Boeing opens commercial spaceship plant in Florida

[Valin]

Reuters:

Irene Klotz

Fri Sep 4, 2015

 

(Reuters) - Boeing Co took the wraps off an assembly plant on Friday for its first line of commercial spaceships, which NASA plans to use to fly crews to the International Space Station, officials said. "This is a point in history that reflects a new era in human spaceflight," Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said at a grand opening ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center.

 

Boeing's newly named CST-100 Starliner spaceships will be prepared for flight in a processing hangar once used by NASA's space shuttles. The capsule's debut test flight is targeted for 2017. Starliners will fly from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard Atlas 5 rockets, which are built and flown by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

 

NASA is paying up to $4.2 billion for a Starliner test flight and up to six missions to the station. The U.S. space agency has a similar contract with privately owned SpaceX, which intends to accomplish the work for $2.6 billion. NASA previously contributed $621 million to Boeing and $545 million for SpaceX for capsule design and development.

 

(Snip)

[clearvision]

Competition in space flight, who would have thought.