Boeing's Calamity Capsule returns to Earth without a crew Boeing's Calamity Capsule has returned to Earth, bringing to an end a test mission that did not go entirely according to plan. Not least because the Starliner's crew had to stay behind aboard the International Space Station. New to the Starliner drama? We recapped it here for you. That Boeing's CST-100 Starliner's return to …
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If the priority was to get them home, there are multiple ways that could have been achieved already. Including having them laying in the cargo area of the crew dragon that's up there or indeed risking the starliner with its unknown thruster performance. There were valid contingencies for emergency situations.
But the priority was to debug starliner. And as ever with the ISS, doing science stuff. Crew schedules are some way down the list.
The return plan for the Starliner crew in case of emergency is for them to hang out on the cargo pallets in the back of the Dragon capsule. Soyuz MS-25 is already full. It only has 3 seats and those barely fit. Absolutely no room to get anyone else in. Soyuz MS-26 will be launching in 2 days (if all goes as planned) and will bring 3 new people up. So also not an option to return the starliner crew.
I don't know what you're smoking, but you might want to adjust your tinfoil hat and do some thinking. Soyuz isn't a solution for the problem at hand
No, because that's a counterfactual history so we would not be able to ever know if anyone would or would not have developed the inventions were it not for the space program.
Feel free to invent a casuality-breaking time machine to go back and find out what happened in an alternate reality.
>Could you name six of these benefits
Distracting the public from your presidential private life
Amortization of the costs of ICBM development
Strategic investment in aircraft makers without being a communist
Gives retired Nazi rocket scientists something to do
Gives redundant Soviet rocket scientists something to do
Allows people to run for office with a suitably macho story if we hadn't had any successful wars recently
Of course it is, it wants the subsidies and the fat contract.
On the other hand, it acts like a spoiled brat. Boeing didn't attend the briefing ? What pathetic man-child decided that that was a professional attitude to have ?
If it was up to me, Boeing would be stricken from the list of partners of NASA in general, period.
"They were leaking before it launched though."
It always leaks. He is smaller than H as H likes to pal around with a friend (H2) and He is happy on it's own. The problems are seals on things like valves that have to move.
Other gases could be used that won't react with what they are pressurizing, but the mass of the compressed gas can be significant. A vehicle I worked on used Nitrogen to pressurize the fuel and He to pressurize the Lox (can't use Nitrogen with Oxygen) and just the difference in mass to switch to all He was over 6kg on a small test lander. We also slimmed the plumbing down by 1/3 which saved even more. The cost of the gasses was the reason to go with a dual system in the beginning and leakage was another issue.
From Spaceflight Now:
By the time they return to Earth around Feb. 22, Wilmore and Williams, who originally expected to spend about eight days in orbit, will have logged more than eight-and-a-half months in space.NASA astronaut Frank Rubio faced a similar dilemma in 2022 when his six-month stay aboard the station was extended to more than a full year because of problems with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that carried him to orbit.
“I think going from six months to 12 months is tough, but it’s not as tough as going from eight days to eight months,” Rubio said in an interview with CBS News. Asked how Wilmore and Williams took the news of their extension, he said “they’re doing great.”
“Certainly, there’s a little part of you that’s disappointed,” he added. “It’s okay to acknowledge that. But you also can’t mope around for the entire time, right? … You just have to kind of dedicate and rededicate yourself to the mission.”
Now it might just be me, but if I were sent to the ISS for eight days but instead was accidentally left there for eight months, I wouldn't be complaining too loudly. It's undoubtedly different for veterans with earthbound responsibilities, but you joined the human spaceflight program to get into space, after all, and the more spaceflight the better, right?
"Now it might just be me, but if I were sent to the ISS for eight days but instead was accidentally left there for eight months, I wouldn't be complaining too loudly."
Particularly if the deal went on this way:
- initially it was 8 days
- now you have the choice:
- stick to the plan with 50% chances of being incinerated alive in a fucked-up capsule but keep Boing stakeholders happy (won't be their problem, is a NASA accident)
- stay for 8 more months there with 99% returning home alive, but crash the Boing shares
I think it was a no-brainer for the astronnauts ...
"- stick to the plan with 50% chances of being incinerated alive in a fucked-up capsule but keep Boing stakeholders happy (won't be their problem, is a NASA accident)"
The chance of an unsuccessful landing was nowhere near 50%. The difference with the unknown trustworthiness of the thrusters wasn't demonstrably greater than the risk of going in a capsule with no known issues according to Scott Manley who has been following all of the technical disclosures.
8 months in space at their ages is going to mean a good year or more of physical therapy to recover as best as they can to good health. It's debilitating to spend extended amounts of time in space so it's not a bonus to have to stay longer than planned.
I hear some noises on the interweb that the next Starliner flight will be a uncrewed cargo mission. I find that difficult to believe but alas, there you have it.
I suspect that in the next few weeks we'll hear Boeing pulling out of the Commercial Crew Program despite assurances to the contrary.
"The navigation system also temporarily had difficulty acquiring a GPS signal as the spacecraft came out of the plasma generated by reentry."
Genuinely curious, once it has a GPS signal is it using it for anything more than "I know where I am"? I'm assuming it doesn't have any steering capability once it's through that phase of reentry?
I've not been able to find anything specific for Starliner, but it should be similar to Apollo - which had a reasonable cross range capability due to a lifting force generated by re-entry being at an angle (though working thrusters were also needed). A bit more info here
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