Boeing’s next big adventures into deep space ride with new super rocket By Bill Seil It’s been more than 40 years since human beings have traveled beyond Earth’s orbit. But stay tuned. The next chapter in deep space exploration has begun. The past four decades have seen tremendous achievements in space. Boeing was NASA’s prime con-tractor for the Space Shuttle program and remains the prime contractor for the International Space Station. The company is also developing a Commercial Crew space-craft that will carry crew and cargo to and from the space station, as well as other low Earth orbit locations. The last time astronauts escaped the pull of Earth’s gravity was December 1972, when Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the last people to set foot on the moon. The Apollo program was made possible by the most powerful rocket ever put into service—the Saturn V. Work on the Saturn’s first stage, which was built by Boeing, took place at NASA’s vast Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans. When complete, it was put on a barge and transported to Cape Kennedy, Fla. Boeing heritage companies North American Aviation and McDonnell Douglas built the second and third stages, respectively. Today a team from Boeing is at Michoud preparing for the construction of the main stage of the Space Launch System, a more powerful and technologically advanced successor to the Saturn V. Boeing is the contractor for the core cryogenic stage, the foundation of the rocket, which is designed to be adaptable to ambitious new missions. Boeing is also creating the avionics for the core stage, as well as for an interim cryogenic propulsion stage—which is a smaller upper stage that will be used for the first two flights. After these first lunar orbital missions, an interim stage will be replaced by an upper stage to provide additional power needed to travel to deep space. “Once people realize the capabilities of this vehicle there’s going to be great excitement around it,” said Todd May, NASA’s program manager for the Space Launch System. 22 Frontiers February 2014
Frontiers February 2014 Issue
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