Boeing leases old NASA hangar to build spaceship

NASA’s old space shuttle hangar at the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, will now be used by the largest aerospace company in the world, Boeing to test and build Boeing’s new spaceship, which will be used to transport astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and back, confirmed a report in Space.com. The report further states that NASA leased out the old hangar, which happens to be the space shuttle processing hangar -  Orbiter Processing Hangar Bay 3 at the space centre in Florida to Boeing for a period of 15 years.

Boeing testing a model of the CST-100

The Crew Space Transportation-100 (CST-100) capsule is being touted as the one, which Boeing plans to test and build at the space facility in Florida, and it has been essentially designed to function like a transport medium. The report further states that the CST-100 capsule resembles a gumdrop and can accomodate 7 astronauts at any single point. Boeing will place the CST-100 atop an Atlas 5 rocket, by the United Launch Alliance company.

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Boeing aims that it should let out the CST-100 by 2015. Boeing’s choice of location (Florida), according to this report is being perceived as a highly conducive one. Since NASA wound up its space program spanning three decades, several those who earned their livelihood off this lost their jobs. A new facility set up here would invariably mean more job opportunities.