The origin of Boeing's Starliner is traced back to 2010. I got an early look | Tim Walters

As I watched Boeing’s crewed Starliner capsule lift off atop an Atlas V rocket on Wednesday, it was something I had been looking forward to for 14 years.

You read that right — 14 years.

The year was 2010, and I got to see Starliner truly in its infancy — as bits and pieces at a secretive place in California.

Sit back and let me tell you my tale.

A quick commercial space history lesson

On April 15, 2010, President Barack Obama made a historic speech about the space program at Kennedy Space Center.

The speech was immensely controversial at the time. The Space Shuttle program was about a year away from sunsetting (something set forth by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush in 2005), but Obama went a step further, cancelling shuttle’s successor, the moon project Constellation.

He made NASA’s new mission to get people to Mars, while setting forth a new era of commercial space — with a big boost from government funding — for purposes like getting astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, allowing industry to step in to find efficiencies that government has struggled with over time — like staying on budget and on time.

It was a step much like what the government had done with the aviation industry in 1978, when the Airline Deregulation Act turned over the civil airline industry into a free market competition.

As we’ve seen over the past 14 years, this may be President Obama’s greatest success in hindsight.

SpaceX launches multiple rockets per week from the Space Coast, while also having sent 12 crewed missions to the space station.

With Boeing’s Starliner launch on June 5, we now have two commercial entities to get crewed launches to the ISS.

But back to 2010...

Getting in front of commercial space

Following President Obama’s announcement in April, we at FLORIDA TODAY wanted to get ahead of the curve.

Under the direction of space reporter Todd Halvorson — one of NASA’s famed “Chroniclers” — he and I embarked on a journey to put together a documentary on this new thing called commercial space.

In August, we flew out west. Todd did an amazing job as our travel agent.

We had multiple destinations set forth.

They included: Boeing’s Phantom Works in Huntington Beach, California; SpaceX, in Hawthorne; XCOR, based at Mojave’s Air and Space Port; a side trip to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to check out the early stages of the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012; and finally, Bigelow Aerospace, In Las Vegas.

Boeing’s Phantom Works lives up to reputation

Our first stop was Boeing’s secretive Phantom Works. It was a beautiful campus, in many ways reminiscent to the one I enjoyed at the University of Florida. But instead of classes being taught inside the buildings, they were building super secretive things, among them a planned space capsule that would one day carry humans to space.

We were taken to a warehouse-like structure, and inside was a large bronze-colored disc propped up on a pedestal. A worker was putting sensors on the inner part of the disc.

The outside had a hexagonal pattern. I was told I had to stay a certain distance away while shooting photo and video because they didn’t want competition — or foreign governments — to steal their proprietary secrets, including the depths of those hexagons.

We then sat through an informational meeting with several project managers — the capsule being referred to as CST-100.

They broke down all facets of their futuristic ferry. A lot of it was like another language to me.

As a side note, one of these leads was eventually relocated to Florida, and he now lives a half mile from me. Small world.

We were then shown a scale model exhibiting how the CST-100 would dock with the International Space Station. It was quite remarkable.

The CST-100 was in such a stage of infancy, the top half of the first test article hadn’t even been delivered to Phantom Works yet. But one of our tour guides asked us if we wanted to see it.

Of course, the answer was a resounding “Yes!”

We were taken in a van to a non-descript neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. You’d never know a piece of space history was being built there.

As we pulled up to another tall, warehouse-like building, I was amazed at what I saw from the street: through two open bay doors, you could see the top half of a space capsule!

It had the same hexagonal design as the disc we had seen earlier, but it was obviously much taller, yet still in its most primitive form.

It was a sight to behold, nonetheless.

Boeing had high hopes for their CST-100 capsule, and we were appreciative of the great tour and information they had given us.

A visit to Vegas to meet a man named Bigelow

For the purposes of this column, I’ll skip past our visits to SpaceX, XCOR and NASA’s JPL. I want to stick to Boeing.

We departed L.A. after several days and headed to Las Vegas, where just outside the famed strip sits another secretive structure, this one owned by billionaire hotel magnate, Robert Bigelow.

We got a tour of the facility, including walking up to the roof in 108-degree weather. It was essentially for me to get a cool shot of the strip and just how close it was to something this top secret.

Inside Bigelow, we got to see mockups of his “expandable” space station units. Many didn’t know it, but he had two of his expandables orbiting the Earth, test articles launched in 2006 and 2007 from Russian rockets because ITAR regulations stopped him from launching on U.S. soil.

We then got to do an interview with the elusive Mr. Bigelow. He was generous with his time.

His ultimate plan was to send his expandable units into space, one further than the other, and astronauts could travel from one “space hotel” to another to go deeper and deeper into space.

His preferred capsule was the CST-100.

It was at Bigelow where they had a full mockup of Boeing’s capsule, and I got to climb inside with Todd and sit at the controls.

It was quite spacious and comfy for a space craft, but there were only two of us and no payload, after all.

Bigelow’s timeline had Boeing launching humans to his space hotels in 2014.

Unfortunately, it took a bit longer.

A new name, same course

On Sept. 4, 2015, Boeing announced that the spacecraft would officially be called the CST-100 Starliner.

A series of delays and setbacks continued to push back Starliner. Dates like 2018 were used. And then 2019. And then a pandemic.

Finally, on May 19, 2022, Boeing completed a successful uncrewed Starliner mission to the ISS, clearing the way for the first crewed flight test.

We finally saw that come to fruition Wednesday after several more delays.

I stood in my driveway, raising my fist in victory as it lifted off with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. I felt so incredibly happy for all those brilliant people I had met 14 years before, awed by the greatness that they had achieved.

Space Inc.: A documentary ahead of its time

My documentary, which we titled “Space Inc.,” debuted on Nov. 14, 2010.

While much of it was speculative, much of it became reality. Sure, the timelines were off, but think about it: launching humans on top of giant bombs is dangerous, and they want to make sure they get it right.

I’ve reposted the documentary to floridatoday.com. Check it out if you have 30 minutes. It’s a great watch and will teach you a lot about the early days of commercial space.

Sure, it was only 14 years ago, but 14 years is a long time when you think of all that’s happened for the space industry since.

Walters can be reached at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: I saw Boeing's Starliner in 2010. Here's what it looked like | Walters