Posted on 06/01/2013 5:36:34 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The next time that American astronauts launch to space from American soil it will surely be aboard one of the new commercially built space taxis currently under development by a trio of American aerospace firms Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp enabled by seed money from NASAs Commercial Crew Program (CCP).
Boeing has moved considerably closer towards regaining Americas lost capability to launch humans to space when the firms privately built CST-100 crew capsule achieved two key new milestones on the path to blastoff from Floridas Space Coast.
The CST-100 capsule is designed to carry a crew of up to 7 astronauts on missions to low-Earth orbit (LEO) and the International Space Station (ISS) around the middle of this decade.
Boeings crew transporter will fly to space atop the venerable Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance (ULA) from Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
/johnny
...on board Burt Rutan's SpaceshipTwo.
"Space" and "Orbiting" are two different things.
While reading this article, I was afraid that they were going to cancel the Orion program. However, it looks like Orion is scheduled for a Sept 2014 launch. One of our daughters is a systems engineer on the Orion team.
(puff out chest, name drop, put on “Proud Papa” t-shirt, etc, etc.)
that is dream catcher, it’s sweet looking.. currently at Edwards AF base for some testing
Orion is for the BEO to Mars and the Obama astroids
bump!
The Dream Chaser is a good design.
Too bad the Turkish Muslim Ozmen couple ended up owning it, and that it has to be launched on a rocket that depends on Vlad Putin’s RD-180.
I've been waiting for two years for one of their subsidiaries to complete what should have been a simple contract, but now the items are having to go back due to technical issues with things that didn't used to be difficult to do. With regards to on-time functional delivery, they have completely stepped on their collective private parts.
IIRC, the Atlas V is not man rated. I’m sure Boeing is working on that as well.
Why. Go. To. LEO. At. All?
One day soon, there will be a Seven Eleven in orbit selling garbage to astronauts. “Hey buddy, lotto is 80 million parsniks this week! Wanna ticket with that latte and 12 pack?”
bookmark
Hmmmm, I see the decommissioned F-117 stealth fighter in their somewhere.
There is another possibility to launch the Dream Chaser that doesn’t require a launch pad
http://www.stratolaunch.com/
When they canceled Ares they said that they would continue Orion for possible ISS missions. They have also changed crew capacity, IIRC. A lot of the work is either re-inventing Apollo or extrapolating from Apollo.
” Spacecraft to serve as the primary crew vehicle for missions beyond LEO
Capable of conducting regular in-space operations (rendezvous, docking, extravehicular activity) in conjunction with payloads delivered by the Space Launch System (SLS) for missions beyond LEO
Capability to be a backup system for International Space Station cargo and crew delivery”
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/mpcv/index.html
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