NASA KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Boeing [BA] is taking a slow, but steady, approach to achieving its NASA Commercial Crew milestones, despite being roughly two years behind rival Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in certain areas.
Twenty-seventeen will be a big year for Boeing’s Crew program, company Vice President and Program Manager for Commercial Programs and Space Exploration John Mulholland told sister publication Defense Daily on Sept. 4. Boeing will perform its uncrewed flight test with its Starliner, the renamed CST-100; the pad abort test; the crewed flight test and its first service mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017.
On the other hand, SpaceX performed its pad abort test with its Dragon space capsule in May. SpaceX expects to perform its first human missions in Dragon by 2017.
Mulholland downplayed the difference in schedule, chalking it up to different philosophies. He said Boeing is focusing on “traceability” within its Crew program, a company-wide approach to large development programs, whether it be in aircraft, space capsules or any other complex piece of hardware.
“Other companies might take an approach of doing some earlier development type testing … we verify designs,” Mulholland said at Boeing’s unveiling of its Commercial Crew facility. “You need to make sure you have that ‘traceability’ from test back through design. So that’s kind of how we’ve structured our plan, which is very similar to how we do any large development program in the Boeing Company.”
Mulholland said Boeing is “largely” on plan with its Crew program. The company, he said, wants to make sure it is past its critical design review (CDR) and that test articles are actually the flight design that’s been verified to meet all requirements when they perform important tests with vehicles like the structural test article qualification test vehicle and the pad abort test.
“We go through that rigorous process to make sure design is complete,” Mulholland said. “Then we build up our integrated test articles so that we can show that tracability of final test article to proven design.”
The first ISS services flight will take place in December 2017, Mulholland said Sept. 3. As part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with NASA, Boeing is guaranteed at least two, and potentially six, service flights to ISS after completing human certification, according to a company statement.
The pad abort test will take place at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. Boeing, he said, will not perform an in-flight abort test in 2017. This takes place during an actual launch so that Boeing can test its safety mechanism for getting humans away from a rocket.
SpaceX did not return a request for comment by press time.