Starliner, Explained (Part 1): Everything you need to know about Boeing's spacecraft

Boeing's cst1 100 Starliner

spacecraft

is once again preparing to take off. This will be the capsule's third launch to date, but more importantly, it will be the first time it has astronauts on board. Commander Butch Wilmore, this is a test flight, so when you test it. You expect to find things and we expect to find things and pilot Sunny Williams. This is where the rubber marks the path where we are going to leave this planet and that is pretty cool. Their mission is called a crew flight test. It's a trip not to do it. It will not only reunite these experienced astronauts with the International Space Station, but also demonstrate the Starliner

spacecraft

's capability and readiness to support long-duration astronaut missions as

part

of NASA's commercial crew program.

This won't be Boeing's first forid-human spaceflight, of course, in the future Americans will be launched into space aboard the world's first reusable human spacecraft. The space shuttle in 1996. Boeing acquired the space and defense divisions of Rockwell International for $3.1 billion. It is the company that developed and built the six space shuttle orbiters. That acquisition also meant Boeing, co-owner of United Space Alliance, the company that operated and processed the shuttle on behalf of NASA, also had a key stake in the International Space Station and is our primary supporter and is responsible for the safety of the entire space station. team that built more safety built into our entire spacecraft and so the processes that we're talking about that we use together for human spaceflight have been around, you

know

, we've had the crew vehicle for 25 years. for 23 years and now with Starliner they are preparing to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station once again, there is a lot to this story, so we will divide it into two

part

s in this first video that we are going to watch. we will talk about the history of Starliner, how it came about and how we got to this point preparing for the crew flight test and then in the second video, we will talk exclusively about the crew flight test, what is full mission profile, so like the astronauts preparing for the flight and the training they had to go through, but first let's start with perhaps the most basic question: what is Starliner, Cruise Space Transport or CST 100?

The Starliner spacecraft is designed by Boeing for fiscal year astronauts. to and from the space station measures approximately 5 m or 16.5 ft tall when the crew module is combined with the service module has a diameter of approximately 4.6 m or 15 ft the crew module has 12 system thrusters reaction control thrusters that can generate 100 lb of force each service module has 28 slightly less powerful RCS thrusters along with 20 orbital maneuvering and attitude control thrusters or omac that produce 1,500 lb of thrust per piece. There are also four launch abort engines that can generate 40,000 lb of thrust per piece. We can take a look at a training mockup of the capsule at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

We use this trainer for different aspects mainly with crew training, but we also do engineering evaluations as we make design changes, mature them and go into an integrated system to, you

know

, make sure it works where it's supposed to, you can see we have two seats in place, those are seats for our commander where Butch Wilmore will sit and we will have the second seat there for sunny Williams. who is our CFT pilot um and then we have some cargo in seats four and five in that bottom row what we call uh and that's where we would normally pack the cargo while we have crew in the vehicle, the seats in this particular Starliner configuration They focused on Williams and Wilmore's body sizes for this rough first mission, but as we learned from Nicole Jordan, manager of NASA's commercial crew programs spacecraft office, they are designed to be quite adjustable, she has been working with these seats for about 8 years.

It's designed to be ultimately adjustable, so one of the easiest to see is the seat panel, which is what we call this part. Here you can see that it can have a wide range of adjustability and you can also notice that as you get taller torsos, the seat drops and that way your point of view stays the same with respect to the screens, so you don't change where your vantage point to see the screens as you adjust the seat and that's just one of many adjustments but it's one of the easiest to see, the crew module is designed for up to 10 flights with the South service module designed for a single use before the version of Starliner that will fly the CFT Mission heads to the Launch Pad, we meet Mark.

We spoke inside Boeing's commercial crew and cargo processing facility, where we talked about what the fueling process is like. We have three different types of thrusters in the vehicle and then we also have what's called pressure, so think of thruster pressure as what actually goes boom if you will and pressure is pushing it properly, allowing it to go where it

need

s to go. , the crew module on top uses hyden along with catalyst beds and propellants, while the service module uses a combination of nitrogen tetroxide and monomethyl hyden, these are typical hypergolic that everyone uses for this type of things, very stable on their own, but if you put them in the right mix at the right time they will explode To fully understand why the Starliner was born, let's delve into a condensed history of the commercial crew program. 2 1 begins there, air boost and takeoff of the closed Endeavor as the spa program came to an end.

NASA

need

ed its own human-rated spacecraft to stop paying tens of millions of dollars per seat to Russia to fly American astronauts aboard a Soyu spacecraft. NASA paid an average of $56.3 million per seat between 2006 and Kate Rubin's launch in 2020, the cost per launch rising markedly over the years as the United States was left without its own trip to space. to get to the space station with which we will work. a growing set of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable the commercial crew program was born from president obama's fiscal year 2011 budget the liftoff of aries 1x would replace the constellation program that only had a launch in 2009 In May 2010 Phil McAllister, one of the architects of the commercial crew, gave a presentation on behalf of the commercial crew study team in Gston, Texas, in which he outlined NASA's goals for a new system of commercial transportation for its astronauts, one born of the competition that we use and take advantage of a lot.

From lessons learned, much of NASA's experience over the years, we've been talking about doing this for decades, so now we're doing it and we can apply those lessons learned in the future and, if we're successful, We feel there will be significant benefits, this could really transform human spaceflight for future generations. The initial $50 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding began in 2010 and was used to fund what was called the first round of commercial crew development, or CC Dev 1, of which Boeing received $18 million to advance the design of a spacecraft he called CST 100 the fiscal year 2011 budget came with more money to support CC Dev 2 that contract awarded almost 270 million to four companies blue origin obtained 22 million dollars to develop its biconical space vehicle SpaceX received 75 million to develop launch boort engines and a life support system for the Dragon capsule, Sierra Nevada Corporation received $80 million to work on its Dreamchaser spaceplane and Boeing received $92.3 million to advance the CST-100 three other companies received unfunded space law deals Boeing and Sierra Nevada received an additional $20.6 million and $25.6 million, respectively, upon achieving previously negotiated milestones.

There will be no turning back once commercial human spaceflight to low Earth orbit becomes a robust, vibrant and profitable commercial enterprise with many suppliers and a wide range of public and private users, this is the ultimate goal and one I believe that unites us all where there was no Unity referred to the commercial crew budget the original request from the then NASA administrator, Charlie Balin, was for one billion dollars annually, it was a point of Contention between NASA and Congress, especially for those who saw the commercial crew as a financial threat to this bace launch system rocket.

Here's just one exchange from a House subcommittee hearing in March 2014 in which the budget for the commercial crew program was discussed. The committee would oblige me. Let everyone remember my first hearings when I became administrator of NASA, when we started talking about commercial crew, at that time we were asking for a billion dollars, we asked for a billion dollars over the next six years for a total of 6 billion dollars for commercial use. team that was based on my estimate and that of the Augustine committee that said a vendor would call would cost about $2.5 billion, we multiplied it by two and I and I added a billion, that's how I got to 6 billion and we got zero the first year.

The second year we got 525 million at the time we were targeting 2015 for commercial crew availability. Now we would be months away from launching the Americans from American soil and I wouldn't have to worry about paying the Russians another $450 million over time. When I came back to the committee I said that if we didn't get full funding, we were going to fail. I finally came back and said we had failed, now we won't have commercial crew available until 2015 2017 and we may not have the competition I need the committee implored us to select one we said please don't make us do that we need competition I think this committee and Congress agrees with you, we don't want to rely solely on the Russians for human access to space, I mean we want to launch American astronauts from American soil and American rockets and the president, like I said before, buses are about options, this committee, this Congress decided to trust the Russians because they decided not to accept the president's recommendation and request as of right.

Funding for commercial crews, you can't have it both ways, well we're moving away from that so I want to say Congress R will once again underfund commercial crews out of the $8.483 billion requested for fiscal year 2015. NASA only received $800 million, but the competition continued and in September 2014, NASA paired the companies with SpaceX and Boeing as awardees of the $6.8 billion commercial crew transportation capability contract that would include the value of up to six flights of crew rotation each to the ISS. The Boeing contract award was uh 4.2 billion and the SpaceX award was 2.6 billion. Now I want to make sure that people understand that the value of the contract is for the certification uh so complete the certification development and certification efforts, including the within the RFP, we had a requirement for at least a crew demonstration uh. like a demonstration flight to the ISS with NASA crew members on it, there are a maximum of six missions under that contract value and a certain amount of contract value for special studies, so those three components are all in those totals that I gave you. for Boeing and SpaceX across all contracts so far Boeing was to receive $44.82 billion at SpaceX 3.14 4 billion for its work on the cst1 100 Boeing opted to take over the processing facility space shuttle Orbiter, which is located next to the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was converted into the commercial spacecraft and cargo processing facility or C3 ppf.

Space allowed for a staged flow of work being done on the spacecraft and what engineers would describe as a womb for at the tomb facility we are privileged to be at the forefront of human spaceflight and, frankly, it is one of the most important things we do, it's one of the most exciting things we do and possibly the most inspiring things we do for the next generation. In 2015, Boeing held a ceremony welcoming press and dignitaries to view the C3 PF and the progress made toward the goal of a 2017 flight.It was also during this ceremony where they publicly named the spacecraft that will welcome the CST 100 Starliner through development and testing. phase of the Starliner and Dragon PHM setbacks that delayed their launch schedules, some of these challenges were highlighted in reports from NASA's Office of the Inspector General, as was the case in 2016, while previous funding shortfalls have contributed to the delays.

Technical challenges with the contractor's designs are Now the schedule for Boe includes issues related to the effects of vibration generated during launch and issues related to the vehicle's mass. A change to the designed capsule to allow a water landing and related concerns that the capsule could absorb excessive water have contributed to the delays. for SpaceX SpaceX had problems with the parachutes and booster during its development campaign. It had 27 parachute tests with the last taking place on May 1, 2020, less than a month before launching its crew demonstration mission 2 on May 30 for Starliner in 2016. Boeing announced the delay. From its October 2017 to January 2018 pad aort test, which would ultimately push the uncrewed orbital flight test away from its planned December 2017 date, the teams were finally able to conduct the pad aort test on the 4th.

November 2019 and paved the way for the The following month, two, one and liftoff, a major milestone occurred with the first orbital flight test on December 20, 2019. The spacecraft that flew on this mission was the third of the three Starliner capsules developed. The mission began as planned with liftoff of the Atlas 5 rocket at 636 am east of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, however, not long after the spacecraft separated, a problem became very apparent: There was a problem in the software that controlled the spacecraft's internal timer that made it think it was much further along in the mission than it actually was and that caused it to perform maneuvers at the wrong time and ultimately miss the insertion. orbital.

You know, we built a spacecraft right here at the Kennedy Space Center, and of course I stopped by before I came here to address the problem. team and yes, these are passionate people who are committing a huge part of their lives to returning Americans to space from our soil, so it's disappointing for us, but that doesn't mean we're not going to diagnose it and find out what's wrong. correct. what to do moving forward, whether another, what kind of next flight test we flew and continued instead of docking with the International Space Station as planned, the Starlander spacecraft ended up orbiting the Earth about 33 times before making a safe landing at White Sands.

Missile Range in New Mexico on December 22 Earlier this year we spoke with Leroy K, deputy director of the Starliner program, about the mission. He says that, knowing what they know now, if the same problem had arisen, but with the crew on board they could have reacted even faster than they did. did it in 2019, so in some ways it's fortuitous that it happened the way it did, because first we found the problem so we could fix it, and secondly, it led us to other discoveries as we delved deeper after the Mission into what we call rcca or root cause corrective action, that led us down other paths where we said you know, similarly, these other areas where we have critical times, we want to look at those as well and make sure we don't have any problems.

Boeing and NASA spent the next 2.5 years working to fully understand what had happened during its fourth-quarter earnings statement in late January 2020. Boeing said it was setting aside $410 million to conduct a second test flight. of Starliner if that's what NASA wanted an independent review team to also be convened to study the anomaly and the best path forward. My direction to the team was that we needed to go look at some of the areas between here and Landing where we have some equally time-critical events in the software. where there are handshakes between hardware software and firmware and I need you guys to come back and convince me that we don't have any problems in those areas.

It turned out that we did have it through analysis by L NASA Boeing's independent review team, or IRT. Three main concerns were identified in this first test flight number one: An error in the mission completion timer caused it to shut down at 11 hours, meaning the spacecraft thought it was on the wrong part of the mission after the separation of the rocket's upper stage number two. There was a software issue with the service module removal sequence that, if left unchecked, could have caused the service module to collide with the crew module after separation; however, a software patch was uploaded to prevent this and, number three, there was an intermittent gap for the direct link to ground. issue that made it difficult for the ground control team to control the vehicle and send commands to it after we returned to the ground safely and began to take a closer look, ultimately leading us to a conclusion that you know we hadn't .

We have done enough with what we call integrated testing of embedded hardware software in our labs as part of our validation process for what we call V&V verification. Our requirements were to validate and verify many of our capabilities through analysis, much of it through testing, but a lot of things. all the bu analysis and it turns out that we decided that the bu analysis for some of these things was not good enough and we were no longer happy with that and although we met our requirements by doing so, we took additional steps to add much more integrated tests as part of the review, NASA also conducted an organizational safety assessment of Boeing's work on the commercial crew program during a March 6 teleconference, Doug Lao.

NASA's then-associate administrator for human spaceflight discussed 61 corrective actions that Boeing needed. However, he stopped short of saying that a second test flight would be necessary. We require a test flight. Frankly, at this time we do not know the findings and corrective actions that Boeing has put in place. Now we have to go back to NASA with a plan for how they are going to move forward and address all of those. That plan will have a schedule, it will have all the technical aspects, it will have all the details. of when and how they are going to go ahead and address them and then NASA will evaluate that plan, we will evaluate the results of their work, we will do our own inspection of the results of their work and then we will be in a position to decide whether or not we need another flight of test or not, in April 2020 Boeing announced that it would, in fact, conduct a second uncrewed demonstration of the Starliner.

We have chosen to re-fly our orbital flight test to demonstrate the quality of the Starliner system. Boeing said conducting another uncrewed flight will allow us to complete all flight test objectives and evaluate the performance of the second Starliner vehicle at no cost to the taxpayer in July 2020. NASA provided an update on an independent review of the frequency and gave 80 recommendations for both. and Boeing to address issues related to software and oversight of the review process. NASA officials reiterated the hope of flying2 in 2020, but it would depend on Boeing's readiness and the availability of the space station.

Meanwhile, SpaceX was preparing to launch its first operational mission in November 2020 following the success of its crude demonstration flight 2 in May of that year. In August 2020, Boeing stated that it was making excellent progress toward of2. The company said that The mission could arrive in December 2020 or January 2021, but when December arrived Boeing announced that of2 was pushing until the end of March 2021 In a statement, Boeing said the company is more than 90% complete in closing all recommended actions developed by a joint NASA-Boeing independent review team, including those that were not mandatory prior to the Starliner uncrewed flight test.

He also noted that while this work was in progress, the often used crew module was being remodeled while a new crew module was being built for crew flight testing that was targeting summer 2021 at the time. February 2021 a new release date of April 2 was announced. Second, the 8-day delay from March 25 to April 2 occurred after a power surge damaged some of the Starliner's avionics during testing, but in March the launch date was left under some uncertainty and May to April the date was postponed again, this time to August or In a statement, Bo said the mission would be ready in May if there was an earlier launch opportunity, but they were challenged by the availability of the Atlas 5 launch pad of ISS ula and the eastern range, as luckily they were able to find that window of opportunity on July 30, 2021 and now

everything

was beginning to feel tangible: the Starliner spacecraft left Boeing's commercial crew and cargo processing facility to reunite with its Atlas 5 journey into space and was stacked on top of the rocket. and launched to the launch pad, but then a problem with Russia's Thruster module on the ISS caused the launch date to be changed to August 3 before that, on July 29, the then newly confirmed administrator of the NASA Bill Nelson said the flight readiness review went smoothly.

Like Glass, he expressed his confidence in OF2's flight and also said why having two providers for the commercial crew program was always important. Competition is good not only for the obvious reasons that it produces the most efficient, productive and profitable work product, but also because of what it does, it gives you a backup, the proof in the pudding, years ago, when this competition started for commercial crews, what if we hadn't had two competitors, and what if it had just been Boeing and so on, right there, that's enough of a demonstration? for you, why we want competition problems arose again for Boeing, when they found a valve problem in the propulsion system equipment of the Starliner service modules, the teams tried to fix the problem while the rocket was in the launch pad and then again within ula vertical integration. installation, but both were unsuccessful.

Boeing made the call to return Starliner to the C3 PF on August 13 at a Tel conference with press in October 2021. Officials said the launch would be delayed until sometime in the first half of 2022 to allow more time to work . On the valve issue, we looked at options for how to move forward and felt the best path was to continue with the current service module while maintaining the same configuration of the service module and crew module. This is putting us somewhere in the first half of 2022 and of course that is pending spacecraft readiness, atlas 5 availability, getting a date for a range and of course working with our partners of the ISS to ensure we have a port to dock.

Boeing noted that it was taking some of the impacted valves for extensive testing at multiple NASA centers and said it was not clear why they were having a problem now that we have seen this propulsion system work successfully, it is the same propulsion we use during our SM service. hot fire module as well as our aort pad test as well as of1 um and I hadn't seen any of these issues so there was no reason to believe we would have a concern here spywood vmer said in October mid December Boeing decided to take the service module that was going to be used for crew flight testing and instead move it to the OF2 mission.

The move would give Boeing the opportunity to finally launch the OF2 mission in May 2022, after extensive analysis the company concluded that Moisture entered the oxidizer isolation valves and caused corrosion when NASA and Boeing finally approached to the day of the release of2. Mark Nappy, vice president and program manager of Boeing's commercial crew program office, said they had done extensive work to understand and mitigate the valve issue at least in the short term, we have the root cause. We know that these nitrates, which are the type of corrosion particles that formed inside the Val valve and caused it to stick, are formed through the chemical reaction of aluminum, which is the body of the valve. of nto, which is the propellant we use and some moisture gets into the system, so the trick for this flight was to remove that moisture and make surethat does not cause these nitrates to form and with these changes in the location and takeoff of the OF2 mission finally launched on May 19, 2022, the important thing was that they were able to go through the orbital insertion and begin the journey to the ISS, but as It was a test flight, some problems arose after a spacecraft. separation, two thrusters failed, the first had fired, fired for a second and then shut down.

The flight control system did what it was supposed to do and handed it over to the second booster, it fired for about 25 seconds and then shut down again, the flight control system took over, it did what it was supposed to do what to do, it went to a third booster and we had a successful uh or orbal insertion the day after launch. Starliner approached and eventually docked with the ISS. He looked beautiful walking in and It was really special to be able to see him walk out there and it was, you know, once he parked at the door for a while, it was almost like he was giving us a chance to admire him. for a little longer before finally arriving at the dock after spending a few days in orbit.

Starliner undocked from the orbital outpost on May 24 and landed in the New Mexico Sands on May 25, closing of2 in a post-landing briefing. Steve Stitch, NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager, described some of the similarities between of2 and spacex's UNC Crew Demo 1 in March 2019. We had challenges between Demo 1 and Demo 2 that people may forget . We had a major redesign of the propulsion system. between demo 1 and demo 2 I, no, I don't see that here, in what we saw on this flight, between demo 1 and demo 2, we did a redesign of the parachute system on Dragon, again, I don't see that .

I don't see that here at Starliner regarding these parachutes we have worked with Boeing and performed numerous drop tests, the parachutes work well now, 2 and a half years after their first orbital flight test, Boeing was finally considering its first astronaut mission to the ISS, crewed flight test after returning the of2 Starliner spacecraft to the Kennedy Space Center in June for August 2022. NASA and Boeing announced their intention to launch crewed flight test in February 2023, although delayed until April to adapt to the ISS schedule. For things like the docking of the SpaceX Cru 6 mission, the last of its original contract, the makeup of the flight test crew has changed markedly since Boeing astronaut and mission commander Chris Ferguson withdrew his name in 2020 citing family considerations.

I am deeply committed to human space. flight I am dedicated to the Starliner program and I am passionate about the team that has formed it, but next year is very important for my family. I have made several commitments that I simply cannot risk losing. I'm not going anywhere. We just won't go to space next year. The Boeing team has been very understanding. The crew is doing great. Thank you also for your understanding. We'll go more into the full evolution of the crew in our next video, but Lero Kane said in the lead up. According to CFT, Boeing was doing a great job with the final crew selected for the mission, Nas astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams.

That period of time is where we really increased crew participation. Our plan was always that we had about a year or 18 months. Previously when we planned to launch CFT we would have more flight crew involved, more regular flight crew involvement with the larger team - they have always been there and working behind the scenes - but more engagement with the larger team to include many of these great integrated activities that we do where we have the Boeing Mission Control Center for the United Launch Alliance control center that at the ASO in Florida um the flight control team here in Houston um our mission support team here in Houston we have these very large integrated activities that the crew was now a part of at the end of March.

NASA and Boeing announced another mission delay, this time not before July 21, 2023, in his comments Steve Stitch said they were still going over the abort procedures and added that there was still work to be done to validate the data from the parachute system aboard Starliner. At this time, there are really no problems or concerns with the parachute system, those in which the parachutes are installed. in the vehicle are in good shape, it's just a matter of going through all that data and looking at the data and making sure that we're really ready to fly safely. He noted that they would also perform a final ground test that involves Sprouts attached to the forward heat shield cover are used to remove the cover from the top of the Starliner spacecraft which then exposes the other parachute systems to deploy and let's go. to do a test at the highest possible regime. which could be seen in an aborted portion of the flight, so we will do that test on the ground and just to make sure the system can be deployed correctly in June and this time another issue arose from one of Boeing's suppliers in In a statement, Boeing said the parachute supplier notified us of a problem identified through testing that reduced our safety margin.

Our engineering team provided additional analysis and since we determined that the safest course of action was to withdraw for the July launch opportunity, the announcement came. Immediately after NASA's aerospace safety advisory panel expressed concerns about the timeline in its official minutes, the panel wrote that it is imperative that NASA not succumb to pressure, even subconsciously, to launch the CFT without adequately addressing all remaining impediments to certification in a In the June 1 conference call, Boeing officials said two problems were found at the end of the verification process, the first had to do with the so-called soft links of the parachutes and the other was a large amount of flammable tape found inside the spacecraft.

We found them because of our process. It's rigorous, we find them late because those elements of the process, by definition, come at the end of the process, so that's how it works, however, less never makes you feel good. All of these delays over the years not only affected the potential astronaut fight schedule for NASA, but also Boeing's bottom line after the valve problem was discovered in the summer of 2021. The financial status of the Boeing's third quarter noted a $185 million impact from the Starliner program, added to the original estimate of $410 million to carry out the OF2 mission that brought the overrun to $595 million during the second quarter 2022 earnings call.

Boeing noted a $93 million charge quote driven primarily by release manifest updates and additional costs associated with of2. The total cost has now skyrocketed to $688 million. The trend continued, although after the second-quarter 2022 earnings call, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission noted another $195 million loss reflecting increases in estimated costs related to completing flight tests. of the crew. Losses now stood at $883 million when the latest announcement came of delays related to the flammable tape and parachute concerns. Boeing's second-quarter 2023 earnings statement reflected another $250 million hit that brought the total to more than $1.1 billion in delay-related losses during an update on August 7, 2023.

NASA Steve Stitch was optimistic On the progress made to address the tape and parachute concerns, he noted that A number of independent review systems had also been put in place, an independent team within Boeing to examine all areas that were previously closed. The NASA chief engineer controlled each subsystem manager and the NASA chief engineer, his deputy, and the NASA chief of engineering and safety. The entire Center worked with technical experts to review the main problems that remain to be resolved in the flight. We reported this plan to the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel last week and they were satisfied with our independent reviews plan and felt that this was exactly what we both wanted to do on the NASA side the Boeing side and then as the panel also noted aerospace safety advisor during that teleconference, they announced March 2024 as the new CFT target date for October 2023, NASA dissuaded that April was actually a better month for the ISS Calendar Leroy Kane said that to address the problem of parachutes, the team decided to move the parachutes originally intended for Starliner 1 for use on the CFT mission in early January.

NASA and Boeing conducted a final drop test to validate the fit in the fall. When we made that decision, we already implemented the steps to ensure that we had the next series of taxis, which will now be for Starliner One and are not even on the critical path for Starliner One in 2025, Boeing as well. managed to remove about a mile of the problematic tape from inside the spacecraft or otherwise negate it as an impact factor and now, in May 2024, Starliner is once again atop an Atlas 5 rocket and is finally ready to launch. the first raw mission. about a decade after his selection by NASA to work alongside SpaceX's dragon crew and as for Kane, a man who worked with shuttle missions dating back to S ts26, the return to flight after the disaster of the Challenger, the weight of this crude flight test is a lot inside him, the most difficult thing to do is get that first centimeter of the ground and I know how difficult it is even now when I see missions that are not ours but that interested us because we are , you know, involved even. if it's tangential when I see spacewalks, I mean, it makes my palm sweat, um, that will never go away from me, I know too much and that's part of what you have to understand that it takes in this business and if not If you don't feel that way, then you don't understand it well enough.

Be sure to stay tuned for part two of this two-part series where we'll introduce you to the team in detail about the CFT mission and the training they had to undergo. Review and discuss the entire mission profile in its entirety, from liftoff to landing and then to space light. I'm Robinson Smith now, see you next time.