The upcoming launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will mark not just the first time the spacecraft has carried astronauts but also the first crewed launch of the Atlas 5, a vehicle approaching its retirement.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...