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.
That's right! - Never A Straight Answer
ReplyDeletelinks never work for me here. I'll post this if anyone else has difficulty.
ReplyDeletethis needs to be read-
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/the-harrowing-story-of-what-flying-starliner-was-like-when-its-thrusters-failed/
Pretty close to being in one serious pickle there. Wonder if they had extra-vehicular suits, so they could jump ship and get onto the ISS, I mean, if it was me and not enough thrusters, no effin' way would I trust what remained to aim the capsule back into a re-entry, to be burned up because it was too steep an entry angle, or skip off the atmosphere out into wild space. Uh uh, not in this lifetime, I'd be in that suit in a NewYork minute, take my chances jumping to the airlock on the ISS.
ReplyDeleteNo, they had no EVA suits. Based current (read 50 year old design) EVA suits won't fit through the hatch on a capsule. They get set to/from ISS in pieces on a cargo flight.
DeleteThanks, thats like a vehicle without a spare tire, but lots worse.
DeletePressure suits only, in case of loss of pressure in the capsule during flight. But no self-sustained life support unit or anything.
DeleteYet, with all of the problems that Boeing has had over the last decade including planes that killed people and Boeing engineers celebrating the fact that they had duped FAA regulatory engineers, they get awarded the contract for the new F47, when they should been forced into bankruptcy. Solid decision making there.
ReplyDeleteNemo