Boeing insists its first crewed mission of the Starliner capsule is “going well” despite another delay in the return of its astronauts from the International Space Station. In a statement on Wednesday, the company said the delay is part of the program and not a failure. “It is a test flight,” the company said. “The mission is still going and it is going well.” The company also said the Starliner was “performing well” and could return to earth at any time if necessary.
The Starliner docked with the ISS on June 6 and was supposed to leave a week later. But a total of five helium leaks and issues with the thrusters pushed that back. It was delayed again and Boeing and NASA have stopped giving projected dates. The departure is now scheduled for sometime in July. Many news outlets have used the word “stranded” to describe the plight of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, which the company is emphatically rejecting.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck! It’s probably stranded.
Have to love political corporate speak. While Boeing exclaims everything “going swell” in fact have a swelling list of issues. This is akin to calling a traffic accident a test drive.
And at Tesla …it would be a ” test drive “, accident and all…
Maybe NASA and Boeing could reach out to AI ,too and join the FAA in that ” Endeavor .”
They spent a long time supposedly fixing the helium leaks on the ground. Bet the highly trained mechanics up there concentrate harder on the job than their ground-based colleagues.
Heard a NASA “insider” say on the BBC that the alternative ways of getting the crew home are already being prepared.
Did not say a Tesla ride instead of a Lada, but I am sure they would aim for that due to the embarrassment factor.
How long before the extra two “guests” have eaten all the food and the knives come out?
When someone continually tells you how great things are, they’re usually not.
NASA: “Hello, Roscosmos? Yeah, NASA here. Listen, our Starliner shuttle is in the shop with some minor issues and we need to bring home two of our colleagues who have upcoming family obligations. How much to send a Soyuz to get them?”
Roscosmos (Putey): “Stand by” (long pause). “Uhhhh, we can do for 8 billion U.S. dollars payable to our non-profit 501C.3 “Ukraine Land Acquisition Trust” account in Geneva. Cash or cashier’s cheques only (no wooden nickels!).”
NASA: “O.K., when could you launch? We need to get them back as soon as possible as rations are getting low and they may have to start eating insulation.”
Roscosmos (Putey): “Stand by (longer pause). Uhhhh, we need to replace the carburetor and spark plugs and fill it with diesel, so maybe September? But no worries, we are currently offering a 2-for-1 “all you can eat” smorgasbord of borsch, tvorog, beet roots and, on special occasions, caviar! And only for 1 billion U.S. dollars more payable to the same trust (cash or cashier’s cheques only–no wooden nickels!).”
NASA: “Uh, let me call you back.”
NASA: “Hello Elon? How much….”
“OK. ve get point”.
Thank you for the morning laugh out loud Marc.
Now that was funny…
Yeah, and the Titan was on a test dive
When I compare Boeing statements with elaborations by journalists (i.e., “however”, “but”, “insists”), I find it difficult to find fact vs editorial in articles such as this and then the modern wonder of instant commentary posts.
The media seems looking for a scoop, a mystery. For my part, I’ll read NASA and Boeing releases and go with that.
Not everything is Capricorn One.
Bill, Absolutely with you on this one. It’s a test flight and nothing works perfectly, ever. The armchair warriors are in an echo chamber and they’re enjoying it, but I can’t stand reading such comments.
Me? I put myself in the place of the engineers from NASA and Boeing who are all immersed in bringing out the best performance in Starliner for the long haul. All the best to them.
Maybe they should forego inserting people into the mix when it’s “just a test flight” ?
They already did… twice.
While it’s fun and even justifiable to dog-pile on Boeing right now, there is some truth to what they’re saying.
The leaks are in the Service Module. This part is discarded before reentry and burns up in the atmosphere. So while they could leave anytime, doing so would rob engineers of the opportunity to test and gather data. Without this data it’ll be more difficult to figure out how to fix the problem for future Starliners.
So Boeing engineers want to test and observe as much as possible before throwing away the evidence. Meanwhile, the ISS has PLENTY of reserves to support the extra astronauts. I recall NASA gets worried when rations drop below six-months’ worth. And they’re not worried.
Exactly Kirk! This is a test flight. There is a problem with a component. Is it better to study that component while it is in your hand or after it burns up in the atmosphere?
There’s also the issue of regular “space walks” and other station activities scheduled which require onboard resources. The departure of the Starliner would disrupt those activities.
But rest assured that whenever NASA, Boeing, or any other entity doesn’t announce every single detail, commenters will fill in the blanks with innuendo.
If you are correct, then why doesn’t Boeing just say that? Everyone would understand. Instead, they pull back to corporate-speak announcements with plenty of wording that bends around specificity. You should get a job as their PR person. Also, so many corporations make an art out of saying something that means nothing. That has a corrosive effect on their collective credibility.
Most reputable PR experts would agree with you completely. The problem is when the statements drafted by the Corporate Comms group have to be vetted by “Legal” first. Usually that’s when it turns into diarrhea.
I don’t know why Boeing didn’t say so in this press release. My summation above comes from a joint NASA/Boeing press briefing held on June 18.
Unfortunately, a lot of news outlets didn’t cover that (or anything space-related) in depth.
You make valid points, but Boeing received a third more money from NASA to develop this vehicle, yet couldn’t deliver a quality product as quick as SpaceX. Well… it has yet to deliver that product.
while i agree that the capsule is probably not stranded and they are just gathering data from the service module while they still can, it is important to remember that no, this is not a test flight. This is a demonstration flight intended to demonstrate that the system is ready for full reliable operation as a crew transport vehicle. This flight is demonstrating the opposite if that and i expect NASA to be a lot more candid about the failure boeing experienced on this mission once the crew is down safe. I belive the crew will return safely on starliner but it is a failure nonetheless.
Is there a link to that Boeing statement? Would be interesting to read it in full.
Downplaying the dire nature of the situation, while understating / misrepresenting the obvious. All in the hope of avoiding some level of embarrassment or loss of credibility both of which are long gone. This is starting to feel like the Kursk in slow motion.
Using the Starliner makes the ISS “Hotel California” – you can check out but you can never leave.
18% (5 of 28) of the Starliner’s thrusters failed during docking. Testing them for a fraction of a second and declaring that four of these are now working nominally does nothing to address why they failed or why 18% or more of them aren’t at significant risk of failing again during reentry. Complicating this further is that 1 of the thrusters appears to have failed in a different way, so there are at least 2 separate faults with the thruster systems. Both NASA and Boeing are staffed with highly qualified smart people and there is no doubt that they are burning the midnight oil to try answer this question. But if they can’t answer that question, putting astronauts on it for the return trip, would meet the text book definition of normalization of deviance.
The thrusters don’t endanger re-entry. They are on the service module which is discarded before the final plunge.
The thrusters still have to get the vehicle to the re-entry point. Get proper speed and positioning.
The thrusters are critical to reentry.
“In a statement on Wednesday, the company said the delay is part of the program and not a failure………”
Well, that’s a classic Baghdad Bob response…….stunning.
I can quit smoking any time I want to. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The helium leaks are getting a lot of public attention lately. I used to work in the engineering of hard drives. At that time, we were just starting to design prototype hard drives filled with helium instead of air. The reason is helium, being less dense and a much smaller molecule, allowed the read/write heads to fly lower over the spinning magnetic storage media without “stalling”. The difficulty was how to keep the helium from leaking out before the stated life of the drive expires. Typically 5 years. Helium can leak along, or thru typical sealing gaskets. The electrical connectors were fired glass formed around gold plated connector pins. That was the only way (at the time) to seal a connector. For the Starliner, they use helium to pressurize the thrusters because it’s the only inert gas that won’t freeze into liquid in space(like nitrogen).
The first flight of the Starliner was fully automated, IIRC. Is there a chance Boeing could fly the capsule home under remote control and let the two astronauts return via SpaceX or Soyuz?
First two. This is the third flight.
And yes, it can fly entirely under automation. Indeed, this is normal, the astronauts don’t usually need to interfere except for testing purposes, etc.
Then let them, but DO NOT jeopardize our Astronauts on a vehicle that is not up to standards.
If the Starliner was “doing well”, it would be home already.
Given Boeing’s ongoing quality assurance issues, do we really want to allow them to continue with a Blank Check for overruns? Cut this program now, they pushed a product that after flight test obviously isn’t up to standard. Human lives haven’t mattered that much to Boeing, so why should we expect NASA’s new Launch system to matter to Boeing, they will just go to NASA and the government and demand more money and both will capitulate. Paychecks are currently too fat at the top, PUT THE ENGINEERS that ran Boeing back at the top re-structure the management to what it was BEFORE McDonald Douglass joined a prosperous, safe company. The Bean Counters have ruined Boeing and its’ reputation to include the faith of the American Public as the “Can Do” company. Americans fear of Boeing products is at an all-time high and rightly so. Bring my Astronauts home safely, no exception.
In fairness this is the same site that praised Space X for their success every time one of their rockets crashed or failed in some other way.
My feelings about Musk have softened considerably since he came out in favor of free speech and patriotism but his rockets fail also.
Space X has always been transparent about each test flight, stating test flight goals as well as possibiity of rocket destruction during those kinds of test flights. It has met those goals and projections. Whether or not Musk is in favor of free speech and patriotism is a matter of personal opinion, totally irrelevant in comparing SpaceX’s success with Boeing’s, and certainly to this story.
SpaceX’s very public experimental Starship program are the only vehicles we’ve seen explode recently. To emphasize that while ignoring their operational Falcon 9 workhorse is nonsense. 300 consecutive successful launches and as many first stage landings. Some of the Falcon boosters have been reused over 20 times. Quite an achievement.
Absolutely. Falcon 9 is an achievement few have actually begun to understand largely because of main stream media’s bias against @elonMusk’s support of free speech. The historical RUDs “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of SpaceX rockets were planned and treated as experiments and ultimately yielded droves of critical information impossible to access otherwise.
So if Boeing said before every flight their rocket might fail that would put them on parity with Space X?
No it would not. Nor has SpaceX made such a brutally stupid statement. Provide a direct reference supporting your comment.
I mention the positive things about Musk because I’m not prejudiced against him. He seems to be one of the ‘good guys’, despite Tesla. I mention this to establish that my criticism of his rockets exploding is not predicated on personal opinion.
“Despite Tesla.” Care to elaborate ? If you don’t own or operate a Tesla on a daily basis don’t bother responding to this comment. Trying to explain gamma squeezes on Game Stop to gramma is a fools errand. Even if she holds a Series 3.
Everything is “going well” until it’s not. Flying is fun until you crash wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip- flops and you are trapped inside a burning aircraft.
Should have never retired *ALL* of the Space Shuttle Orbiter fleet.