Boeing Starliner access arm installed at Cape Canaveral
Perhaps early in 2018, a pair of astronauts will enter an elevator at Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 41, ascend 170 feet and cross a 50-foot arm leading to the hatch of Boeing’s new CST-100 Starliner capsule.
In a “white room” at the end of the arm, a support crew will help the test pilots board the Starliner and strap into seats less than three hours before their liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
The access arm and white room will swing away from the capsule 10 minutes before the crew blasts off to the International Space Station, hoping to prove the privately developed spacecraft is ready to begin commercial service.
That scene grew a step closer to reality on Monday morning after a crane lifted the 90,000-pound Starliner access arm into place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
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The arm’s installation marked the end of major construction on the new tower at pad 41 that will enable astronauts to launch again on Atlas rockets, like John Glenn did in 1962.
“In a matter of about 18 months or so, we're going to be launching humans on an Atlas from this historic launch pad,” said Chris Ferguson, the deputy manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program who commanded NASA’s final shuttle mission five years ago.
Boeing’s flight could be the first of astronauts from U.S. soil since Atlantis' mission to the ISS in 2011, though SpaceX currently is targeting an earlier test flight of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, as soon as a year from now.
SpaceX will launch from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, a former Saturn V and shuttle pad now being renovated for flights of Falcon rockets. A new crew access arm will be installed there, too.
The Starliner tower has risen over the past year next to an active launch pad, its tiers stacked during gaps in a busy schedule of unmanned Atlas V launches (the next is planned Sept. 8).
Final outfitting and completion of the tower is expected later this year.
Then all that will be needed is a flight-ready Starliner and a crew.
Boeing is testing a prototype capsule in California. Three flight capsules will be assembled in a former shuttle hangar and engine shop at KSC.
The company’s latest schedule anticipates a test of the Starliner’s abort system in October 2017 in New Mexico, and launch of an unmanned, orbital test flight from the Space Coast before the end of next year.
Boeing plans to have a company astronaut — Ferguson would be a safe bet — join a NASA astronaut on the crewed test flight now targeted for February 2018.
Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at KSC, looked forward to that day as the Starliner access arm was hoisted into position Monday morning.
“It’s going to be so cool when our astronauts are walking out across this access arm to get on the spacecraft and go to the space station,” she said.
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