I dunno. Occupying a docking bay for three months... What are they going to learn about Starliner’s condition and exploring solutions for a safe return that they haven’t learned already? Why not bring the Starliner back to earth and study its remains here? Then contract with SpaceX (or the Russians or whoever can) to bring the crew home safely?
The longer Starliner stays the worst it will get
Why not bring the Starliner back to earth and study its remains here?
I think that’s the problem.
They can‘t. The Boeing junk ain’t going. It’s broke, Jim.
Because the leaks they are tracking down are on the service module part of the spacecraft. That is the part that burns up.
I am not sure why they cannot come down with the capsule, though. Is the heat shield damaged?
It has come to light that the capsule can not return to earth un manned. Further the capsule apparently can’t be detached from the space station unless there is a crew member inside to work the detaching mechanism.
I think Boeing is just trying desperately to avoid having to admit that they’ve failed again. They’re also trying to avoid the embarrassment that having SpaceX rescue their astronauts would bring. But both of those outcomes are as inevitable as the sun rising every 90 minutes while on orbit (see what I did there?).
However, I’ve been wondering for a while now how SpaceX will be able to accommodate two astronauts who have incompatible spacesuits and for whom custom seats don’t exist in the Dragon. Seats are molded to the bodies of individual astronauts, both for comfort and safety. I suppose they can get around that one by installing seats that are as close to their known body dimensions as possible. As far as I know, forces during reentry in Dragon max out around 4 Gs, which would be easily tolerable even if the seat isn’t perfectly fitted. However, I don’t know if they can get around the need to have the spacesuits custom fitted. Maybe it doesn’t matter as much if they’re not going to be moving around much in them, just riding down, but I wonder about things like the suit’s ability to protect them in an emergency from thermal or pressure changes if its fit is only a rough approximation.