Flying Boeing’s Starliner capsule

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August 21, 2018 9:54 am Robert Zimmerman

Link here. The article provides some nice details about the way the spacecraft will operate (mostly by computer), with the astronauts monitoring and capable of taking over at any point.

Unlike Dragon, the control panel has no touchscreens. According to astronaut Chris Ferguson, the design was “borrowed a little bit from Orion, and it’s kind of the way some of the 5th generation military planes interact with pilots.” Not as fancy, but maybe more practical. I still have my doubts about the ability of astronauts to accurately press a touchscreen during the vibrations of launch.

There is something else, however, about this article that bugs me. It reads too much like an SLS update, filled with glowing reports that, in the case of SLS, are designed to disguise a program that is not going to meet its schedule. This is pure speculation based on nothing but instinct, but it is an impression I have and do not like.

3 comments

Kirk
August 21, 2018 at 10:29 am
Interesting that their priority “is to get the Crew Flight Test vehicle, spacecraft number 2, out the door” so that it can start its final vibration, pressure and acceptance testing in El Segundo, then shift work to the Orbital Flight Test vehicle “which does not have to go through the same procedures prior to its uncrewed test flight”.

If Boeing doesn’t run into too many unexpected problems, they might be in a position to fly those two missions in quicker succession than SpaceX. SpaceX’s Dragon 2 which will fly their DM1 uncrewed mission in November, returning to a splashdown in December, must be refurbished in time for its In Flight Abort test in March, in advance of the DM2 crewed mission in April. A recent Teslarati article said that refurbishment of cargo Dragons takes a lot longer than that. I suspect that SpaceX will make it happen in time, but that refurbishment may be the gating factor for an April crewed flight.
Blair Ivey
August 21, 2018 at 12:12 pm
It seems crewed spacecraft have come full circle (helix). From ‘Spam-in-a-can’ (Mercury) to crew-operated (Shuttle), back to automated capsules. The next-gen spacecraft look a lot like modern airliners: they can be flown, but the operators (airlines) would much prefer the computer do the flying.
Edward
August 21, 2018 at 8:53 pm
Kirk wrote: “A recent Teslarati article said that refurbishment of cargo Dragons takes a lot longer than that.”

Since the Flight Abort test does not go to orbit, it may not need a full refurbishment, thus it may be available sooner than would otherwise be expected.

Blair Ivey wrote: “It seems crewed spacecraft have come full circle (helix). From ‘Spam-in-a-can’ (Mercury) to crew-operated (Shuttle), back to automated capsules.”

I suspect that the capsule design is due to the necessity to get CCDev flying sooner rather than later. Less development work was needed.

I hope that Sierra Nevada’s spaceplane paradigm becomes the standard in the next decade. On the other hand, SN’s spaceplane may also be largely automated.

Flying Boeing’s Starliner capsule

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