Original subtitles

Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut.

We're at a really

exciting time

where the number

of crewed vehicles

going to the International Space Station

will go from just one to three.

The Soyuz's eight year

monopoly for getting humans up

to the International Space Station

is finally coming to an end.

So today we're gonna take a deep dive on the two

new spaceships that are going to be responsible

for taking humans to

and from

the International Space Station from the United States.

So we're gonna compare the Boeing Starliner,

riding an Atlas V rocket,

to SpaceX's Crew Dragon on their Falcon 9 Rocket.

And to see how

far we've progressed in the world of human spaceflight,

we're also gonna compare all of these

systems alongside

Russia's Soyuz capsule

and the United States' retired Space Shuttle,

in a side by side comparison.

We'll take a look at the designs,

the rockets they ride, the dimensions,

the cost, the safety considerations,

and any other unique feature that each vehicle offers.

Considering I've been

up close and personal with SpaceX's Crew

Dragon Capsule

and Boeing's Starliner,

I think I've got some pretty

good insight on these vehicles.

Let's get started!

The International Space Station is

still one of the greatest feats of human engineering.

I mean after all,

it's a football field-sized floating laboratory

traveling 10 times faster than a bullet,

circling the Earth

every 90 minutes.

It's taken

33 launches to put all of its pieces into orbit

and has been home to over 230 people

from almost 20 countries.

The ISS typically has six astronauts on board.

Crew are sent up in groups of three

and usually reside at the station for six months.

There is typically

a three month overlap for existing crew

and newly arriving crew.

But since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011,

there's only been a single ride to the ISS,

that's Russia's Soyuz vehicle.

But we're coming up on a really

exciting time,

as the United States prepares to send U.S. astronauts

to the International Space Station from U.S. soil on two

brand new spaceships!

And what I think is most exciting is

NASA has hired private companies to do the development

and the operations in a new program

called the Commercial Crew Program.

The two companies that won the contracts are

SpaceX and Boeing.

I'm not really going to get into how

the Commercial Crew Program got started or

has progressed in today's video,

I mostly want to talk about the hardware,

starting off with Boeing and their Starliner.

Boeing started

designing the Starliner,

originally known as the CST-100,

in 2010, after winning a contract from NASA

for the CCDev program.

The Starliner is the traditional

truncated-cone capsule design,

much like previous spacecraft from the United States.

It can carry up to seven astronauts at a time,

although NASA won't use more than four seats at a time.

The Starliner will be the first

orbital capsule to land on solid ground

in the United States.

Now this is similar to how the Soyuz capsule lands,

and also how Blue Origin's

Suborbital New Shepherd capsule lands.

There are five

landing sites proposed in the Western United States,

but the two prime sites will be the U.S.'s Army's

White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico

and the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.

Starliner will land

using parachutes and a set of large airbags.

A pair of drogue chutes are deployed at about nine

kilometers and altitude,

followed by a trio of main chutes at 3.6 kilometers,

and at 1.5 kilometers in altitude,

the heat shield is ditched

and the six airbags are inflated.