts from other countries if there are seats and cargo spaces available on Starliner flights.
In May of this year, NASA contracted for a minimum of two Starliner missions and the possibility of as many as six flights. They named four astronauts who will begin training for commercial crew operations on the Starliner. Boeing is planning on an unpiloted test flight of the first Starliner in May of 2017. This test will be followed by an "on-the-pad" launch abort test in August of 2017. Then there will be a piloted test flight in September. If all these tests go well, the first operation crew ferry flight to the ISS will be conducted in December of 2017.
Boeing is also a bidder for another NASA contract for delivery of supplies to the ISS using a version of the CST-100 (the original name of the Starliner spacecraft) without a pilot. Now, supplies for the ISS are delivered by two private companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation. These two companies have thee and one half billion dollars worth of contracts that run through 2018.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden addressed an enthusiastic crowd of Boeing managers, employees and dignitaries in Florida recently. He said "In 35 states, 350 American companies are working to make it possible for the greatest country on Earth to once again launch our own astronauts into space. But right here, today, we're focused on one state -- Florida -- and the incredible things the Boeing company has done with this former orbiter processing facility, transforming it into a state-of-the-art place where a new American spacecraft will emerge."
These plans for the Starliner depend on NASA getting the one billion two hundred million appropriation requested from Congress by the Obama administration. Drafts of budget legislation in the House of Representatives would cut the appropriation to one billion dollars. Similar work in the Senate would bring the appropriation down to nine hundred million dollars. In view of the uncertainty over the approval of the requested funds, NASA has said that it will spend about five hundred million to procure six Soyuz seats on flights to the ISS through 2018 and landing support through 2019. This is in addition to the four hundred and fifty million dollar contract that Boeing has with the Russians for six Soyuz seats through 2017.
NASA has been complaining that the lack of Congressional funding for U.S. spacecraft has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, when U.S. spending on space should be used to create jobs in the U.S.
Artist's concept of Boeing Starliner:
