Ars Technica reports that there has been a lot of recent activity at NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX. This activity suggests that two ISS astronauts (Wilmore and Williams) could come home aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft rather than Starliner.
Nextbigfuture believes that it is a needless risk to have the astronauts return on Boeing Starliner. Multiple engineering teams within NASA agree. Sending astronauts on Starliner despite not knowing the root cause of helium leaks and thruster problems is as reckless as the choices to use the Space Shuttle before fatal accidents.
They have NOT identified a root cause for why 5 of Starliner’s RCS thrusters failed during docking.
One informed source said it was greater than a 50-50 chance that the crew would come back on Dragon. Another source said it was significantly more likely than not they would. NASA has not made a final decision. This probably will not happen until at least next week. It is likely that Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, will make the call.
There is still at least a small risk to flying Starliner in its present condition, the space agency and Boeing have tested the thrusters as thoroughly as possible while the spacecraft is docked to the space station. This testing was intended to “buy down” these risks. But while the data is good, it has not addressed all of NASA’s concerns.
* NASA keeps delaying a decision. A Flight Readiness Review meeting had been scheduled for today, August 1, several days in advance. However, it was canceled. Instead, NASA put out a vague blog update on Thursday stating, “Following the completion of Starliner’s return planning, which is expected to continue into next week, more information will be shared about the agency’s return readiness review preparations and subsequent media briefing.” So maybe the meeting will take place next week.
* NASA issued a $266,678 task award to SpaceX on July 14 for a “special study for emergency response.” NASA said this study was not directly related to Starliner’s problems, but two sources told Ars it really was. Although the study entailed work on flying more than four crew members home on Crew Dragon—a scenario related to Frank Rubio and the Soyuz MS-22 leaks—it also allowed SpaceX to study flying Dragon home with six passengers, a regular crew complement in addition to Wilmore and Williams.
* SpaceX has been actively working on a scenario in which two or four astronauts launch on board Crew 9. (A normal crew is four) This mission has a nominal launch date of August 18, but it could well be delayed. SpaceX has already identified flight suits that would fit Wilmore and Williams, allowing them to fly home on the Crew-8 spacecraft (presently docked to the space station) or the Crew-9 vehicle. It is unclear how crews would be assigned to the two Dragon return flights. It is possible, if four astronauts launch on Crew 9, that five people could fly home on each of the two Dragons.
* Two sources told Ars that in meetings this week at NASA field centers, there have been vigorous discussions about whether or not to fly crew home on Starliner. Multiple groups remain “no” on Starliner as of Wednesday. It is unclear how this will be resolved. Some engineers believe that if there are questions about Starliner, then NASA should opt for the safe course—flying on Crew Dragon, which has safely launched 13 times and landed 12 times.
Boeing is pushing for the use of Starliner.
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This seems more like a problem generally with Boeing. Starliner is the fallout, Boing is “the bomb”.
It is Boeing. It will be all right. Something may fall off or break but they will land somehow.
I bet they won’t forget the ride though.
They have tested the Service Module thrusters, but not the Crew Capsules thrusters.
That is what they should be concerned about, and that is likely the reason for the return delay.
The only thing that has prevented the Starliner’s Astronauts from returning on a Dragon, is that the Starliner’s space suits are not compatible with Dragon.
That was likely rectified with the Cygnus resupply launch Sunday.
NASA has detailed size information for the astronauts. And space X could ship up extra space suites for the returning astronauts. Or spaceX could make adaptors that would allow the astronauts plug in their strainer suites to the dragon.
NASA knows that there is always some risk of catastrophic failure and the worst possible scenario for that from the institution’s POV is after their having been seen to dither about taking a safety risk for months, making that a news story in itself, and then deciding to take it. There is no worse possible situation for bringing blame on themselves. They will decide to take what seems to be the safe course, which is sending them home on Dragon.
If NASA is even considering sending them back on Dragon, they will. They don’t want a repeat of the Columbia disaster, and they have no real reason to trust Starliner.
I don’t actually agree with the assessment that sending them back on Starliner is equivalent to sending them back on Columbia. Columbia actually had a known failure on the heatshield, whereas the failure on Starliner was not on any part used for reentry. The only reason not to send them back on Starliner is due to lack of confidence in Boeing’s ability to get anything right (which I must admit is reasonable). It’s not the same risk as Columbia, though. However, considering that NASA’s whole catchphrase is “Failure is not an option”, and this failure upon reentry is a scandal that’s already occurred to them once before, it’s hard to imagine NASA not just retrieving the astronauts with a tried-and-true Dragon capsule.
I agree almost totally with you, except that they do NOT know the root cause for the failure.
You are right the failure is not on reentry vital systems. But not knowing the root cause may in some cases be AS BAD than KNOWING the root cause is in a reentry vital part.