Boeing Co. once helped the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in the race to the moon. Now the company intends to go toe-to-toe with newcomers such as billionaire Elon Musk in the next era of space exploration and commerce.
Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg sketched out a Jetsons-like future at a conference Tuesday, envisioning a commercial space-travel market with dozens of destinations orbiting the Earth and hypersonic aircraft shuttling travelers between continents in two hours or less. And Boeing intends to be a key player in the initial push to send humans to Mars, maybe even beating Musk to his long-time goal.

“I’m convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket,” Muilenburg said at the Chicago event on innovation, which was sponsored by the Atlantic magazine.


Like Musk’s SpaceX, Boeing is focused on building out the commercial space sector near earth as spaceflight becomes more routine, while developing technology to venture far beyond the moon. The Chicago-based aerospace giant is working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to develop a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System for deep space exploration. Boeing and SpaceX are also the first commercial companies NASA selected to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.

Mars Transport
Musk last week welcomed competitors as he unveiled a SpaceX craft that would dwarf the workhorse of Apollo missions of a half-century ago, hauling 100 travelers to Mars with cruise-ship-style amenities.

“The goal of SpaceX really is to build the transport system. It’s like building the Union Pacific railroad,” Musk told a space conference, as he laid out a plan to bring travel to Mars to a mass market with tickets priced one day as low as $100,000.

Boeing built the first stage for the Saturn V, the most powerful U.S. rocket ever built, which took men to the moon. Nowadays, Muilenburg sees space tourism closer to home “blossoming over the next couple of decades into a viable commercial market.” The International Space Station could be joined in low-earth orbit by dozens of hotels and companies pursuing micro-gravity manufacturing and research, he said.
“I think it’s a fascinating area for us,” he said.

Muilenburg said Boeing will make spacecraft for the new era of tourists. He also sees potential for hypersonic aircraft, traveling at upwards of three times the speed of sound.

Science Fiction
Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp. are among the space heavyweights developing experimental aircraft that could fly U.S. travelers at speeds right out of a science fiction movie.

Lockheed’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 is being designed to zip through the sky at Mach 20 (about 13,000 miles per hour), flying between New York and Los Angeles in 12 minutes. Boeing’s X-51A WaveRider, which relied on its own shock waves for compression lift, reached Mach 5.1 in 2013.

Costs will need to drop substantially before these experimental spacecraft can be seriously considered for commercial use, Muilenburg said.

“That business model isn’t closed yet. At some point it will,” he said. “The future of innovation has to include not only the technology, but economic viability.”

This console generation has become known for its plethora of remasters. Some, like The Last of Us and Grand Theft Auto V, have been solid updates to last generation's brightest games. Others haven't fared as well.

Right now, EA is the last big publisher to be staying away from that arms race. When I spoke with Patrick Soderlund, executive vice president for EA Studios at E3 2015, he emphasized that the company was looking ahead to new projects instead of dipping into the back catalog for remasters.

In the year since, that position has been reversed, as EA is now strongly considering a move into the remaster space. Of all the publisher's games, one series that stands out as having strong demand from fans: Mass Effect.

In our conversation at EA's Gamescom welcome event, Soderlund stopped short of confirming the remasters are coming, but he strongly hinted that they might be in the offing when we asked about BioWare's sci-fi trilogy specifically. Here's that segment of my interview:

Game Informer: One of the things I asked you last year when we sat down at E3 was about Mass Effect. At the time, there were two publishers that hadn't really dipped into the remaster world: you and Activision. Activision has since released a number of remasters or ports, and now they are working on a full-on remaster for MW. Revisiting this as the last man standing on remasters, has anything changed? Like a Mass Effect trilogy remaster?

Soderlund: What's changed is that there is proof in the market that people want it, maybe more than there was when we spoke. There were some that did it before, but I think there is even more clear evidence that this is something that people really want. The honest answer is that we are absolutely actively looking at it. I can't announce anything today, but you can expect us most likely to follow our fellow partners in Activision and other companies that have done this successfully.

Despite the strong desire from the market for remasters of popular games like Mass Effect, the decision isn't an easy one. Soderlund told me that there are a number of factors EA is considering so it doesn't make a mistake.

"We have to be careful in choosing the right brands for the right reasons at the right time," he explained. "A remaster is something that you can just do or do it really well. I want to make sure that if we were to do it, we would do it really well and that people feel that it's the same game but it feels so much better in this new shape and form. There have been titles that have come out that have done it really well, and there have been others that maybe haven't done it so well. We just want to make sure that we stay in the 'done it really well' camp."

With Mass Effect Andromeda on the way, the timing seems like it might be perfect to revisit Commander Shepard's adventure. EA says that Andromeda is still on track to make its current release window, though fans have expressed concern since the public hasn't seen gameplay yet.

"You'll get [your first look at gameplay] in the not too distant future," Soderlund said when I inquired about the game's absence from E3 and Gamescom. "I get people want to see gameplay and I just came back from a short vacation and I played through the first three hours of the game. It's very playable, and there is no alarm about, 'Why aren't they showing it?' It's strictly that the game will get the right type of exposure at the right time and that we can the right voice for it. Right now we're focused on our big titles for [October through December], and when that's done, we'll shift to Mass Effect. You'll see a lot more very shortly."

Private spaceflight company Moon Express will soon announce it has been granted regulatory approval by the US government to send a lunar lander to the surface of the Moon, according to a source familiar with the matter. If so, that means the company will be the first private company to have received permission from the government to send a vehicle beyond Earth orbit and on to another world.

GRANTING PERMISSION TO SEND A VEHICLE BEYOND EARTH ORBIT


Moon Express is a private spaceflight company with long-term hopes of mining the lunar surface. But in the short term, the company is focused on simply getting to the Moon first. The venture is developing the MX-1 — a 20-pound lunar lander designed to "hop" across the Moon’s surface. MX-1 is in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, an international contest to send the first privately funded spacecraft to the Moon. In order to win that competition, Moon Express has to get its lander to the surface of the Moon before December 31st, 2017.

The company has already booked a ride on an experimental rocket called the Electron, manufactured by startup Rocket Lab. But Moon Express still needs permission to go to the Moon — and that was turning into an issue for the company. Only state governments have ever traveled to the Moon or other planets. Currently, there’s no regulatory framework in place that allows the US government to oversee private missions beyond Earth orbit.

THE US HAS TO ADHERE TO OBLIGATIONS SET BY THE OUTER SPACE TREATY

And that’s a problem, since the US has to adhere to obligations set by the Outer Space Treaty — an international agreement that guides how nations conduct missions in space. Specifically, the US has to adequately oversee private missions to other planetary bodies, as well as ensure that companies don’t violate planetary protection. But right now, there is no way for the government to make sure that private missions going beyond Earth orbit don’t violate these portions of the treaty.

So Moon Express came up with its own temporary solution. In April, the company announced that it had submitted a payload review to the Federal Aviation Administration, in which it disclosed how the MX-1 mission would comply with the Outer Space Treaty. That included giving the government certain "voluntary disclosures," detailing ways in which the mission adhered to the treaty. And Moon Express is expected to announce that its regulatory patch idea worked, according to the source, who asked to remain anonymous.


If so, the implications are huge. This would be the first company that’s ever been approved to go so far into space. The decision will likely form a precedent for any future companies that want to travel to deep space. SpaceX, which recently announced its intentions to go to Mars in 2018, will need similar approval.