Boeing's Calamity Capsule gets another shot at the ISS taxi business SpaceX might not be the ISS's only ride after NASA and Boeing claimed that Starliner - aka the aerospace giant's Calamity Capsule - will fly again and carry a crew in 2028. The plan is to launch an uncrewed vehicle, the Starliner-1, in the December 2026 / January 2027 timeframe, and a crewed vehicle, Starliner-2, sometime in …
> if all goes well
If all had gone well in the past, this would have happened years ago. So It would be foolish to place any more credibility on this latest effort. Maybe Boing simply can't "do" space capsules any more.
At this rate they will be lucky to have anything capable before January 2031, when the ISS will be destroyed.
“ An observer might wonder what the point is of splashing cash on a program that has managed one crewed flight since the contract was awarded in 2014. .....”
Well having multiple options is obviously better......
Hang on, what is that I can smell? Is it beef, venison, lamb? Ah no, it’s pork
We've already had, what was it, three tests flights that have gone wrong so far, yet we are still waiting for "Starliner-1" to take place.
Shouldn't that be "Starliner-4" at least?
Unless, of course, each time it goes wrong, the *next* attempt becomes the New, Improved Starliner-1.
Quite reasonable, after all, Boeing have probably filmed their entire campaign by now, proudly boasting that "Starliner-1 is all-American know-how and easily managed its goals..
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Didn’t the Soviets (and maybe Russia too now) have a habit of renaming failed planetary missions as Kosmos xyz (of which there have been hundreds), and then only identifying them with a real name once successful?
For example, Kosmos 419 was intended to go to Mars but failed to leave Earth orbit. Had it been successful, almost certainly it would have been called Mars 2.
Starliner SLAMMED into the ground at over 500mph. Which would have liquified the astronauts organs and broke every single bone in their bodies.
Boeing claimed it was "a successful landing" because Starliner didn't explode or Blow itself into a billion fragments!
They didn't give a crap if astronauts would be alive at all.
Now they're going to take 2 years more (asking for billions and billions) for an unfixable pile of crap.
We'd be better off asking schools to design a rocket out of cardboard and sellotape.
> Starliner was going less than 19 MPH as intended when it landed after the mission.
After being slowed by the airbags, the final impact of the capsule with the ground was about 4 mph, so definitely less than 19!
A mere factor of 100, two orders of magnitude, from xyz123's imagined astronaut liquefying ballistic impact.
xyz123> Starliner SLAMMED into the ground at over 500mph
Citation?
'Cos this one says:
>> UPDATE: Starliner touched down in the New Mexican desert at White Sands Space Harbor at 12:01:35 a.m. EDT. The craft’s pair of drogue parachutes, three main chutes, and six airbags deployed in sequence, bringing the craft to a soft landing
xyz123> Boeing claimed it was "a successful landing" because Starliner didn't ... Blow itself into a billion fragments!
What do you think they are they making it out of, if it can impact at 500mph and stay in one piece?
"What do you think they are they making it out of, if it can impact at 500mph and stay in one piece?" -- see title for answer! Light, cheap, fantastic performance, and every bit as real as Boeing's quality, or the hope this will ever be on par with Crew Dragon.
(I'm not a big fan of Musk the person, particularly the political angles, including his takeover of Twitter, and watching SpaceX's developments are weird, but at least they got their capsule right. Let's see an actual lunar HLS, then.)
The ISS is scheduled to de-orbit in 2031. Obviously the existing capsule design isn't working out with too many contractors involved. Integrated modules aren't working as they should. Deorbit the ISS early, it's leaky as an old boat and has served well - give it a dignified end!
