Catching a Taxi to Space

Boeing is putting together a rocket that will launch its experimental spacecraft in the not too distant future.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Boeing has begun assembling an Atlas five rocket in anticipation
of an historic launch of a new space capsule. In
will you soon be able to hail a space cab?
I'm Jonathan Strickland and this is text up daily. For years,
NASA has had to depend heavily upon Russia in order

(00:24):
to conduct missions into space. NASA started the Commercial Crew
Program in response to that dependence, looking to private companies
to fill the agency's needs and remove the necessity to
rely upon foreign powers. Boeing was one of the companies
selected to participate in this program. Boeing's design is called
the c ST one star Liner, or sometimes the space Taxi.

(00:47):
The CST stands for Crew Space Transportation. Boeing has designed
several different configurations of the capsule, including one that could
hold up to seven crew members or a combination of
crew and cargo. According to Boeing, the craft's design allows
it to be reused up to ten times, with a
six month turnaround between trips. The capsule has some cool

(01:08):
upgrades to the tech you'd find in historic spacecraft like
the Apollo vehicles. Crew interfaces will include touchpad devices and
wireless internet, and unlike other capsules, the CST one hundred
will be able to land on solid ground rather than
in the ocean. A combination of a parachute and an
air bag system provides the cushioning necessary for land based returns.

(01:29):
The original plan was to have the CST one hundred
ready for use by ten. That was the purpose of
the Commercial Crew program, free NASA from dependence upon Russian
spacecraft by the end of sev As it turns out,
designing space vehicles it's pretty hard. It requires precise engineering
and manufacturing to ensure the safety of crew while giving

(01:49):
the best guarantee for mission success. Boeing discovered some design
flaws in the star Liner structural elements that delayed the
production of the spacecraft by more than a year. Some
of the more complicate at elements of the design required
more time to troubleshoot than engineers originally anticipated. Boeing isn't
the only company that's been working on this project. Space X,
founded by Elon Musk, has also been hard at work.

(02:12):
SpaceX has already developed the Falcon nine rocket, a two
stage launch vehicle that has already delivered cargo to the
International Space Station. The first stage of the Falcon nine
is reusable. SpaceX has demonstrated this by landing a first
stage Falcon nine rocket on special platforms. Reusing rockets creates
significant cost savings, but space x is also running a

(02:32):
little behind on its Dragon two capsule, which is the
one the company hopes will deliver astronauts to locations like
the International Space Station in the future. We may have
to wait until twenty nineteen or later to see people
flown into space aboard of private spacecraft. The private space
industry has created some interesting challenges. For example, one potentially

(02:52):
lucrative aspect is asteroid mining. With the right technology, it
would be far more efficient and economical to mine resources
in space rather than to send them up via rocket
from Earth. Asteroid mining craft might be able to get
precious minerals that can serve as raw material for space
based construction, but until recently, there was a bit of
a sticky issue who would own the minerals. In two

(03:15):
thousand fifteen, United States President Barack Obama signed the Space
Act of into law. The Act, among other things, grants
companies the rights to whatever minerals they might mine on
asteroids or other celestial bodies. This appears to be a
direct contradiction to the Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven,
in which countries around the world agreed that it would

(03:36):
be illegal to sell space based minerals for profit. Some
legal experts argue that these considerations apply only to government agencies,
not to private companies. In other words, the United States
has no legal authority to lay claim to a particular asteroid,
but Boeing or SpaceX or some company that doesn't even
exist yet might not have such a restriction. Asteroid mining

(03:57):
and trips to the space station are just the tip
of the celestial iceberg when it comes to private space travel.
Some companies are already competing to become the number one
name in space tourism. The strategies range from taking high
altitude parabolic flights to simulate micro gravity to actual short
trips up into space but not quite low Earth orbit.

(04:18):
Then there are the plans for Mars. Several entrepreneurs, Elon
Musk included, have expressed interest in setting a course for
the red planet. But Mars is a particularly tricky destination.
It would take months of travel to get there, and
once you touch down, it would be pretty tricky getting back.
Then there's the cosmic radiation you'd encounter both along the

(04:39):
way and on the surface of Mars. Plus I forgot
to mention this, pretty much everything on Mars is trying
to kill you, but it might be cool to visit
it one day. We're still in the early stages of
the private space industry. Within a decade or two, who
knows where we might end up. To learn more about
space tech and companies like Boeing or SpaceX, subscribe to
the tech Stuff podcast. On that show, I take my

(05:01):
time exploring subjects with my listeners and learning what makes
them work. That's all for today. I'll see you again soon.