When will Starliner come home? Boeing and NASA still don't know

[Admin]

Boeing's Starliner capsule has been in orbit for more than a month, and it remains unclear when the spacecraft and its two astronauts will return to Earth.

When will Starliner come home? Boeing and NASA still don't know : Read more

 

[newtons_laws]

I guess they'll have to borrow a few more spare clothes from their ISS colleagues.....

 

[Coconutwater]

I pray this ends well. It seems that NASA and Boeing are at their wits end on how to solve these problems. Let Elon Musk send a rescue craft and cut Starliner from the ISS.

 

[FireNWater]

Unfortuately all that AWESOME data will end up getting dumped into the Indian Ocean . . . and Boeing will get a few million more taxpayer dollars to keep their engineers employed . . . . . <sigh>

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I am wondering how much velocity change was required of the thrusters to reach the ISS, and how much will be required for the re-entry burns.

Also wondering if any of he "thruster problems" experienced on the previous, robotic flight, occurred during the re-entry phase of the mission.

 

[jamestmallow]

I pray this ends well. It seems that NASA and Boeing are at their wits end on how to solve these problems. Let Elon Musk send a rescue craft and cut Starliner from the ISS.

Indeed. I hope Zeus returns them safely.

 

[ruffleshaveridges]

Boeing's Starliner capsule has been in orbit for more than a month, and it remains unclear when the spacecraft and its two astronauts will return to Earth.

When will Starliner come home? Boeing and NASA still don't know : Read more

Only way they're coming home safely is a ride from SpaceX, which is exactly what they're waiting for.

 

[newtons_laws]

Unfortuately all that AWESOME data will end up getting dumped into the Indian Ocean . . . and Boeing will get a few million more taxpayer dollars to keep their engineers employed . . . . . <sigh>

Seeing as Boeing are on a fixed price contract for the Starliner then any extra additional costs to fix the problems will have to come from Boeing, who are already (rightly) making a loss on their delayed Starliner project.

 

[Rob77]

Might be more to it than they're letting on, maybe Butch & Suni are refusing to come back on Starliner....and I don't blame them.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

With Space.com posting all sorts of articles about Musk and personnel issues at SpaceX, I am surprised that it so far has not mentioned that Boeing has pled guilty to a felony in their aircraft part of the business. And that is because they have not met their end of the safety culture improvements that they agreed to with the government 3 years ago to avoid a trial then. The Feds called them on it, and now the company has pled guilty to a felony. See https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjjjj85z0lno .

And then there is the discussion about whether Boeing is "too big to fail", or more to the point, too important to the Government to let fail. See https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6p2jeg14r9o .

This backdrop to the ongoing CFT of the Starliner capsule, with its repeated thruster failures, makes me worry that there is some politics getting mixed into the public statements and maybe also into the engineering response to the situation.

 

[Squirrel Boy]

Boeing's Starliner capsule has been in orbit for more than a month, and it remains unclear when the spacecraft and its two astronauts will return to Earth.

When will Starliner come home? Boeing and NASA still don't know : Read more

The astronauts were foolish to agree to ride on that thing.

 

[Hardcrunchyscience]

Unfortuately all that AWESOME data will end up getting dumped into the Indian Ocean . . . and Boeing will get a few million more taxpayer dollars to keep their engineers employed . . . . . <sigh>

Try a few hundred million dollars. But that likely will be subsumed under the Boeing-funded second crew test flight, a la the first/second unmanned test flights.

 

[DrRaviSharma]

I came across a recent article on Helium adsorption on hydrogen different varieties.
I am hoping this and another email to NASA to get attention to physics that could possibly be causing the He leak through adsorption. Here is the reference from arXiv preprint server
2407.12436v1


This has reference to Butch and Suni conference and NASA Manager Comments:

QUOTE
In addition to the thruster issues, several helium leaks have been identified in the Starliner capsule. "There were a number of specific actions that were identified from both the helium and the thruster anomalies," Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and Commercial Crew Program manager, said on Wednesday. "It's just a little bit over 30 [actions], of which more than half of them are closed at the moment."




"On the helium leak, we hope to bring that into the Starliner mission management team for final resolution later this week," Stich said. Despite these problems, agency officials said that the spacecraft is rated to leave the ISS in case of an emergency, with all but one of its 28 RCS thrusters cleared for use during reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

The decision to extend Starliner’s mission has also provided ground teams with additional time they weren’t expecting. According to Nappi, Amy Decker, of Starliner’s chief engineer's office, says the extra data they’re getting is "AWESOME, in all caps."

"The more time you have to get more data," Nappi said, "the more excited [the engineers get]."

END QUOTE

Regards
Dr Ravi Sharma
NASA Apollo Award 1969

 

[Unclear Engineer]

At this point, NASA and Boeing have wrapped up the thruster testing at White Sands, but have not finished analyzing the data. So, still no planned return date.

 

[newtons_laws]

At this point, NASA and Boeing have wrapped up the thruster testing at White Sands, but have not finished analyzing the data. So, still no planned return date.

Hope none of them had family vacation trips planned for August.....