The Boeing Starliner space capsule that lost NASA officials’ confidence to safely bring home two astronauts will begin its return from orbit with no crew Friday and, if all goes well, parachute to a landing in New Mexico early Saturday.
But even a successful landing will be something of a hollow victory. The last leg of the groundbreaking mission would conclude a test flight that strained relations between Boeing and NASA and raised questions about when the Starliner will become fully operational.
The spacecraft’s return without Wilmore and Williams represents a stinging loss for Boeing, which had hoped the test flight would lead to regular operational missions for the spacecraft. But because the Starliner experienced thruster problems and helium leaks as it brought the pair up to the space station, NASA deemed the complete round trip with crew too risky. Now Boeing will have to continue to run tests on the Starliner on the ground before it can be fully certified for future crewed flights, NASA officials said.
Boeing...The company that gave us the B-52 and 747. What's changed? Corporate greed and the need for an ever-increasing stock price? Part of the downfall of our country. Great and steady is never good enough...Always about growth and margin expansion and Short-term thinking! There's something to be said about a steady-state of excellence, with just incremental improvements from there.
For those of us that were alive when the Apollo 1 crew died so tragically, we understand if the USA wants to have the best space program we have to put the crew's lives first.
The Apollo 1 disaster was a colossal screw up. Any chemist or physicist can tell you that even metals burn in pure oxygen, and all it would take to start a fire was a microscopic spark. Some knuckleheads thought they would save a bit of weight by eliminating nitrogen, and instead eliminated a crew in the capsule.
@VoleKenRepublican1wk1W
I think the full Mercury and Gemini programs used a pure oxygen atmosphere, too. Apollo 1 was the last ship to use it, not the first.
Boeing needs to kick out the greedy money-grabbers and put the engineers back in charge.
Merger w McDonnel-Douglas decades ago, more of acquisition from within, led to bean-counter McD execs taking over from Washington state Boeing engineering execs... with typically disastrous business decisions driving the company direction, instead of the engineering vision of quality and safety... and led to the 737max deadly debacle
@ISIDEWITH1wk1W
@ISIDEWITH1wk1W
Loading the political themes of users that engaged with this discussion
Loading data...
Join in on more popular conversations.
