Boeing Unveils Cabin Design For Commercial Spaceliner

Jeremiah Cornelius (137) writes " Did you enjoy your flight, Dr Heywood Floyd?" Boeing unveiled a new concept for the cabin of a future commercial spaceliner, based on the blue-lit Boeing "Sky" interior of the company's modern airliners, as well as work on the company's CST-100 space capsule. "Provided there is a destination for them out there, how will that passenger want to go back and forth?'" said Chris Ferguson, a former astronaut who commanded NASA's final space shuttle mission in 2011 and now serves as Boeing's director of crew and mission operations for the commercial crew program. Boeing developed the CST-100 capsule to compete for NASA's space station crew launch business after the agency retired its space shuttle fleet. The capsule is designed to launch on an expendable Atlas 5 rocket. NASA will be selecting one or more companies in August of this year, with the aim of reaching flight operations in 2017."

Comments

Talk (concepts) is cheap

[CRCulver]

By quoting Kubrick's film (Heywood Floyd travels in a Pan-Am spaceflight in 2001: A Space Odyssey ), the summary suggests that Boeing is preparing to send commercial travellers to space stations or the moon. In that case, unveiling a concept would just be meaningless fluff PR, like those architecture firms that show off plans for mile-high arcologies but have no initiative to actually build them. For the time being, the only prospects for human commercial spaceflight is sending people up to enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness, not even real orbit.

Re:Talk (concepts) is cheap

[clarkkent09]

US tourism industry is worth about $126 billion/year, worldwide over $1 trillion. Don't underestimate joyrides.

Re:Talk (concepts) is cheap

[Trepidity]

Yeah, this is pretty clearly marketing. This is basically an "artist's rendition" of what the interior of such a space vehicle would look like. Needless to say, how to do interior design of the cabin is not really the biggest obstacle in the way of this vehicle existing.

Actually I think it might not even be marketing for their space arm, but cross-over marketing for their commercial airliner arm. Boeing has been rolling out their new "Sky interior" concept on new and refurbished planes, and there's a big branding push to make it have a positive/modern/advanced image in travelers' minds. Tying it in with some futuristic space-shuttle concept whose interior looks remarkably like the 787's interior could be part of that strategy.

Re:Talk (concepts) is cheap

[clarkkent09]

I don't know but 600 people have already paid and thousands more put their name down for a trip on Virgin Galactic at $250K a seat.

Article Summary

[McGruber]

Article Summary: Boeing's Vaporware includes a blue interior.

Re:Article Summary

[nameer]

Uh, lots of Boeing customers use the Sky interior.

More than 85 percent of Boeing's backlog of more than 3,400 Next-Generation 737s and 737 MAXs will be delivered with the Boeing Sky Interior. The Boeing Sky Interior will be standard on the 737 MAX.