Boeing’s Starliner program can only be called nothing short of a disaster. It’s now seven years behind schedule and only just had its inaugural flight with astronauts last month.
Except now the spacecraft continues to have problems.
Originally the astronauts were supposed to return to Earth on Starliner in mid June. Then this was pushed back twice until June 26th. And it was announced late on a Friday evening (and we all know what those announcements mean) that the return has been indefinitely delayed.
The publicly admitted problems are five helium leaks and issues with the trusters aboard the spacecraft. None of these in theory preclude a return trip but as we engineers say, small problems lead to bigger problems every time.
It also brings into question the reliability of other systems. Since so many errors have cropped up over each test flight of Starliner, I’m sure confidence is, if not low, at least shaky that its up to the safety standards for a return flight with humans aboard.
NASA and Boeing now face a difficult decision. The longest time Starliner can remain docked before returning is 45 days, which would be July 21st. With the planned operations at the ISS and the July 4th holiday that date is going to be coming up very quickly. Engineers will have to make a go/no-go decision on whether to return the craft with humans aboard.
The easy decision for NASA is to let Starliner return without anyone aboard and ditch it into the ocean. Then have the astronauts return on a more reliable spacecraft. However, this would be an absolutely disastrous outcome for Boeing whose stock would almost certainly take a beating from another PR nightmare. Unfortunately, NASA kisses Boeing’s ass like so many governmental organizations do with their contractors despite how good they are at their jobs. It continues to astonish me that SpaceX with their incredible cadence, low cost, and insane reliability (and technology) seems to play second fiddle at NASA and the DOD.
As no fan of Boeing, I personally hope the astronauts have to be rescued by a SpaceX Dragon, which would hopefully cement that SpaceX is the right partner for spaceflight. It’s so ironic that the DOD and NASA only started demanding two launch partners after SpaceX became so dominant. Really speaks to a lot of shady dealings inside the government.
In any case, my biggest prayers are that the two astronauts return safely, no matter how that outcome occurs. Personally, you couldn’t pay me to get on a Starliner or a 737 MAX.