Boeing’s Starliner Returns to Earth, Leaving Crew at ISS
The capsule touched down without a hitch at the White Sands Space Harbor.
The last we checked the status of the Boeing Starliner mission, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) had determined the pulsing sound heard aboard the spacecraft was an audio configuration issue.
As I indicated in that report, the Starliner was due to return to Earth on September 6th. Fortunately for Boeing, this portion of the mission was successful.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed uncrewed in a New Mexico desert late on Friday, capping a three-month test mission hobbled by technical issues that forced the astronauts it had flown to the International Space Station to remain there until next year.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first crew to fly Starliner in June, remained on the ISS as Starliner autonomously undocked at 6:04 p.m. ET (2204 GMT) on Friday, beginning a six-hour trek to Earth using maneuvering thrusters that NASA last month deemed too risky for a crew.
Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch, a NASA live stream showed, nailing the critical final phase of its mission.
The spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere at around 11 p.m. ET at orbital speeds of roughly 17,000 miles (27,400 km) per hour. About 45 minutes later, it deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated a set of airbags moments before touching down at the White Sands Space Harbor, an arid desert in New Mexico.
The mission was intended to be a final test flight before NASA certified Starliner for routine missions. However, the thruster issue that prevented the crew from returning with the capsule threw the spacecraft’s certification path into uncertainty.
Spectacular view of the #Starliner reentry seen from El Paso TX as the capsule was en route to White Sands Space Habor. Shortly after this video was taken my brother and I heard a clear sonic boom. Aerospace. Is. Cool. #Boeing #NASA pic.twitter.com/eQsM9bYsxA
— Nick Davis (@NickDavisWx) September 7, 2024
However, it is important to note that Starliner’s return marked the first time an American capsule returned to Earth on land at a designated space harbor. This is an exceedingly important development. If Boeing resolves the issues and focuses on solid engineering rather than DEI, it can be a real powerhouse in the space race.
Meanwhile, NASA appears to have identified that the problem with the Starliner thrusters is related to overheating.
Those issues appear to be linked to overheating — a result, perhaps, both of the frequency of thruster use and their placement inside heat-retaining shelters on the outside of the spacecraft known as “doghouses.” Bulging seals and insulation shedding appear to restrict the flow of propellant to the RCS thrusters.
NASA and Boeing had hoped that CFT [Crew Flight Test] would pave the way for Starliner’s first operational crewed flight. That mission, known as Starliner-1, is tentatively targeted for August 2025. But it’s too soon to tell if Starliner will hit that timeline.
“I think we’ll see where we’re at in another month or so, and have a little bit better idea of what the overall schedule will be,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during a post-landing press conference on Saturday morning.
That schedule could even include another test flight before Starliner is certified for operational astronaut missions.
“I would say it’s probably too early to think about exactly what the next flight looks like. I think we want to take the next step to go look at all the data,” Stich said.
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FTA: “However, it is important to note that Starliner’s return marked the first time an American capsule returned to Earth on land at a designated space harbor.”
Geez, when I was an engineer at Kennedy Space Center in the 90’s, I remember that the MD-X prototypes did exactly that.
And it’s what the Soviets have always done. Sometimes with not so good results.
(Despite it still hitting like a brick, landing in water allows some give if your speed is a bit off. Land doesn’t. Except in Wile E. Coyote cartoons.)
On the way down, they had another thruster failure.
Frankly, Musk’s system is much more elegant.
It is sad what NASA and Boeing have become. Bloated and incompetent.
Back in the seventies I had a 64 Mustang that acted like the Starliner it would usually get me where I wanted to go but not necessarily back again
I had a 68 convertible metallic blue and did not have problems with it.
I had a Jaguar with two gas tanks, a manual choke, and Lucas electronics. Oftentimes it just wouldn’t start again after having driven somewhere. I found a 100 percent fix. I would leave the car and go have a few beers, and on return it would start the first try. It was tricky fix for mornings though.
Lightly, Ford has been offering something called the Tremor. I had a Ford tremor many years ago. New spark plugs, a distributor cap and new points, wiress, and condenser got rid of the tremor.
Actually it was the ’64 Mercury.
So, what you’re saying is, Boeing is out of the running.
I honed in on that line as well.
Very close to Boeing insiders. You have no idea how bad it has gotten. Some of those with the protected skin color are being shown the door or put on special projects.
…but that is just scratching the surface. You also have tons of stupid white people too. Tough to point to a company this large managed so poorly or with pure stupidity.
A lot of the McDonnell mentality infected Boeing. The same McDonnell mentality drove Douglas into the ground.
Greed and stupidity?
The question is whether NASA will pay for a third test flight or demand that Boeing do so — the latter is what is currently called for in the contract.
I rather suspect that Boeing would walk away from paying for all of a third test flight given the several billion dollar over-run on the fixed contract at this point. Boeing has eaten all of that and they aren’t made of money.
So if NASA doesn’t volunteer to help out with the costs they could end up with no Starliner at all, leaving them only SpaceX’s Dragon Crew capsule. Depending on a single vendor is exactly what the Commercial Crew Program was supposed to prevent.
nailing the critical final phase of its mission
Ummmm, no. “Nailing” the final phase of its mission would have had the astronauts stepping out and waving. In the New Mexico desert.
You can say it nailed the landing in its aborted mission, or it did what it was supposed to do with its new parameters, but its mission included returning those astronauts.
“If Boeing resolves the issues and focuses on solid engineering rather than DEI, it can be a real powerhouse in the space race.”
I doubt it. DEI is certainly a problem, but not the only one. The quality of our engineers has been in decline for many years and it has reached a critical point. A friend of mine who works at a US National Lab tells me the quality of new engineering hires is dismal, and he has to spend a lot of his time educating them. For example, many don’t know the Laplace Transform. Yikes in the old days, the Laplace Transform was covered in Sophomore or Junior level undergraduate engineering courses. It’s a workhorse technique the permeates engineering. You need it for circuit theory, control systems, signal processing, aeronautical engineering, biomedical engineering, mathematics to name but a few of the many areas. Even worse, another friend (now retired) told me he talked to new hires who didn’t know what the transpose of a matrix is! Is it any wonder that NASA lacks capabilities it had over 50 years ago. Many new engineers are simply Matlab jockeys where they generate pretty graphs, and they lack an understanding of the fundamentals. Decades ago when I interviewed students I notices some subjects have disappeared from transcripts, like thermodynamics. I think Mechanical engineers still take this course, but electrical engineers don’t.
So what is going on? Admission standards are way down, and DEI is one of the causes. Engineering is just too hard for some of our “protected” groups so lower the standards to get more women and minorities into “STEM” (a term I don’t like). The consequences of lower standards has become all too obvious as one can see with NASA and Boeing. My SO is getting a pilot’s license. We will fly our own plane to get around. I no longer trust the airlines and the airplane manufacturers.
That math kicked my butt so bad as an undergrad.
As a student athlete- taking higher level math classes killed me. Later is was the compiler courses for computer science which was a 2 semester course. It was a “herd thinning course” and it did thin the herd. I had to drop the first time. My former teammate quit after attempting this course and got a general studies degree (worthless in the market place)
After I was done with my athletic eligibility I retook the and scored highest in the class. Of course at that point I literally spent 18 hours a day in the lab.
It got lost in the debate news cycle, but the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission lifted off with 4 astronauts on board earlier today. So far it’s a flawless mission, complete with the 1st stage booster successfully soft landing on the drone ship in the Atlantic. The high Earth orbit EVA/space walk is next. Awesome stuff.