Boeing's 1st crewed Starliner to return to Earth without astronauts on Sept. 6

[Admin]

Boeing's troubled Starliner capsule is poised to return to Earth without any crew aboard on Sept. 6, NASA announced on Thursday (Aug. 29).

Boeing's 1st crewed Starliner to return to Earth without astronauts on Sept. 6 : Read more

 

[newtons_laws]

The article says
"The uncrewed Starliner spacecraft will perform a fully autonomous return with flight controllers at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida," NASA officials wrote in an update this evening.

"Teams on the ground are able to remotely command the spacecraft if needed through the necessary maneuvers for a safe undocking, re-entry, and parachute-assisted landing in the southwest United States," they added.

Of course for some rather obscure reason Boeing had removed the autonomous return software capability from the Starliner that had previously been demonstrated, so they will have to reinstate that software on the Starliner before it can leave the ISS. As an aside it would be interesting to know whether Nasa had been made aware by Boeing prior to launch of this Starliner mission that they had removed the autonomous return capability?

 

[jan.wolitzky]

Once the Starliner departs, there will be 9 crew aboard the ISS, with 3 seats on the attached Soyuz capsule, and 4 seats on the attached Crew Dragon. In the event of a needed partial (or complete) evacuation (as has happened at least six times, because of potential space junk collisions detected too late for an orbital change), what will be done with the two extra crew members, before the arrival of Crew-9 (with two empty seats)? The attached Dragon has no extra seats aboard, and the Boeing space suits that Wilmore and Williams wore are incompatible with the Dragon.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

And, with the FAA "grounding" SpaceX launches for an indeterminant period, there is no "emergency launch" capability for a "rescue" until the FAA is "satisfied".

If Boeing doesn't abandon the StarLiner contract, NASA needs to be much more involved in reviewing the status of future Boeing launches, to be more assured that Boeing doesn't keep inserting NASA astronauts between rocks and hard places with its lack of reliability and its unannounced deletion of already proven capabilities.

Boeing really should just stop trying, having already lost over a billion dollars and not having made past progress rapidly enough to honestly project success before the ISS is set to retire.

But, scuttlebutt is that Boeings new CEO has said he intends to complete the project. I guess that seems necessary as part of rehabilitating Boeing's reputation for engaging in future business, both in the space industry and the aircraft industry.

Hoping that Blue Origin steps up and becomes an honest option to SpaceX for NASA. We will get to see how its New Glen launch vehicle performs before the end of this year (hopefully).

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Does it seem strange to anybody else that NASA allowed different commercial providers to make space suits that are incompatible with each other's spacecraft? At least NASA was smart enough to standardize the docking mechanisms for the craft it paid to develop for transporting its astronauts to the ISS.

But, what is going to happen if NASA's vision for multiple commercial LEO space stations with multiple capsule types becomes a reality without standardizing much of the most basic inter-compatibility apparatus?

Much of the commercial world is thinking monopolistically, and tends to avoid interchangeability for purposes of profiteering. Boeing even lobbied NASA to give it a sole source contract for the new space capsule. We can't rely on commercial companies to put the best interests of the country ahead of their interests in maximizing profits for their companies.

 

[Viking]

Does it seem strange to anybody else that NASA allowed different commercial providers to make space suits that are incompatible with each other's spacecraft? At least NASA was smart enough to standardize the docking mechanisms for the craft it paid to develop for transporting its astronauts to the ISS.

But, what is going to happen if NASA's vision for multiple commercial LEO space stations with multiple capsule types becomes a reality without standardizing much of the most basic inter-compatibility apparatus?

Much of the commercial world is thinking monopolistically, and tends to avoid interchangeability for purposes of profiteering. Boeing even lobbied NASA to give it a sole source contract for the new space capsule. We can't rely on commercial companies to put the best interests of the country ahead of their interests in maximizing profits for their companies.

Not really. The current director of NASA was upset that NASA was using orange juice from California instead of Florida.

 

[newtons_laws]

Meanwhile Starliner has started making weird noises. On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft. It sounds like a regular pulse with a repetition rate of about a second (and no, I'm sure it's not someone banging on the outside hull of Starliner even if it sounds like that!) https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/...an-emitting-strange-sonar-noises-on-saturday/

Maybe it's electrical crosstalk in the Starliner's wiring, with a system timing pulse getting through to the loudspeaker amplifier input? In itself not a problem, but possibly indicative of more quality problems....

 

[Sacchi]

Your article on tonight's Calypso touch down, is stating that it was 23:01, local time here in New Mexico, when Calypso touched down; that is an incorrect local time.
It was 22:18 here in the Tularosa Basin, when Calypso touched down out at White Sands.