Category: CCtCap

Workers are deep into construction of the first two tiers of the new crew access tower for Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Boeing and United Launch Alliance are building the tower so astronauts and ground support teams can access the CST-100 spacecraft for missions to the International Space Station. Offsite construction of the tiers was essential to be able to sustain the launch schedule of the Atlas V rocket – which will carry the CST-100 – and still provide a human-rated service structure NASA needs for its Commercial Crew flights.

The first two structures will be outfitted with nearly everything they will need at the launch pad except wiring and the elevator shafts before they are stacked and trucked over to the launch pad. It will take seven tiers to complete the 200-foot-tall structure. While the tiers are assembled a few miles away, workers at SLC-41 are preparing the foundation of the structure. Pile drivers, cement trucks and other heavy equipment are establishing a firm support base for the tower.

The CST-100 spacecraft Boeing is developing to take astronauts to the International Space Station will feature a crew interface system computer and displays built by Aitech Defense Systems of Chatsworth, California.  Aitech’s work will allow pilots of the CST to assume direct control over the spacecraft in orbit to adjust its attitude, height and direction with precision.

Three CST-100s are to be built at Boeing’s Kennedy Space Center location in preparation for a pad abort test, unpiloted flight test and piloted flight test to the station in 2017. The spacecraft will include numerous systems and subsystems built by subcontractors all over America.

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is working with Boeing and SpaceX under separate Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contracts to return crew launch capabilities to the United States. The new spacecraft also will increase research capacity on the station by adding a crew member to the orbiting laboratory and allowing scientific time available to double to 80 hours a week. 

Boeing took its CST-100 spacecraft mock-up and a scale model to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., recently for a series of tests designed to evaluate different aspects of the design. The CST-100 is the spacecraft Boeing is developing in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to carry astronauts to the International Space Station using American spacecraft and rockets launching from the United States. The full-scale version of thespacecraft was dropped into water at Langley to judge how the spacecraft would behave in case it had to make a quick return to Earth and could not land on the ground. The CST-100 is designed to descend from orbit under parachutes with inflatable bags cushioning the landing for crew members inside. A smaller model was used inside one of the Langley wind tunnels to determine how the air flows around the outside of the spacecraft when it inside Earth’s atmosphere and different phases of flight. Read more about this critical evaluation cycle for the CST-100 at http://go.nasa.gov/1Df0i9A