NASA Extends Boeing Starliner Astronauts’ Space Station Stay to 2025
Aha!!! More evidence of Boeing management’s decline from the teams that built America’s greatest manufacturing company and largest exporter, to the incompetence and benign neglect of more recent ones, that took root well before the crashes and has continuously been revealed since.
Where once those management teams were all about attention to detail and excellence, the recent versions have stressed maximizing profits and the stock price, to protect their own personal wealth as their “holy grail.” Shame, Shame, Shame!!!
The results keep showing their ugly head. Here’s another!
Persistent concerns with the vehicle’s propulsion systems mean Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will return home next year in a SpaceX vehicle.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/24/science/nasa-boeing-starliner-astronauts.html?smid=em-share
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NASA decides to keep 2 astronauts in space until February, nixes return on troubled Boeing capsule
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA decided Saturday it’s too risky to bring two astronauts back to Earth in Boeing’s troubled new capsule, and they’ll have to wait until next year for a ride home with SpaceX. What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months.
The seasoned pilots have been stuck at the International Space Station since the beginning of June. A cascade of vexing thruster failures and helium leaks in the new capsule marred their trip to the space station, and they ended up in a holding pattern as engineers conducted tests and debated what to do about the flight back.
After almost three months, the decision finally came down from NASA’s highest ranks on Saturday. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come back in a SpaceX capsule in February. Their empty Starliner capsule will undock in early September and attempt to return on autopilot with a touchdown in the New Mexico desert.
As Starliner’s test pilots, the pair should have overseen this critical last leg of the journey.
“A test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The decision “is a result of a commitment to safety.”
Nelson said lessons learned from NASA’s two space shuttle accidents played a role. This time, he noted, open dialogue was encouraged rather than crushed.
“This has not been an easy decision, but it is absolutely the right one,” added Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator.
It was a blow to Boeing, adding to the safety concerns plaguing the company on its airplane side. Boeing had counted on Starliner’s first crew trip to revive the troubled spacecraft program after years of delays and ballooning costs. The company had insisted Starliner was safe based on all the recent thruster tests both in space and on the ground.
Boeing did not participate in Saturday’s news conference by NASA, but released a statement: “Boeing continues to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft.” The company said it is preparing the spacecraft “for a safe and successful return.”
Rand Corp.’s Jan Osburg, a senior engineer who specializes in aerospace and defense, said NASA made the right choice. “But the U.S. is still left with egg on its face due to the Starliner design issues that should have been caught earlier.”
Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, are both retired Navy captains with previous long-duration spaceflight experience. Before their June 5 launch from Cape Canaveral, Wilmore and Williams said their families bought into the uncertainty and stress of their professional careers decades ago.
During their lone orbital news conference last month, the astronauts said they had trust in the thruster testing being conducted. They had no complaints, they added, and enjoyed pitching in with space station work.
Wilmore’s wife, Deanna, said she and their daughters, along with family and friends, “were praying for a safe return on whatever spacecraft that may be.” While they are disappointed that he will be away longer, “we know that it’s the Lord’s plan,” she said via text.
Flight operations director Norm Knight said he talked to the astronauts Saturday and they fully support the decision to postpone their return.
There were few options.
The SpaceX capsule currently parked at the space station is reserved for the four residents who have been there since March. They will return in late September, their routine six-month stay extended a month by the Starliner dilemma. NASA said it would be unsafe to squeeze two more into the capsule, except in an emergency.
The docked Russian Soyuz capsule is even tighter, capable of flying only three — two of them Russians wrapping up a yearlong stint.
So Wilmore and Williams will wait for SpaceX’s next taxi flight. It’s due to launch in late September with two astronauts instead of the usual four. NASA is yanking two to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the return flight in late February.
NASA said no serious consideration was given to asking SpaceX for a quick stand-alone rescue. Last year, the Russian Space Agency had to rush up a replacement Soyuz capsule for three men whose original craft was damaged by space junk. The switch pushed their six-month mission to just over a year.
Former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, applauded the decision via X: “Good to err on the side of caution for astronaut lives.” Long missions are “what astronauts work their entire career for. I’d take it in a heartbeat!”
Starliner’s woes began long before its latest flight.
Bad software fouled the first test flight without a crew in 2019, prompting a do-over in 2022. Then parachute and other issues cropped up, including a helium leak in the capsule’s propellant system that nixed a launch attempt in May. The leak eventually was deemed to be isolated and small enough to pose no concern. But more leaks sprouted following liftoff, and five thrusters also failed.
All but one of those small thrusters restarted in flight. But engineers were perplexed by ground testing that showed a thruster seal swelling and obstructing a propellant line. They theorized the seals in orbit may have expanded and then reverted to their normal size. Officials said the results marked the turning point, as their concerns grew.
With all the uncertainty about how the thrusters might perform, “There was too much risk for the crew,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, told reporters.
These 28 thrusters are vital. Besides needed for space station rendezvous, they keep the capsule pointed in the right direction at flight’s end as bigger engines steer the craft out of orbit. Coming in crooked could result in catastrophe.
With the Columbia disaster still fresh in many minds — the shuttle broke apart during reentry in 2003, killing all seven aboard — NASA made an extra effort to embrace open debate over Starliner’s return capability.
Despite Saturday’s decision, NASA isn’t giving up on Boeing. Nelson said he is “100%” certain that Starliner will fly again.
NASA went into its commercial crew program a decade ago wanting two competing U.S. companies ferrying astronauts in the post-shuttle era. Boeing won the bigger contract: more than $4 billion, compared with SpaceX’s $2.6 billion.
With station supply runs already under its belt, SpaceX aced its first of now nine astronaut flights in 2020, while Boeing got bogged down in design flaws that set the company back more than $1 billion. NASA officials still hold out hope that Starliner’s problems can be corrected in time for another crew flight in another year or so.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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NASA Extends Boeing Starliner Astronauts’ Space Station Stay to 2025
NASA Extends Boeing Starliner Astronauts’ Space Station Stay to 2025
U.S. Coast Guard Academy, in New London, Connecticut between 1988 and 2006, including the revelation of leaders who discouraged disclosure. Those cases do not include at least 42 more that have been identified as not having been properly investigated. That is not to mention new Pentagon published statistics showing student-reported assaults at West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy.
So after all the accusations and denials, the truth is finally revealed about Bill Cosby’s lifetime of raping young women, who were unfortunate enough to cross his path. The answer as to how he got away with it for so long, lies in his skill of slipping a Methaquolone pill, otherwise known as a Quaalude, into a drink he would give them. It would render them helpless to escape his subsequent sexual assault. Of course, he had also built a persona of America’s Grandpa, that was the ultimate deception.I first heard about quaaludes (‘ludes) in college in the 60’s. Apparently, he did as well! The word was that if you could slip one into a girl’s drink, she would be more compliant than otherwise. The records show that Cosby had multiple prescriptions filled at least throughout the 70’s, then apparently, subsequently found other sources. It became his “MO” and many women his victim. But that game is over now, most likely for the duration of his life! As with most abusers, Cosby felt he had a way to evade the light from shining on what he was up to. He thought he was safe and would never get caught, but If accused, he could claim it was consensual. It is what all abusers think, regardless of the form that abuse takes, and sometimes it can work for a long while. But when the light finally does shine and reveals the truth, the rule is that the longer the perpetrator got away with their nasty deceptions, the deeper the hole they will have dug for themselves. Epstein escaped via suicide. I think they’ll be keeping a close eye on Bill!