Starliner on Vulcan

[Asteroza]

ULA has already certified Atlas for Starliner doing same for Vulcan shouldn't be hard. Be surprised if they didn't allow for it in the design. ULA also has crew access tower on the pad.

Yes, Vulcan was designed with human rating in mind, per a tweet by Tory Bruno in 2019.

It doesn't have a retractable access arm, but crew access pathways have been built into Blue Origin's big launch tower at LC-36

Roughly when would we need to see work start on a crew access arm at the SLC-41 crew access tower if they were preparing for crew certification of Starliner for Vulcan?

Plus with Dreamchaser coming along in a similar timeframe, how will the arm work out to handle two different vehicles? Swappable tip rooms?

[Vahe231991]

ULA has already certified Atlas for Starliner doing same for Vulcan shouldn't be hard. Be surprised if they didn't allow for it in the design. ULA also has crew access tower on the pad.

Yes, Vulcan was designed with human rating in mind, per a tweet by Tory Bruno in 2019.

It doesn't have a retractable access arm, but crew access pathways have been built into Blue Origin's big launch tower at LC-36

Roughly when would we need to see work start on a crew access arm at the SLC-41 crew access tower if they were preparing for crew certification of Starliner for Vulcan?

Plus with Dreamchaser coming along in a similar timeframe, how will the arm work out to handle two different vehicles? Swappable tip rooms?

NASA can decide whether the Starliner's chequered development history will preclude it from awarding a contract to Boeing for Starliner flights aboard the Vulcan.

[DanClemmensen]

ULA has already certified Atlas for Starliner doing same for Vulcan shouldn't be hard. Be surprised if they didn't allow for it in the design. ULA also has crew access tower on the pad.

Yes, Vulcan was designed with human rating in mind, per a tweet by Tory Bruno in 2019.

It doesn't have a retractable access arm, but crew access pathways have been built into Blue Origin's big launch tower at LC-36

Roughly when would we need to see work start on a crew access arm at the SLC-41 crew access tower if they were preparing for crew certification of Starliner for Vulcan?

Plus with Dreamchaser coming along in a similar timeframe, how will the arm work out to handle two different vehicles? Swappable tip rooms?

NASA can decide whether the Starliner's chequered development history will preclude it from awarding a contract to Boeing for Starliner flights aboard the Vulcan.

NASA has contracted for six Starliner CCP missions after the CFT. That would be one per year in the years 2024-2029, which together with the already-contracted Crew Dragon CCP missions should more or less last until ISS is decommissioned. ULA has allocated seven of the remaining Atlas V LVs for Starliner. There is no indication that NASA will need any other Starliner missions. I think Boeing needs another customer to justify Starliner on Vulcan.

There are only two Starliner capsules and there is no indication that Boeing intends to build more. Refurbishment time is said to be six months. To a rough approximation, this means each CCP mission fully occupies a capsule for a year, so Boeing will not be able to sell many non-CCP missions.

[Asteroza]

There's certainly the implication here that Starliner won't be popular for commercial use until it completes it's ISS obligations out to 2029. But Dreamchaser is up before 2029 (early 2024), so Vulcan crew access tower will probably need a Dreamchaser crew access arm at least before 2024 if there is an on-pad late load need that can't be handled before pad rollout. So perhaps this year may see early crew arm work, which is a foundational component to Starliner human spaceflight certification on Vulcan.

Assuming they pencil in the spots for Starliner specific crew arm components when building it for Dreamchaser, the next item is whether SNC will shoulder most or all of the human certification work for Vulcan, in light of the timing of when a potential Dreamchaser and Starliner certification process begins. If Boeing is greedy, they will camp out until 2029 and dump the work on SNC to pay.