3 Strikes For Starliner. Is It Out?
Keith’s note: NASA says that Starliner will return to Earth without any crew. Butch and Suni will stay on ISS until early 2025 when the Crew 9 on a SpaceX Dragon will bring them home. That’s three times that Boeing’s Starliner has flown and each mission has had problems – two of the missions have had mission-altering safety issues. And of course no one has been cited as being at fault. That will likely change when the inevitable congressional hearings occur. Did the post-Columbia safety culture at NASA work? Yes. Full stop. Did contractor oversight by NASA and contractor performance by Boeing work? You tell me. For the same program SpaceX did everything nearly flawlessly with Dragon years before and a $billion+ less than Boeing. Bill Nelson says that NASA will be flying astronauts on Starliner again. Well, it’s easy to punt and say that now since that decision will be made after the election and regardless of who wins Nelson will probably not be making that call. That said, at what point does NASA give up? One has to wonder whether Starliner will ever fly again with – or without – humans. Three strikes and … Update: I spoke about this with LBC Radio in the UK [audio], on Deutsche Welle TV at 4:00 pm EDT [audio] and again at 7:00 pm EDT [audio] and was on CGTN TV at 5:00 pm EDT [audio]. Videos below.
4 responses to “3 Strikes For Starliner. Is It Out?”
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I expect SpaceX to become a full fledged space program in its own right over the next 10 years. If you look at the Polaris Dawn mission, two of the crew members are SpaceX employees. They are building inhouse experience for space missions. In addition, the Starlink constellation has given the company the manufacturing infrastructure to develop advanced satellite architecture and technology. This can easily be translated into designing probes for deep space applications. Once the number of Starlink subscriptions reaches critical mass, the sky is the limit for SpaceX.
There are Senators and Congresscritters who will defend Boeing to The bitter end, but none of them have the power that Shelby had and he is gone. Retired. Kaput. Thank god.
One thing I haven’t seen much mention of is Boeing’s inability to get past the first round of the Commercial Cargo 2 selection, allowing Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser 100 to grab a contract for cargo delivery to ISS and probably beyond. Personally, I’m hoping Boeing drops out of commercial crew and NASA makes a call to Sierra Space to get Dream Chaser 201 ready.
“For the same program SpaceX did everything nearly flawlessly with Dragon years before and a $billion+ less than Boeing.” No one knows the true cost for SpaceX to build their space program/vehicles. They’re a private company and aren’t under any obligation to release that data. We don’t even know if they had additional investors to fund certain aspects of the program either.
Can someone in the know state what the real issue is? The helium leak doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem as the thrusters. It’s my understanding the part of the vehicle that contains the thrusters is burned up during deorbit or re-entry.
Your understanding is correct, the service module is jettisoned and burns up. This is one of the most maddening parts about this design, you don’t get anything back to do an autopsy on. That said, it’s pretty well understood that the doghouses are acting like a thermos – retaining heat and causing most of the thruster and valve problems. When you stop and think about it, it seems obvious but apparently not.