The countdown begins Three weeks before launch, Starliner’s journey from Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center will begin. It will take several hours to complete the seven-mile late-night ride on the spacecraft transport vehicle to Space Launch Complex 41 on the northern edge of neighboring Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Complex 41 is one of more than two dozen launch pads erected across a landscape that is home to 6,500 alligators, 400 species of birds and assorted 300-pound (140-kilogram) wild hogs, according to NASA. Upon arrival, the Starliner will be lifted by crane into the Vertical Integration Facility, a tall, narrow building, where it will be stacked atop an Atlas V rocket sitting on a Mobile Launch Platform. While there, the fully integrated Boeing spacecraft and United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will undergo a series of tests and flight preparations, and the launch team will rehearse the countdown. The day before launch, the Mobile Launch Platform will travel 1,800 feet (550 meters) by rail onto the launch pad, where the rocket will be loaded with propellant and the spacecraft powered up for final pre-launch checkout. Upright on a launch pad more than a half-century old, Starliner will find itself positioned inside a square of four 360-foot (110-meter) lightning towers, necessary protection on the often stormy Floridian coast. Any environmentally generated electrical currents would be redirected through this grid and into the ground. The spacecraft will stand parallel to the 200-foot (60-meter) Crew Access Tower, the first new astronaut gantry built in more than four decades since the Apollo space program; all others are original structures that have been refurbished. For the initial crewed flight, a Boeing test pilot and NASA astronaut will board Starliner through the Crew Access Arm, a bridge extending out from the main structure. They will pause at the end in an enclosed area, designated as the White Room, for removal of their portable equipment and a contaminant wipe-down before entering the crew cabin. They will become the first humans propelled off Complex 41, a pad that previously has facilitated only unmanned Titan and Atlas V launches. Once the launch sequence is set in motion, the Starliner countdown will echo over an outdoor public-address system. The kerosene-fueled rocket and attached solid rocket motors will ignite with a yellowish glare. The ground will tremble. Water will come pouring onto the pad to deaden the sound and ease the vibration, protecting the flight vehicle and systems on the ground. Huge plumes of steam will cascade up and around it as exhaust is redirected away from the pad through a concrete cave called a “flame bucket.” Crowds will cheer as Starliner lifts off the ground, carried by an Atlas V rocket generating 1.5 million pounds (6.7 million newtons) of thrust before completing its job and separating nearly 15 minutes into flight. Following six to eight hours of flight, Starliner will arrive at the International Space Station, which orbits 240 miles (390 kilometers) above Earth. The spacecraft will connect with a new docking adapter rather than the robotic arm that now captures cargo vehicles and pulls them in close. Starliner will remain in space for six months at a time before returning the crew to one of the designated landing sites in the western U.S. Soon after landing, the Starliner will be transported back to Florida where it will be refurbished before repeating this process. • OCTOBER 2016 | 23
Frontiers October 2016 Issue
To see the actual publication please follow the link above