Boeing rolls out Starliner passenger spacecraft to launch site ahead of December flight

The Verge ^ | Nov 21, 2019, | Loren Grush

[BenLurkin]

Now the capsule will be mated on top of the rocket that will take it to space — an Atlas V manufactured by the United Launch Alliance. On December 17th, the rocket and capsule are slated to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida — without any crew members on board — and then dock with the International Space Station. If successful, this demonstration mission could pave the way for NASA astronauts to fly on the Starliner sometime next year.

Boeing has been developing the Starliner spacecraft for NASA as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew program, an initiative to fly astronauts on US-made vehicles once again. Since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, NASA astronauts have had to ride on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to get to the International Space Station, a partnership that costs NASA $85 million per seat.

Boeing is one of two providers for the Commercial Crew program, along with rival SpaceX, which has been developing its own passenger spacecraft called the Crew Dragon. The two have been in an unspoken competition with one another to fly humans first, though Boeing has seemed to lag behind SpaceX in development. SpaceX already launched its Crew Dragon once in March, on an uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station. The flight demonstrated the Crew Dragon’s capability to dock with the ISS and then return home safely.

[Karliner]

Good point. Cats are probably aliens, maybe Earth is like a big cat food bowl? ...but we never went to the moon either!

[minnesota_bound]

Where is the warp drive?