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NASA violated safety standards docking Boeing Starliner to ISS
This is the shocking part of the Boeing Starliner scandals that hasn’t gotten any media attention: When docking at the ISS, NASA greenlit both approach and docking to the space station even though the Starliner’s thrusters had failed—and there was insufficient redundancy to guarantee a safe docking…
This is the biggest scandal of the group. It’s the kind of management that destroyed the Challenger in 1986. I think this really illustrates that bureaucracies can’t learn from “institutional memory”. After a while, all those memories walk out the door and end up in a retirement village…
To my mind, there are 4 major scandals involving the Starliner project:
- Boeing’s mismanagement of the project and NASA funding, doing far less with far more than SpaceX… Embarrassingly so.
- Docking the Starliner to the ISS when safety standards dictated that they must abort and return to Earth. I understand that would put them between a rock and a hard place… But if they’d crashed into the ISS, they could have killed everyone and destroyed a $300 billion asset. NASA’s luck eventually runs out.
- NASA was only paying the astronauts $5 a day per diem for the extra 9 months in space… No overtime.
- Political interference on NASA prevented a rescue flight before the election.
Yes. They should.
Military service pays so poorly, that many families often resort to food stamps to make ends meet. So yes, they should get something extra for being on extended over seas deployments weather on the ground or at sea.
Interesting video. Kudo’s to SpaceX for delivering reliable spacecraft and it would be good for the country if Boeing fixes their quality issues.
There are many things to criticize about Biden administration decision making but in this case NASA made the best decision by returning the astronauts many months later then planned.
I believe these were the options.
Return the two astronauts on the problem ridden starliner as scheduled. NASA decided it was too risky. The video confirms it would be a huge risk. The unmanned starliner did return OK but they didn’t know that outcome at the time.
Return the the astronauts when the replacement crew (crew-9) arrived in September. I assume the policy is to have a spacecraft at the Space station whenever it is manned in case the space station needs to be evacuated. So everybody would have to leave and the space station would be unmanned. NASA claims the space station needs to be manned to ensure proper maintenance is performed. It certainly would upend the schedule of whatever they do up there as they would be six or more months behind.
Take Elon up on his offer and add an unscheduled flight. Every launch carries some risk and certainly a lot of additional costs and a drain of resources. If it was rushed it could be even more risky. If they took proper time the estimate was the soonest it could be done is December 2024. If they picked this option I would probably be criticizing them for choosing a wasteful, risky, politically motivated stunt solely to bring them back on Biden’s watch.
The last option was to assign the astronauts Williams and Wilmore to be part of crew-9 and return them on crew 9 scheduled return in February or March 2025. The option arguably has the least risk, least cost and minimal schedule disruption. This is the option I would have chosen. This is the option NASA chose. Even if it really was a political decision it also happened to be reasonable.
BTW: Speculation has started that Boeing might abandon the spacecraft business. They currently are losing money, aren’t competitive with SpaceX and are bearing a lot of reputational risk if one of their spacecraft blows up
I think its fewer than you might expect.
Its one thing to talk the big game – “yes, I’d love to fly in space!” but when it comes push to shove how many would actually do it? Nervous flyers? Unfit, unhealthy?
When it comes right down to it, I expect maybe 2 or 3% of the population would be willing or capable of flying space…
But that wouldn’t have been the case. They’re always “one behind” on the spacecraft, with each new arrival replacing the previous one. There would have been no need to fully evacuate the station. When Crew-10 arrives, the returnees do the return on the Crew-9 craft that had been docked there since its arrival. The Crew-10 craft then becomes the backup/escape option, until Crew-11 arrives.
It’s also a huge difference between 8 days and 9 months. They don’t have to basically learn to walk again, after 8 days.
I think it’s a lot closer to 20% to 30% than it is to 2 or 3. Most people aren’t little fraidy cats.
They do. It’s not on the order of “overtime pay” which would bankrupt any nation needing to fight a war.
Umm if they already had the capacity why would space-x have to add an extra ‘rescue’ flight
Here is my guess as to how it works.
Spacecraft A already docked and assigned to return current crew
Spacecraft B Starliner arrives and is assigned to return Wilmore and Williams.
Spacecraft C brings crew 9 with 2 open slots reserved for the two. It will be docked and then tasked to return crew-9 in 2025
Spacecraft D brings crew-10
Spacecraft B (Starliner) leaves unmanned leaving only spacecraft A available
After C arrives current crew leaves on Spacecraft A no room for Wilmore and Williams.
This leaves only spacecraft C. If Wilmore and Williams leaves on it there is no escape ship for crew-9 so they have to leave as well.
I think my option list is incomplete. Turns out there was a soyuz craft (capacity 3) parked at the station and it and its crew were replaced with another in September. They also regularly rotate crews in a similar fashion. I suppose we could have asked the Russians instead of Space X to help but probably would face the same logistical issue
Its not that they’re unwilling. Its that they would be unable. They simply are not fit enough to take the flight.
The Apollo astronauts were as fit as Olympic athletes for only a 10 day flight.
It’s more complicated than that, I think. The “rescue” flight was another Dragon type, but it only transferred the two “Stranded” astronauts back to Earth. As far as I’ve read, no other ISS crew members were returned at that time. An additional complication is that the two “Stranded” astronauts came in the Starliner whose life-support/spacesuit connections are different from Dragon.
Essentially though, it would have been relatively simple to return them much earlier than actually happened. Even if it was somehow not feasible to reserve two places for them on an earlier flight. The most likely reason for it not happening appears to have been the FJB administration not wanting Musk – and hence Trump – to “score a win” before the election.
Only because NASA didn’t know what it would take, and also it was a propaganda ploy. Any reasonably healthy person can go to space without a problem.
Or even reasonably unhealthy.
I learned that from “Space Cowboys.”
The biographies I’ve read indicate that astronauts sleeping while in space for days was mostly a myth, the fitness requirements reduced the sleeplessness hazards.
Wouldn’t Ricochet keep them plenty busy?
They were muddling through with analog radio. Sometimes they got a tune at the start of first shift.
I saw one of the Gemini astronauts talking about his flight and describing it as “ten days in a garbage can”. He said that in zero-G you sleep less, you’ve been in intensive training with your shipmate for months so you don’t really have any new war stories to tell each other, and the Gemini craft was so small and cramped that you really couldn’t move around much at all, so you just sat there.
The Gemini capsule was really designed for short duration highly experimental spaceflight to learn how every aspect of the Apollo flight (short of landing on the moon) would actually work out.
Gemini is the overlooked NASA program of the 1960s… Everyone calls a big research program a “Moonshot” but what we really need is more Gemini programs.
heres what a mean…
Announced in 1961, first test flight was in 1964, manned flights began in 1965 and had 12 flights ending in 1966.
Compare this to the Boeing Starliner or Lockheed’s Orion projects … Both have been in development for more than 20 years, have had a few test flights – but are still years away from operational flights…
Its like computers have disabled productivity far more than they have enabled it…
Only a fraction of that 2 or 3% would be mentally and physically capable, but it would still be many many people.
You would think they would go with Sirius XM— Satellite radio!
I only saw a tidbit of Bill Hemmer’s interview with Butch and Suni on Fox due to time issues, but I caught the part where Butch said there were a lot more issues than was reported with this ship. I guess he felt free to speak about it. He said something like they were about to abort, and were so frustrated that they began to try to trouble shoot and do it, as the ISS was right in front of them!
They probably elaborated more but I couldn’t watch it. You are right, they may have realized it wasn’t safe to return in! Bill asked Suni about hearing rumors she may retire and she laughed and said maybe………she retired once already……and was pulled back in. What a stain on Boeing – makes you not want to fly!!
The defense industrial complex won and then lost. It used to be that the government bought dozens of models of planes a year, but as they made planes more expensive and profitable, fewer models were bought. To stay in business, companies had to merge and merge and merge. Only the most avaricious remained on top, and Boeing is one of the biggest on top.
My experience with them was with the A-6 Intruder where they beat out Grumman to manufacture new wings for Grumman’s own aircraft. They under bid Grumman (who to that time seemed to still be relatively honest for a government contractor) and made their own design which was radically different from the existing design. They were supposed to rewing most of the fleet of Intruders. I doubt they rewinged a dozen. But about that same time Boeing started selling commercial variants of their planes with folding wingtips. Curiously those wing tips were a lot like the ones they were supposed to supply to the Navy for Intruders.
I think Boeing lost its way a long time ago, and it’s only now catching up to them. Personally, I think they deserve to go out of business. It will be good for all the companies that replace them.
After a senior astronaut visited Boeing to see how the Boeing Starliner was coming along, he swore he would not fly in it; though he later flew in a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
Boeing is $2 billion in the hole but intends to proceed, with another manned test next year.
This is just the problem. ISS is expected to come to an end in 2030… So they’re not going to get all the flights in that NASA pre paid for before the program ends… NASA even bought more spaceflights from SpaceX knowing that Boeing wont be ready to fly operational missions in time.
He examines Boeing’s future in space by looking back at its history… I think its far more accurate to say that the companies that Boeing bought, have been the solid contractors in NASA space exploration… Unfortunately those corporate cultures have been sublimated into Boeing’s, and after this many years, the original staff have moved on…