Cape Canaveral - Boeing took the wraps off an assembly plant for its first line of commercial spaceships, which Nasa plans to use to fly crews to the International Space Station, officials said.
“This is a point in history that reflects a new era in human space flight,” Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said at the grand opening ceremony at the Kennedy Space Centre.
Boeing’s newly named CST-100 Starliner spaceships will be prepared for flight in a processing hangar once used by Nasa’s space shuttles. The capsule’s debut test flight is targeted for 2017.
Starliners will fly from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard Atlas 5 rockets, which are built and flown by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Nasa is paying up to $4.2bn (R58.2bn) for a Starliner test flight and up to six missions to the station. Nasa has a similar contract with privately owned SpaceX, which intends to accomplish the work for $2.6bn. Nasa previously contributed $621m to Boeing and $545m for SpaceX for capsule design and development.
Both Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Dragon capsules can carry seven-member crews, or a mix of crew and cargo, to and from the station, a $100bn laboratory that flies about 400km above Earth.
Muilenburg declined to say how much of its own money Boeing is putting into the project, but said its ultimate success will depend on customers beyond Nasa.
Boeing already has agreements to provide space transportation services for privately owned Bigelow Aerospace, which plans to lease out space aboard its planned orbiting outposts for scientific research and commercial programmes.
A prototype Bigelow habitat is scheduled to be launched and attached to the space station by early next year for a two-year test flight. Boeing’s refurbishment of the retired space shuttle hangar was partly financed by Florida, which so far has invested about $2bn to lure aerospace companies to the state.
On September 15, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to be at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to unveil a commercial space project, also backed by state and local economic development agencies.
Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, is expected to announce plans for a rocket manufacturing plant adjacent to Kennedy Space Centre.
Reuters