The name, Starliner, keeps with recent Boeing naming operations – as seen with the company’s Boeing 787 aircraft, named Dreamliner.
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Boeing officials revealed the new name in a ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center.
More than 200 people, including Florida Gov. Rick Scott, NASA and Boeing officials, and a bevy of former astronauts, gathered at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to celebrate the grand opening of Boeing’s commercial crew and cargo processing facility.
“Today, we’re in the middle of producing the structural test article, the first piece of fully flight design hardware”, John Mulholland, the vice president of commercial programs at Boeing.
Boeing’s Starliner is one of two commercial spacecrafts NASA has selected to replace the shuttle in flying astronauts to the worldwide Space Station beginning in 2017. That also destroyed its unmanned Dragon cargo capsule destined for the space station. That work is being carried out at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
“In 35 states, 350 American companies are working to make it possible for the greatest country on Earth to once again launch our own astronauts into space”, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “You get a sense that at this point we are witnessing something that we are all going to remember decades from now”. “Well, I’ve always said, ‘Just wait”.
That new chapter begins with Boeing’s transition from the design to production and integrated testing of the CST-100 Starliner.
State economic development agencies Enterprise Florida and Space Florida played a role in the deal, though details on what incentives Boeing will receive for the new jobs have not been released. The Chicago-based company will mark its 100th anniversary next summer. He said the spacecraft is reminiscent of the capsules from the Apollo moon program.
Kathryn Lueders, the agency’s program manager for commercial team, also spoke referred to this at a space conference in Pasadena, California this week that by contracting for multiple flights, NASA is “setting the groundwork for the service and the crew circling missions” that will be needed after 2020.
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NASA is spending money on as many as $5.two billion for getting a Starliner assessment the gate and increase to 6 missionaries into the perron.
