Boeing Shows Off First Commercial Spacecraft

coondoggie writes "Boeing today released the first public glimpse of the commercial spacecraft it is working on under an $18 million contract with NASA. Boeing's Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 can hold seven crew and will be bigger than Apollo but smaller than NASA's Orion, and be able to launch on a variety of different rockets, including Atlas, Delta and Falcon.The company envisions the spacecraft supporting the International Space Station and future Bigelow Aerospace Orbital Space Complex systems. Bigelow is building what it calls 'expandable habitats,' that which are inflatable spacecraft would act as large, less costly space stations."

Comments

Re:If by "show off" you mean "a couple of painting

[jfruhlinger]

That second article has a cutaway view of what it would look like inside w/astronauts in it, to give you a sense of scale. Jesus, they're sure crammed in there, aren't they? What would the point of putting in so many people that they could barely move be? I suppose this thing isn't really for Shuttle-style science, just getting people to and from space stations, so they'd only have to be packed in like that for a day or two at a time...

Re:If by "show off" you mean "a couple of painting

[camperdave]

Well, they're kind of crammed on the Dragon, too.

I'd much rather see an HL-42 styled craft. Give me a horizontal landing, on an actual runway. None of this splashing down in the ocean and waiting for the flippin' navy to rescue you.