NASA and Boeing officials pushed back Friday on headlines that the commercial Starliner crew capsule is stranded at the International Space Station but said they need more time to analyze data before formally clearing the spacecraft for undocking and reentry.
Of course they’re not stranded. There are other capsules we can send up to bring them back down, regardless of Starliner’s status. I’d bet SpaceX is preparing a Crew Dragon in the background, regardless whether NASA has asked them to or not. A rescue Dragon ready to go to save Boeing astronauts would be a massive PR win.
This helium leak that wasn’t an issue on the ground is becoming more and more hilarious to me (because no lives are at risk, just Boeing’s already shit reputation now). A small leak on the ground, no big deal. Even with the leak, it will last like 40+ days. Oh, now there’s 2 leaks… oh now it is 5 “small” leaks. As the days count down and it sits up there attached to the ISS.
No one is saying it, but I honestly think they’re worried about whether they can even undock and maneuver the capsule away from the ISS safely and reliably. NASA for sure has teams working on all sorts of contingency plans. if it can’t maneuver on its own, either dealing with that airlock being useless for the rest of the Station’s life, and a dead capsule that cannot serve as a lifeboat being stuck there; or if there is a way to get the Canadarm to grab the capsule and chuck it back towards the planet out of the ISS sphere of influence. As hilarious as that would be to see, this super slow motion robotic arm grabbing the capsule and yeeting it back towards Earth. Unlikely scenario, but that’s the type of thing NASA does all the time, plan for as many scenarios as possible so there’s always another option available even if they seem ridiculous.
They’re not stranded because Starliner is capable of reentry and is already cleared to be used in emergency situations. In fact, the two astronauts had to prepare for an emergency undocking earlier this week when a Russian satellite broke up and the station’s crew was ordered to take shelter in their respective spacecraft.
The helium leaks are also still not an issue either. The new leaks aren’t “new”, they’re just so much smaller than the first one that they took much longer to be detected.
It’s still docked to the ISS, not because it can’t leave, but because they don’t want it to leave until they collect all the data they need. Part of this data collection process is supposed to involve 2 spacewalks to examine the service module, but those spacewalks haven’t been able to happen yet. Technical issues with the EVA suits prevented the first one they had scheduled from happening. The ship is still fully capable of maneuvering too, they are only down one RCS thruster out of 28.
Yeah, that’s what we’ve been told.
We were also told this wasn’t an issue to begin with, and issue after issue has happened. So, sorry if at this point I don’t take what Boeing says about their vehicles at face value.
NASA is reliant on manufacturer info for a lot of things, and that is coming from Boeing. We now know for a fact that Boeing has falsified manufacturing and safety information for over a decade with nearly a dozen whistleblowers coming forwards on the airliner side of the business now, and more every day. If you honestly think that the spacecraft side was 100% insulated from that company culture, I’ve got some great stuff to sell you.
They assume it can maneuver. They assumed it would dock correctly the first time, before there were multiple failures as well. The last time it moved was to dock with the station and multiple thrusters were inoperative and took quite a bit of time to get working again to dock in the first place. We don’t know that those will work without issue again. Those thrusters have already failed once while up there, failing again isn’t exactly unlikely.
The helium leaks weren’t and still aren’t an issue for the mission. They are an issue that should be addressed in the future, but they pose no safety risk as things currently stand. While Starliner is docked, it won’t even be leaking any helium. The tanks are sealed shut when they aren’t in use, and since the leaks aren’t on the tanks themselves, they aren’t losing any helium as long as they stay docked.
The thruster failures are also not necessarily related to the leaks. They don’t know why the the thrusters shut down, but they were shut down in software and not due to some piece of hardware failing. Their current goal is to figure out why the software shut them down, and why 4 of the 5 that shut down were able to be restarted without issue. They aren’t just assuming it can maneuver either, they know it can because the thrusters aren’t broken. It didn’t require any physical repair work to get them firing again, it took a restart.
Remember, this is just a test flight, and nothing that’s happening is outside the scope of the test.