Boeing Spaceship for Private Space Transportation

Boeing is working on the design of a new capsule spaceship, that will transport people between the International Space Station and other future private space stations. The design of the spaceship is similar to Apollo's and Orion's, and this new capsule is created to somehow compensate the departure of the NASA's space shuttle crew in 2011.

The new space capsule will be the result of the collaboration between several US companies, in a joint effort to build a private spacecraft capable of transporting people into space. This new Crew Space Transportation-100 spacecraft (CST-100) is realized thanks to NASA's $18 million award, under the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) Space Act Agreement. This award is meant to stimulate technological innovations in order to build a commercial space flight transportation system.

The CST-100 can carry up to seven people and it will be bigger than the Apollo spaceship and smaller that the Orion capsule. The “100” in its name stands for the distance between the ground and the low-orbit that it will reach, during its short missions in space. The spacecraft will normally be launched from Florida, but Boeing still has to chose the rocket that will carry it out into space. The CST-100 has been designed to be compatible with several rockets, like SpaceX's Falcon rockets and United Launch Alliance's Atlas and Delta boosters.

Boeing will not wait for NASA to be its only client. It has already teamed up with Las Vegas' Bigelow Aerospace, a new member of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, hoping that it will provide transportation to and from the future Bigelow Aerospace Orbital Space Complex. Boeing officials say that they will work with Bigelow Aerospace, as the company has a quite rich experience from the building of their commercial space station. Bigelow has already launched two prototype modules into space and is currently developing private inflatable living spaces, preparing the launching of the first private space station in 2014.