- Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to Houston, Texas, home of NASA's Johnson Space Center, and I'm here to show you guys something really exciting. Boeing actually sent me out here to check out the Boeing CST 100 Starliner. So this is one of America's
next rides to space. We're actually going to be
sending astronauts on this thing up to the International Space
Station as early as 2019. And I actually got to sit
at the commander's seat and pilot it to see how I do. So, what might take some
astronauts four years, I did in about four hours. Let's see how I did. Let's get started. - [Announcer] 3, 2, 1, and lift off. (upbeat music) - NASA recently announced who'll be flying on the first commercial crew flight, and both Boeing and SpaceX are racing to get their spaceships,
their launch sites, and their spacesuits ready to return humans to space from US soil. Boeing's spaceship is
the CST 100 Starliner. A capsule shaped spacecraft that can fly up to 7
astronauts to space. For NASA missions to the
International Space Station, it'll fly up to 4 astronauts at a time filling the rest of
the capsule with cargo. The Starliner will
launch on top of perhaps one of the most reliable
rockets ever made, ULA's Atlas 5 with two
strap-on solid rocket motors and two RL10 upper stage engines, a configuration that an Atlas 5 has never actually flown before. But, all the hardware has been flown many times throughout history, and today, I get to take you
where the astronauts train, and show you the actual
hardware they use to get ready for this next chapter of US spaceflight. In order to get a better sense of what it will be like
to fly the Starliner, I met up with Tony Castilleja from Boeing somewhere deep in the middle
of Johnson Space Center. So, we've been driving around a lot, and to be honest I kind of have
no idea where I actually am, so, where am I? - You're on Earth.
- Okay, that's good. - In Texas.
- Yes. - In Houston, at NASA's
Johnson Space Center. - Yes. - In the home of the Space
Vehicle Mockup Facility where every astronaut is
trained to go to space, and this is the home of astronaut training for that next generation space capsule. - That is so awesome, I
really want to see it. - You ready? - Yeah, let's do it.
- Let's go for it. (upbeat music) There she is. The Boeing Starliner, CST 100 flying to the
International Space Station and we're training in that vehicle now. - And rumor has it, you guys are, for some reason, going
to let me go inside it. - Well, we're training today, so, if you're an everyday astronaut, we've got to train all of them. - Let's do this. - You ready to give it a spin? - This is my first time actually being an everyday astronaut, normally it's just me in
like a bathtub or something, this is significantly, a
little more sophisticated. - Well, this is real, This is actual size, and this is how we train. - Oh my gosh. That's amazing. - It'll be fun. - Then I met Kavya Kamal Manyapu. She's the Flight Crew Operations and Test Engineer for the Starliner. After swapping out my
hat for a safety hat, she taught me how to get in
and out of the Starliner, or, in other words, ingress and egress. - Luckily, I also follow instructions about as well as a baby goat, floating in a pool of butter. So, let's see how I do. Float on over. This will be a lot easier
in zero G, I think. - [Kavya] Yes. - But this isn't too bad. - Your next to the commander,
which is the pilot seat. - So I'm commander, you're pilot? - That's correct. - But who does the majority
of the actual flying? - The commander. So our vehicle is built to be autonomous. - Right. - You take control in an
inadvertent situation, where the crew has to jump
in an take manual control. - Well, let me tell you a little story, so, for the first, probably year of playing
Kerbal Space Program, I didn't even know you
could do stability control. So I was flying manually. So if you guys need someone who can steer this
thing around willy-nilly all manual-like, you got the right guy. - (Tony) So, if you
remember the space shuttle, there were thousands of switches, and the amount of switches that you see on the console in front of you, is the number of switches that are going to be in the vehicle. We really optimize and
take advantage of, exactly, the cargo vehicles and
the autonomous vehicles, which give you just the minimum
amount of switches necessary to keep this vehicle what we call "safe." Where we're "safing" ability
at any point in the flight. - Okay. Let's pause here for a second. See those screens, or, where
there's normally a screen and for now there's just that blue cover? Despite having large screens to display a lot of useful information, they are not touchscreens. Inputs happen via the buttons
on the edges of the screen. Every button pushed has a
visual cue, an audio cue, and the actual physical
tactile cue as well. The Starliner features a large window directly above the commander's head. They definitely get the
best view in the house. There's another smaller
window on the side hatch and one on the docking port, but, the commander's window
is certainly the best. While we're talking about
features of the Starliner, perhaps one the most unique features is the fact that the
Starliner will land on land using parachutes and giant airbags, as opposed to landing in water
like most capsule designs. This is similar to the
Russian Soyuz capsule, which lands on land in
the middle of Kazakhstan. The Starliner will be
the first orbital capsule to land on land in the US. And notice I said it will be
the first orbital capsule, since Blue Origin sub-orbital
New Shepard capsule lands on land too. There are five landing sites proposed in the Western United States but the two prime sites will be the US Army's White Sands
Missile Range in New Mexico, and the Army's Dugway
Proving Ground in Utah. Landing on land definitely
gives a leg up in reusability, considering the capsule won't
land in corrosive salt water. This will help allow the Starliner to be reused up to ten times. That's impressive. Of course, The Starliner is
capable of landing in water too. But, that most likely
would only be the case if the Starliner had to
perform a launch abort. - And the nice thing about our system, you talked of the abort system on Apollo, being, we call it the
tractor, or the puller, what we have is the pusher. So our abort system is
on the bottom of ours, on the service modules, so
in an inadvertent situation, you'd have to evacuate from the launch pad or the launch vehicle, those four engines fire up and take you about a
mile up and a mile out. - To land you in the water,
if your on the launch pad. - Before we left the
egress/ingress trainer, Kavya and Tony challenged me
to complete a certification. Astronauts are required to be able to put on their spacesuits
all by themselves, inside the capsule, in
under seven minutes. Alright, so, I think it's my turn now to actually see if I can suit up. I mean, I've done this, I've done this a couple times, a time or two, but, this
is actually the first time I've done it with any
real intention, so... This actually, when you first said, it honestly sounded a little scary like I didn't know if it
was going to be hard or not, but sitting here now, this is no problem. - And think about it, you'll be in zero G if you have to put on the
suit for cabin leak scenario, and so you can actually use
up all the volume up there. - Right, you could just be hanging out, right up here, yeah trying to, I feel like I'd be clumsy enough that I'd probably be kicking
people's faces and things. So I'd probably opt for this, but yeah, this is significantly roomier than I imagined it would be. Let's fast forward here 10 times. I've put the suit on so many times, I should have no problem getting it on in under the seven
minutes that's required. Don't forget the binoculars,
those are important. Undo this. Once I was fully suited up, I got strapped in for a quick photo op. So now that I've been trained in how to actually get in
and out of the Starliner, why don't I see what it's like to fly one? For that, we're going to head over to the Mission Simulator
and Training Facility. Here, I would get to go check out the two different training simulators, as well as Boeing's spacesuit. So, before I tried flying the Starliner, I first suited up in a real spacesuit. If you didn't catch what it's like for me to actually put one of
these on and wear it, be sure and check out this video. - So, left seat's yours, commander Dodd. - Commander Dodd, I like
the way that sounds. - Just pop over here. - Now it's time for
Boeing's software engineer, Jim May, to teach me how to
actually fly a Starliner. [Jim May] Okay, and just hop on up. Watch the helmet behind you, alright? Is the helmet comfortable? You're going to have to
lean a little bit forward because that is a very hard seat. There we go. - Oh yeah. - Now do you hear noise in the headset? - Um, yeah, I do. I know that a lot of this stuff we can't actually show on screen, so I apologize to you
guys, but, this is amazing. This is going to be really exciting. - Okay, watch your right arm here. Oh yeah, oh yeah, we're
going to need that. Since I can't show you
what's on the screens, I'll describe it. Basically, Boeing developed a way to show your position
relative to your target and shows where you're about to be. It is surprisingly easy to understand but, now, Jim actually
gave me the controls. It's my time to show
him just what I've got. - So you've played a little
bit of Kerbal Space Program, so it's looking, I mean,
these screens look normal? - Yeah. Yeah, this actually
looks pretty familiar to me and I think you
mispronounced the word little an obsessive amount, so to speak. - I mean, your basically
an Aerospace Engineer, so. So down also in front of you, you've got your distance
to the station over here, okay, six meters, you've
got your relative velocity, Right now you're sitting pretty still. The vehicle's in autopilot,
holding you up ten meters away. When we get going, you're going to want to
make this about -.04. - -.04. - Correct. Each pulse will
be a .01 pulse for this part. - So, four little pulses,
will get me underway. Oh, wow, Everything changed. - So we're in run. We need to do a couple of things first. - Right now the joysticks are turned off, the autopilot's in control, so right above your left hand
there's a manual control, flip the flight control button up. - Flight control button is up. - Okay, flight control is now on. Okay, primary control, we want to turn the pulse
control on for trans so there's a panel, primary
control right in the middle. - Find my control right in the middle. - Okay, trans is the
translation hand controller from the bottom pull the
cover up on the pulse button and push that. So now you are in manual pulse control, go ahead and grab the joystick and give yourself a forward thrust. - Forward thrust, of one. - There we go. You see
how the pointers move? So give about three more. - .02, .03, and here we come up on the .04. Looking good. Gotcha, so what you're
saying go up at like, I could blast my way up to
like .2 meters per second and then scrub off that velocity
right before we get there and just really impress everyone down at Mission Control, right? - I mean, they'd be a little worried, and you'd be firing a bunch
of thruster gas in stationary, but, you know, that,
that's annoying, yeah. - And here it comes. - Five one contact captured. - Contact captured. - Successful Doc. Houston, we're here. - We made it to the
International Space Station. I did it. Guys, I didn't ruin anything. Oh, I didn't even notice up there. Was that running the whole time too? - It was. You were seeing the
station and not even looking. - I wasn't even looking.
I could've been looking out at space this whole time, dang it. - One meter. Contact, and capture. Look at that, successful docking. - Yes, thank you, I actually did it. I did a thing, I did a thing. That was pretty hard, actually, that took a good amount of concentration. - It did. - After a few more successful dockings, it was time to change back
into my normal clothes so I could see where astronauts can train in a more casual environment. In the room next door
is a more mobile set up. I did a few more dockings
with even less help from Jim, which was actually kind of scary. But, had I known he was just watching replays of me playing
Kerbal Space Program, and shopping on my website, I don't think I would've been as nervous. Man, so crazy, it's so cool though, it's really fun looking
at the future here, and realizing that we're
very, very, very close to seeing people actually flying in this, and this'll be going to space, returning our crews to the
international space station, flying from the US soil,
it's really exciting, and yeah, I can't wait, I'll be there, I'll bring you guys there,
we're gonna watch it, and we are going to cheer
it on the whole way, and we're gonna tell you
every square second about it, it's going to be amazing. Man, that was awesome. I'm more excited than ever for
the Commercial Crew Program. I can't thank Boeing enough
for flying me and my crew out to Houston to see the
Starliner and their spacesuit. So, thank you for showing me your world. And I also owe a special
thanks to Space Center Houston, for showing me around their amazing museum that's just outside of
Johnson Space Center. Be sure and let me know
in the comments below, if you have any questions
about the starliner, Boeing, the Commercial
Crew Program, The Atlas V, or anything else space related. I owe a huge thanks to
my Patreon supporters for helping make videos like this and all other content possible. As a thanks to those
that support this show, I'm now doing giveaways every 100 patrons. It'll always be some kind of
flown space material like this, pieces of space shuttle. So if you want some chance to win some actual flown space hardware, or wanna hang out in
our exclusive subreddit, or our exclusive discord channel, head on over to
Patreon.com/EverydayAstronaut, thank you. And while you're out there
on the grand ol' internet, head on over to my website,
EverydayAstronaut.com, where you can find pre-launch previews of all upcoming rocket launches, that's right, you finally
don't have to ask me "What's gonna happen on this
upcoming mission" on twitter, you can go there, to my website, and you can find out "Are
they gonna land this one, "is this one gonna recover a fairing, "Where's this mission going
to, when's it launch", all the things you need to
know in one easy to find place, and then while you're there,
head down over to my shop and check out my new
awesome shirts like this F1 engine can be on your chest. EverydayAstronaut.com. Thanks everybody, that does it for me, I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to
Earth for everyday people.
ok, not SpaceX, but...
I loved this video, thank you Boeing. Can't wait for Elon to invite you to SpaceX!
Tim, please do a video about the SpaceX suit and the Dragon 2.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 42 acronyms.
[Thread #1689 for this sub, first seen 23rd Aug 2018, 16:36] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Man, I really want to see what those display look like in action.
Why is the shuttle simulator still there?