There’s lingering uncertainty over the safety of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, NASA officials said Wednesday, and the space agency is split over the risk. As a result, chances are increasing that test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams may have to watch from the space station as their Starliner is cut loose to return to Earth empty.
If that happens, NASA would leave behind two of four astronauts from the next SpaceX taxi flight in late September, with the vacant seats set aside for Wilmore and Williams on the return trip next February.The pair expected to be gone just a week or two when they launched June 5 as Starliner’s first crew.
I wonder if the two astronauts have any say in which capsule they'd prefer to return home. And can they refuse to return home in the Starliner? At this point if I were them, I want to take a...
I wonder if the two astronauts have any say in which capsule they'd prefer to return home. And can they refuse to return home in the Starliner? At this point if I were them, I want to take a Dragon Crew home.
I am sure they are free to do that, as long as they never want to fly again. To be honest, if all the engineers at NASA say it’s reasonably safe, an astronaut refusing would be making decisions...
I am sure they are free to do that, as long as they never want to fly again. To be honest, if all the engineers at NASA say it’s reasonably safe, an astronaut refusing would be making decisions through fear and not logic.
My understanding of the main issue here is NASA is not convinced enough that a malfunctioning thruster (during, say undocking maneuvers) wouldn't ram Starliner into ISS. Which would very bad....
My understanding of the main issue here is NASA is not convinced enough that a malfunctioning thruster (during, say undocking maneuvers) wouldn't ram Starliner into ISS. Which would very bad.
They're less worried about Starliner being unable to properly deorbit, since the capsule is apparently designed to "hold" its reentry posture. The thrusters aren't needed to hold that posture during reentry; the physics forces affecting the capsule as it drops through the atmosphere will apparently orient it properly without any need for powered assist.
That undocking part though, NASA is quite concerned about. A thruster throwing Starliner into ISS would be bad. If the thrusters threw Starliner off into a wild orbit that's not going to reenter would also be bad. The main issue is they're worried some thrusters might fail (and not reignite, and thus remove control authority) or that active thrusters might fail to turn off (thus ramming/wild vector concerns).
Needing to rescue astronauts trapped in a dead capsule tracing an eccentric orbit would be a movie-worthy problem. There'd be a real ticking clock, plus there's no guarantee some other craft (Dragon for example) would be able to match orbits and accept the astronauts.
There's also a non-zero chance that a wild Starliner might manage to smash into some other piece of orbital infrastructure if it goes off uncontrolled into the orbital planes. Space is big, and even the orbital area around Earth is still quite big, but it is finite and there are vectors that would smash a malfunctioning Starliner into other satellites and so on.
As I said earlier - I wonder how mankind was able to land on the moon over 50 years ago. Nowadays we get people to space on half-assed rocket with basically no backup plan? How did we get to this...
As I said earlier - I wonder how mankind was able to land on the moon over 50 years ago. Nowadays we get people to space on half-assed rocket with basically no backup plan? How did we get to this point?
We spent something like $288 billion dollars (in 2024 dollars) to get to the moon. Boeing's Starliner contract is 4.2 billion. I think it's safe to say that we're not nearly as heavily invested in...
We spent something like $288 billion dollars (in 2024 dollars) to get to the moon. Boeing's Starliner contract is 4.2 billion. I think it's safe to say that we're not nearly as heavily invested in spaceflight now as we were at the time of the moon landing.
We are also 50 years from those times. Shouldn't we be able to make rockets better and also cheaper than before? Advance in technology, materials, computers, simulations... And yet we man a flight...
We are also 50 years from those times. Shouldn't we be able to make rockets better and also cheaper than before? Advance in technology, materials, computers, simulations... And yet we man a flight that had troubles even before launching. If there was no ISS, those two may have been dead by now. Or may have safely returned to Earth, who knows?
We have built rockets better, and cheaper than before. Just take a look at this graph. In the 1960s the Delta E was $177k/kg to LEO, the Delta II was $38k/kg in the 90s, the Delta IV was $10/kg in...
We have built rockets better, and cheaper than before. Just take a look at this graph. In the 1960s the Delta E was $177k/kg to LEO, the Delta II was $38k/kg in the 90s, the Delta IV was $10/kg in the 2000s, and the Falcon 9 is $2.6k/kg. They've reused a Falcon 9 booster something like 20 times, and can go from landing to the next flight in around 3 weeks.
I agree with your frustrations, but I think it should be focused on the Starliner program as the outlier rather than the space industry as a whole. After all, there's another launch vehicle that nobody is doubting will be able to carry the astronauts home safely after their extended stay.
Not that I disagree with you, but these rockets today are pretty fundamentally different from the ones 50 years ago. The funding was massive before, it was a race, and across the board people were...
Not that I disagree with you, but these rockets today are pretty fundamentally different from the ones 50 years ago.
The funding was massive before, it was a race, and across the board people were more willing to risk things to make history.
People died in early rockets and lessons were learned. There's a lot more scrutiny about that now. These are also private companies with PR around deaths to worry about where NASA itself during the space race had more support for that kind of thing than Boeing would today.
Today's rockets are also being built to be re-launchable and are significantly more complex to reach those goals.
Again though, these are things we could address like they were back then.
I know about rocket history to some extent. I know about three astronauts death in oxygen fire on top of Saturn V, I know about sealing problem on SRB of Space shuttle. But I also know Space...
I know about rocket history to some extent. I know about three astronauts death in oxygen fire on top of Saturn V, I know about sealing problem on SRB of Space shuttle. But I also know Space shuttle launched only when it was optimal conditions for launch and next one was sitting at ready waiting for possible rescue mission. Many times launches were postponed due to various problema, Starliner's too, yet they lunched it with prblems and likely hoped for the best.
As I said in my other comment - I would have thought we have advancem more in those 50 years. Don't get me wrong though - I realize we did advance. Yet sometimes it doean't look like that.
Moon landings were primarily a scientific and national pride endeavor. Now it's primarily profit driven and Boeing especially has moved from an engineering company to a government handout machine.
Moon landings were primarily a scientific and national pride endeavor. Now it's primarily profit driven and Boeing especially has moved from an engineering company to a government handout machine.
That is what I didn't say and yet thought about - money. Everything revolves around money. Who cares if astronauts live through it, it must make money.
That is what I didn't say and yet thought about - money. Everything revolves around money. Who cares if astronauts live through it, it must make money.
Yep. This kind of thing is bound to happen when you gut your in-house engineering force in favor of fractal spirals of subcontractors. Everybody in the chain is shaving off margin and nobody cares...
Yep. This kind of thing is bound to happen when you gut your in-house engineering force in favor of fractal spirals of subcontractors. Everybody in the chain is shaving off margin and nobody cares about quality since they can point their fingers at someone else.
It might make the company’s financials look good for a while but sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost.
I can’t help but wonder how compensation works for a mission like this, in a case where it’s very much gone wrong. I’m hoping and assuming these astronauts are getting paid in someway and haven’t...
I can’t help but wonder how compensation works for a mission like this, in a case where it’s very much gone wrong. I’m hoping and assuming these astronauts are getting paid in someway and haven’t effectively just being couch surfing without pay now that their one week contract is over. But I really wonder how that works, considering they’re already months past their original departure date with likely months more to go.
All NASA astronauts are salaried positions like any other employee and there's always work to be done on the ISS. They've both been on the ISS multiple times, they're getting paid and working like...
All NASA astronauts are salaried positions like any other employee and there's always work to be done on the ISS. They've both been on the ISS multiple times, they're getting paid and working like it's any other flight, just going to be much longer than planned.
I wouldn't be surprised if they are over the moon (so to speak) about it. Astronauts only have so many opportunities to go into space over their careers, and getting to stay up there for weeks or...
I wouldn't be surprised if they are over the moon (so to speak) about it. Astronauts only have so many opportunities to go into space over their careers, and getting to stay up there for weeks or months, rather than just days, is something that I can imagine most astronauts have dreamed of since they were children.
I wonder if the two astronauts have any say in which capsule they'd prefer to return home. And can they refuse to return home in the Starliner? At this point if I were them, I want to take a Dragon Crew home.
I am sure they are free to do that, as long as they never want to fly again. To be honest, if all the engineers at NASA say it’s reasonably safe, an astronaut refusing would be making decisions through fear and not logic.
My understanding of the main issue here is NASA is not convinced enough that a malfunctioning thruster (during, say undocking maneuvers) wouldn't ram Starliner into ISS. Which would very bad.
They're less worried about Starliner being unable to properly deorbit, since the capsule is apparently designed to "hold" its reentry posture. The thrusters aren't needed to hold that posture during reentry; the physics forces affecting the capsule as it drops through the atmosphere will apparently orient it properly without any need for powered assist.
That undocking part though, NASA is quite concerned about. A thruster throwing Starliner into ISS would be bad. If the thrusters threw Starliner off into a wild orbit that's not going to reenter would also be bad. The main issue is they're worried some thrusters might fail (and not reignite, and thus remove control authority) or that active thrusters might fail to turn off (thus ramming/wild vector concerns).
Needing to rescue astronauts trapped in a dead capsule tracing an eccentric orbit would be a movie-worthy problem. There'd be a real ticking clock, plus there's no guarantee some other craft (Dragon for example) would be able to match orbits and accept the astronauts.
There's also a non-zero chance that a wild Starliner might manage to smash into some other piece of orbital infrastructure if it goes off uncontrolled into the orbital planes. Space is big, and even the orbital area around Earth is still quite big, but it is finite and there are vectors that would smash a malfunctioning Starliner into other satellites and so on.
As I said earlier - I wonder how mankind was able to land on the moon over 50 years ago. Nowadays we get people to space on half-assed rocket with basically no backup plan? How did we get to this point?
We spent something like $288 billion dollars (in 2024 dollars) to get to the moon. Boeing's Starliner contract is 4.2 billion. I think it's safe to say that we're not nearly as heavily invested in spaceflight now as we were at the time of the moon landing.
We are also 50 years from those times. Shouldn't we be able to make rockets better and also cheaper than before? Advance in technology, materials, computers, simulations... And yet we man a flight that had troubles even before launching. If there was no ISS, those two may have been dead by now. Or may have safely returned to Earth, who knows?
We have built rockets better, and cheaper than before. Just take a look at this graph. In the 1960s the Delta E was $177k/kg to LEO, the Delta II was $38k/kg in the 90s, the Delta IV was $10/kg in the 2000s, and the Falcon 9 is $2.6k/kg. They've reused a Falcon 9 booster something like 20 times, and can go from landing to the next flight in around 3 weeks.
I agree with your frustrations, but I think it should be focused on the Starliner program as the outlier rather than the space industry as a whole. After all, there's another launch vehicle that nobody is doubting will be able to carry the astronauts home safely after their extended stay.
I should have been more concrete - the problem is Starliner, not the whole industry.
Not that I disagree with you, but these rockets today are pretty fundamentally different from the ones 50 years ago.
The funding was massive before, it was a race, and across the board people were more willing to risk things to make history.
People died in early rockets and lessons were learned. There's a lot more scrutiny about that now. These are also private companies with PR around deaths to worry about where NASA itself during the space race had more support for that kind of thing than Boeing would today.
Today's rockets are also being built to be re-launchable and are significantly more complex to reach those goals.
Again though, these are things we could address like they were back then.
I know about rocket history to some extent. I know about three astronauts death in oxygen fire on top of Saturn V, I know about sealing problem on SRB of Space shuttle. But I also know Space shuttle launched only when it was optimal conditions for launch and next one was sitting at ready waiting for possible rescue mission. Many times launches were postponed due to various problema, Starliner's too, yet they lunched it with prblems and likely hoped for the best.
As I said in my other comment - I would have thought we have advancem more in those 50 years. Don't get me wrong though - I realize we did advance. Yet sometimes it doean't look like that.
Moon landings were primarily a scientific and national pride endeavor. Now it's primarily profit driven and Boeing especially has moved from an engineering company to a government handout machine.
That is what I didn't say and yet thought about - money. Everything revolves around money. Who cares if astronauts live through it, it must make money.
Yep. This kind of thing is bound to happen when you gut your in-house engineering force in favor of fractal spirals of subcontractors. Everybody in the chain is shaving off margin and nobody cares about quality since they can point their fingers at someone else.
It might make the company’s financials look good for a while but sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost.
I can’t help but wonder how compensation works for a mission like this, in a case where it’s very much gone wrong. I’m hoping and assuming these astronauts are getting paid in someway and haven’t effectively just being couch surfing without pay now that their one week contract is over. But I really wonder how that works, considering they’re already months past their original departure date with likely months more to go.
All NASA astronauts are salaried positions like any other employee and there's always work to be done on the ISS. They've both been on the ISS multiple times, they're getting paid and working like it's any other flight, just going to be much longer than planned.
I wouldn't be surprised if they are over the moon (so to speak) about it. Astronauts only have so many opportunities to go into space over their careers, and getting to stay up there for weeks or months, rather than just days, is something that I can imagine most astronauts have dreamed of since they were children.