Boeing Starliner is set and ready to launch its first crew to space

Last week Boeing and ULA rolled a Starliner spacecraft from the former’s facilities on Kennedy Space Center to the latter’s launch site on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. With that, final checkouts are underway before two NASA astronauts climb inside and fly it to the ISS and back.

Starliner’s first crewed flight is near

After years of delays, Boeing will finally get its day in the headlines to launch its first crewed flight to the ISS on Starliner. As soon as May 7, the Boeing Crewed Flight Test is planned to lift off from SLC-41 on an Atlas V rocket with NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams.

Last week final preparations began with Boeing fueling Starliner with the propellent it needs for its attitude control thrusters and abort system. Similar to SpaceX’s Dragon, Starliner uses hypergolic fuel for its systems. This fuel can be stored at room temperature so it can last the entire mission, however, it’s extremely toxic to humans.

Fueling was completed mid-las week and so teams from both Boeing and ULA picked up Starliner and moved it to SLC-41 overnight. The move started at Boeing’s facility at Kennedy Space Center, which was originally built as one of the few hangers for the Space Shuttles, and ended just outside SLC-41 at the Vertical Integration Facility.

Their Starliner was hoisted up and attached on top of the special Centaur upper stage. Unlike other Atlas V rockets, the second stage for Starliner’s rocket will be powered by two RL-10 engines. While Vulcan‘s Centaur come standard with two engines, Atlas V’s Centaurs usually fly with just one.

The unique trajectory required for human spaceflight and need for redundant options requires two engines on Starliner Atlas Vs. If you know Atlas Vs, you’ll know each rocket has a number that denotes its variation. For Starliner mission, the Atlas V’s variation is N22. N stands for “no” fairing, 2 for the number of solid rocket motors, and 2 for the number of engines on the second stage.

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A troubled past, now we hold our breaths

As with all test flights, the risks of something going wrong are always greater. The same things where said before SpaceX‘s first crewed test flight in 2020.

This will be Starliner’s third test flight and first crewed. We of course remember Starliner’s OFT-1 mission that nearly ended in disaster, a few times. However, OFT-2 came back with an overall successful mission, outside of a few items here and there that needed fixing. Early SpaceX Dragon missions had similar one offs that needed fixing.

The big delays came when late discoveries of less than capable parachute attachment points and flammable tape were found. This led to a long process of getting Calypso acceptable for launch and new parachute tests.

With all of that done, NASA has signed off on Starliner being safe and ready for its first crewed mission. While SpaceX DM-2 featured an extended multi-week mission with spacewalks, Starliner CFT will most likely be a short duration flight just to test out the spacecraft.

If all goes well, Starliner could get its first operational crew rotation next year and finally begin taking turns with SpaceX on shuttling astronauts to and from the station.

Boeing has six missions under contract, between those and SpaceX’s six, that brings us to one mission at the start of 2030 (the year the ISS is expected to be retired). If Boeing can launch its first operational mission at the beginning of 2025, then we wouldn’t have reliance on just one provider for the rest of the station’s lifespan, If not, and the first operational mission doesn’t launch until fall of 2025, then Boeing would get the final two missions for the ISS.