Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: ULA, Boeing break ground on LC-41 crew access tower

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: February 22, 2015 at 9:13:35 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: ULA, Boeing break ground on LC-41 crew access tower

ULA, Boeing break ground on LC-41 crew access tower
02/20/2015 05:30 PM
By WILLIAM HARWOOD
CBS News

Boeing, United Launch Alliance, NASA and the Air Force broke ground Friday for construction of a 20-story-tall launch pad crew access tower that will be used by astronauts taking off atop ULA Atlas 5 rockets carrying Boeing's commercially developed CST-100 ferry craft starting in 2017.

The access tower, which will be built in pre-assembled sections and then stacked at launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, will include state-of-the-art safety systems, including walk-in slide-wire baskets to whisk crew members to the ground in the event of a pre-launch emergency.

"It was 53 years ago today that John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, launching on an Atlas rocket just a few miles from here," said Jim Sponnick, vice president of Atlas and Delta Programs at ULA. "We are thrilled to be collaborating with the Boeing company and with NASA to be continuing that legacy and to be returning America to launching astronauts to the space station."

Boeing holds a contract valued at up to $4.2 billion to build and launch the company's CST-100 capsule to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. SpaceX won a $2.6 billion contract to develop its futuristic Dragon crew craft.
A new service tower being built at Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station will support launches of NASA astronauts aboard Boeing's CST-100 crew capsule when piloted flights begin in late 2017. The company broke ground for the new launch gantry Friday. (Credit: Boeing)

The commercial crew capsules will end NASA's sole reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for access to low-Earth orbit, a major objective for the space agency in the wake of the space shuttle's retirement in 2011.

But to protect against contingencies that might force a Russian or U.S. crew to depart the station unexpectedly, leaving an all-Russian or all-U.S. crew aboard the lab complex, NASA still plans to launch a U.S. astronaut aboard every Soyuz flight to the station with one cosmonaut going up on each U.S. ferry flight.

That way, at least one NASA astronaut, or at least one cosmonaut, would be aboard the station to operate their respective systems even if one ferry ship -- and all its crew members -- had to depart.

In any case, SpaceX and Boeing managers say they plan to be ready for initial unpiloted test flights to the station in 2017 with the first piloted missions taking off later that year.

SpaceX is leasing one of NASA's deactivated shuttle pads for its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon crew capsules and modifications are already underway. Launch complex 41 is just two miles south at the Air Force station.

United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, currently uses pad 41 to launch Atlas 5 rockets carrying military satellites and NASA science probes, including the Curiosity Mars rover and the New Horizons spacecraft currently closing in on Pluto.

The new service tower will be built in stages to minimize interference with upcoming missions. Sponnick said ULA plans 12 launches off the pad over the next 18 months.

Howard Biegler, a ULA launch operations engineer with the company's Human Launch Services group, said the tower would be built off site in 28-foot-tall 20-by-20 foot sections, reaching a height of more than 200 feet when fully assembled. A pivoting 42-foot-long crew access arm, which the astronauts will use to board the CST-100, will be positioned at the 172-foot level of the tower.

"We're going to build all the major segments in 20-by-20-by-28-foot-tall tiers and then we'll bring those tiers out and start stacking them," Biegler said. "Those tiers will be completely outfitted, so they'll have the stairwell, the elevator shaft, all the cable chases, the water suppression system will all be in these tiers so when we bring them out, they are an integrated unit."

Once the segments are built, "we believe we can get all those seven tiers stacked in a little over six weeks," Biegler said. "Then we've got about 400 pieces of outboard steel that'll make up the rest of the tower."

The tower also will be equipped with an emergency escape system -- four baskets that crew members can walk into for a 1,345-foot-long slide-wire descent to safety. The system is similar to one used at NASA's shuttle pads, "except we've taken a lot of the lessons learned from shuttle and made some great improvements," Biegler said.

The Air Force began work on pad 41 in 1962, using the complex to launch different versions of the venerable Titan rocket for military and civilian payloads, including NASA's Viking Mars missions and the two Voyagers currently exiting the solar system after combined flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The pad was deactivated in 1977, but it was brought back into service in the wake of the 1986 Challenger disaster as the Air Force opted to use upgraded Titan 4 rockets to carry high priority military payloads to orbit that originally were slated for launch aboard the shuttle. Eleven Titan 4s were launched from the complex between 1989 and 1999.

After the final Titan flight, the huge fixed and mobile service gantries at complex 41 were demolished and a year later construction began on what would become United Launch Alliance's 292-foot-tall Vertical Integration Facility just south of the pad.

The pad itself no longer features a fixed service tower. Atlas 5 rockets are assembled vertically in the VIF and hauled to the pad atop a mobile launch platform equipped with its own service mast.

To prepare complex 41 for piloted flights of the CST-100, ULA will build the fixed service tower to one side of the launch mount to provide access to the crew capsule.

"This is an historic pad," said Robert Cabana, a former shuttle commander who is now director of the Kennedy Space Center. "It's launched a number of NASA scientific missions -- Voyager, Pluto New Horizons, the Curiosity rover on Mars -- and now it's going to launch an even more valuable, precious cargo, and that's NASA astronauts to the International Space Station."

© 2015 William Harwood/CBS News

Launch America getting new access gantry for astronauts
Posted on February 20, 2015 by Justin Ray

CAPE CANAVERAL — A groundbreaking Friday ceremonially commenced construction of an astronaut access tower at United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 launch pad in Florida, a 200-foot-tall gantry that will add to the future of U.S. human spaceflight.
Atlas 5 rockets will launch Boeing's Crew Space Transportation-100 capsules starting in mid-2017, leading to NASA astronaut taxi missions to the International Space Station beginning at the end of 2017.
The CST-100 and the SpaceX crewed Dragon spacecraft are the near-term answer to returning launches of people to the U.S. since retirement of the space shuttle orbiters in 2011. The commercial providers will service the low-Earth orbit destination for NASA astronauts under the space policy spelled out by President Obama, leaving the space agency to focus on deep-space with its Orion vehicles.
"Today is a very important date in space history. It was 53 years ago today that John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, launching on an Atlas rocket just a few miles from here," said Jim Sponnick, vice president of Atlas and Delta Programs at ULA.
"We're thrilled to be collaborating with The Boeing Co. and NASA to be continuing that legacy and returning America to launching astronauts to the space station."
The CST-100's first two space missions will see an unpiloted test flight in April 2017 and a demo mission with a two-person crew in July 2017.
The Atlas 5, having flown 52 times since its debut August 2002 in unmanned satellite-deployment missions, has carried out 19 flights dedicated to the Defense Department, 11 for NASA, 11 with spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office and 11 commercial missions with communications and Earth-observing spacecraft.
"The Atlas 5, with unrivaled technical and schedule reliability, is the obvious choice for a commercial crew launch vehicle. We've had 52 successful launches, 100 percent mission success, and we're really excited that Flight No. 73 is going to have a CST-100 capsule," said John Mulholland, vice president of Boeing commercial programs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QgsKNv4HAbk
The new crew access tower, positioned in the northwest corner of the launch pad, is being built in sections off-site and moved to Complex 41 in between ongoing Atlas launch activities for stacking. It will take 18 months to complete.
"It's really unique the way ULA is conducting all of the pad modifications here in the middle of one of the busiest manifests at any pad," Mulholland said.
Once built, the tower will stand 200 feet tall and feature an elevator to take personnel from the ground to the top, a slide-wire basket evacuation system for emergencies and a 42-foot-long swing arm at the 172-foot-level that will be the threshold to enter the capsules.
The CST-100 is designed to transport up to seven passengers or a mix of crew and cargo to low-Earth orbit destinations such as the International Space Station and Bigelow's planned commercial station. The capsules are designed to be reused up to 10 times.
The vehicles, with a crew compartment and a service module, will be operated from a hub at Kennedy Space Center, using the former space shuttle processing hangar No. 3 to build and ready the capsules for flight.
Atlas 5s will be assembled in the Vertical Integration Facility and then rolled out to the launch pad, spending minimal time in the "clean pad" concept of operations used by ULA at Complex 41.

The rocket will fly in the man-rated 422 configuration, which is a two-stage launcher with a Common Core Booster powered by an RD-180 main engine, two strap-on Aerojet Rocketdyne solid-fuel boosters and a Centaur upper stage with dual RL10 engines also made by Aerojet Rocketdyne.
NASA says it will soon pick a cadre of astronauts to begin training on both the Boeing and SpaceX vehicles. The actual first crewmwembers to fly them will come from the group.
The remodeling of the KSC hangar is progressing ahead of arrival for the structural test article hardware and later this year the hardware for crewed flight test for assembly.
Boeing engineers are finishing the design in preparation for the Critical Design Review in March that locks in the systems' architecture and allows manufacturing to begin in earnest.
Later this summer, the flight software will be completed and will power flight displays in the simulator for astronauts to practice. Eventual training simulators include a mission spacecraft for mock flight, an ingress/egress trainer and a water egress trainer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"It's important that the spacecraft have manual controls. It's designedly largely to be autonomous, but the pilot will always be there to back up the autonomy in case something happens. It's sort of like a belt and suspenders for a spacecraft," said Chris Ferguson, the final shuttle crew commander and now Boeing's crew and mission operations director.

A launch pad abort test is planned for February 2017, followed in April by an uncrewed CST-100 flight to the International Space Station. The first crewed mission — featuring one Boeing test pilot and one NASA astronaut — is planned for July 2017. The first taxi services mission for NASA to the space station by Boeing is planned for December 2017.
"I don't ever want to write another check to Roscosmos after 2017, hopefully, that's why I'm looking to (Boeing) and (SpaceX) to deliver. You heard both of them say they'll be flying by 2017. If we can make that date, I'm a happy camper," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden.
"We are planning for a first day rendezvous. The capsule will then stay connected to station for six months as a lifeboat, then leave station and land within five-to-six hours. It's a very similar profile to Soyuz," said John Elbon, vice president and general manager for Boeing's space exploration division.
"The CST-100 capsule is designed to be used 10 times. So we will recover it, refurbish it in the facility at KSC and fly it again," said Elbon.
"Commercial crew is incredibly important to the space station, it's important to reduce the cost of transportation to low-Earth orbit so that NASA has within its budget the capability to develop means to explore beyond low-Earth orbit," Elbon said. "And importantly, I think, it's beginning a whole new industry. … We're making great progress on the program."

© 2015 Spaceflight Now Inc.