Eight weeks after the Starliner spacecraft launched, NASA is still looking for possible answers to its technical issues—including the possibility of SpaceX lending a hand.
Yeah, I am seriously upset. NASA press office seems to be telling lies left and right, and they think they’re just pulling the old Washington spin cycle, but it’s obvious lies. And they’re easy out of line.
They issued a 248k “emergency” engineering study contract to SpaceX to support extra pax on the dragon. NASA press office claimed this award had absolutely nothing to do with Crew Test, but this was immediately contradicted by anonymous internal sources.
Totally not related. Just requested shortly after Starliner arrived at the station with issues. With an expeditious response. Totally normal procedures. Nothing to see here.
Yes, these headlines are continuing to say the astronauts are stranded, which really isn’t the case. This vehicle is working well enough to return them at any time.
The thing is, there is something weird going on with some of the thrusters (of which there are many for redundancy) and this is their only chance to investigate the issue. If they were to return with the astronauts now, it would mean leaving the thrust module to burn up in the atmosphere, and then we wouldn’t be able to test the problematic parts. We could still do that (leave now), but we’d miss out on this opportunity to test hardware and understand better why some thrusters failed.
On the other hand, this is still a huge waste of money and it’s one more example of Boeing bungling things. So I’m not saying this is a great situation, just that the astronauts are not actually “stranded”.
Pretty sure the ISS always has a Soyuz on hand to bring astronauts back, but if they use that, then all the astronauts have to go back because the “bail out” options will be gone. So troubleshooting and getting the boeing capsule working is the primary goal.
Well yes, that would suck to have to abandon the ISS for any period. Definitely not optimal. But as I said, they could leave in the Starliner right now, if they wanted, they have more than enough thrusters functional to control the craft. It just makes more sense to stay until they’ve done all the troubleshooting and know how to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
I mean, Soyuz is the emergency rescue plan. Usually 2 of them sit docked to the ISS at all times for just this purpose. But regardless, the Starliner is functional enough they could leave right now if they had to. They just aren’t stranded, NASA isn’t just like… lying.
The Starliner has redundant systems and even with several thrusters offline it’s still within safe operating parameters. They’re keeping it docked because they want to figure out the problem, not because they need to figure out the problem.
There isn’t a dragon capsule ready to go at the moment, but it doesn’t really matter, it shouldn’t be needed. Because as I said, nobody is stranded, at least not yet.
But don’t worry though, NASA says the astronauts are “not stranded”.
Yeah, I am seriously upset. NASA press office seems to be telling lies left and right, and they think they’re just pulling the old Washington spin cycle, but it’s obvious lies. And they’re easy out of line.
They issued a 248k “emergency” engineering study contract to SpaceX to support extra pax on the dragon. NASA press office claimed this award had absolutely nothing to do with Crew Test, but this was immediately contradicted by anonymous internal sources.
Heads need to roll at NASA PAO.
Totally not related. Just requested shortly after Starliner arrived at the station with issues. With an expeditious response. Totally normal procedures. Nothing to see here.
Yes, these headlines are continuing to say the astronauts are stranded, which really isn’t the case. This vehicle is working well enough to return them at any time.
The thing is, there is something weird going on with some of the thrusters (of which there are many for redundancy) and this is their only chance to investigate the issue. If they were to return with the astronauts now, it would mean leaving the thrust module to burn up in the atmosphere, and then we wouldn’t be able to test the problematic parts. We could still do that (leave now), but we’d miss out on this opportunity to test hardware and understand better why some thrusters failed.
On the other hand, this is still a huge waste of money and it’s one more example of Boeing bungling things. So I’m not saying this is a great situation, just that the astronauts are not actually “stranded”.
Pretty sure the ISS always has a Soyuz on hand to bring astronauts back, but if they use that, then all the astronauts have to go back because the “bail out” options will be gone. So troubleshooting and getting the boeing capsule working is the primary goal.
Well yes, that would suck to have to abandon the ISS for any period. Definitely not optimal. But as I said, they could leave in the Starliner right now, if they wanted, they have more than enough thrusters functional to control the craft. It just makes more sense to stay until they’ve done all the troubleshooting and know how to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Boeing doesn’t listen to their engineers, but we’re supposed to listen to their marketing department.
They’re not. Whether they return on Starliner is the question. SpaceX can send a Dragon up to bring them back easily.
As far as the Starliner mission is considered, they are stranded. Dragon is the rescue mission.
I mean, Soyuz is the emergency rescue plan. Usually 2 of them sit docked to the ISS at all times for just this purpose. But regardless, the Starliner is functional enough they could leave right now if they had to. They just aren’t stranded, NASA isn’t just like… lying.
The Starliner has redundant systems and even with several thrusters offline it’s still within safe operating parameters. They’re keeping it docked because they want to figure out the problem, not because they need to figure out the problem.
There isn’t a dragon capsule ready to go at the moment, but it doesn’t really matter, it shouldn’t be needed. Because as I said, nobody is stranded, at least not yet.