Friday, April 4, 2025
Starliner’s troubles were much worse than NASA made clear
According to a long interview given to Eric Berger of Ars Technica, the astronauts flying Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first manned mission in June 2024 were much more vulnerable than NASA made it appear at the time.
First, the thruster problem when they tried to dock to ISS was more serious than revealed. At several points Butch Wilmore, who was piloting the spacecraft, was unsure if he had enough thrusters to safely dock the capsule to ISS. Worse, if he couldn’t dock he also did not know if had enough thrusters to de-orbit Starliner properly.
In other words, he and his fellow astronaut Sunni Williams might only have a few hours to live.
The situation was saved by mission control engineers, who figured out a way to reset the thrusters and get enough back on line so that the spacecraft could dock autonomously.
Second, once docked it was very clear to the astronauts and NASA management that Starliner was a very unreliable lifeboat.
Thursday, April 3, 2025
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