How it's going
Boeing now has a couple of jobs to do:
1) Change suit design to be compatible with Space-X.
2) Add food storage to capsule.
There is an old medical joke:
“The operation was a success, but the patient died.”
New Boeing joke:
“The Starliner successfully returned, but without the astronauts.”
2024: "If Its Boeing I'm Not Going"
Dude, where’s my ride?
Now put that piece of junk in a museum before it kills somebody
How it's going
I bet that crew left stranded wish they had rode that craft back to earth.
If NASA is too chicken to take risks they should go back to sending chimps to space, the capsule worked fine, no humans needed
If there’s another flight the heads of Boeing and NASA should be on it
Why didn’t they keep Starlink up there as a backup, in case SpaceX develops an unforeseen problem that delays its launch even unacceptably later?
I lost my bet. Figured it would not make it back.
From what I’ve heard Boeing used to use their own people as president or chairman of the board. Now they use people that were hired from outside to run the company. I wonder if that was a good idea?
Boeing encountered a problem, but they succeeded in uploading new software to fix the docking problem, and they also successfully returned the capsule to earth.
Space flight is HARD, and while not by any measure a flawless mission, their team recovered from set backs to achieve a measure of success.
So if the capsule made it back ok, does that mean the astronauts could have come back, with it, after all?
Yeah, you shoulda been there!
The return flight was absolutely flawless, everything happened on que and all of the systems worked as advertised, even the thrusters. Where is the recognition of that?? It's time to look at some aspects of this other than the hardware.
We have been driven by a media induced hysteria and contemporary cultural norms, to expect failure, not just in Starliner but in many aspects of our lives. Optimism is gone.. The media was filling front pages with this pessimism because there are no hurricanes or shark attacks to dwell on so far this year. Hell, they've even run out of tornadoes.
It is obvious that NASA was afraid to make a decision that wasn't 100% guaranteed. They were more afraid of the political fallout than take the chance for success. John Glen knew his ride on the Atlas was about a 75% shot at success. He had seen too many blow up to delude himself otherwise. Still, he went.
Neil Armstrong landed the LEM on the moon even though his computer gave out on him. Standing NASA instructions were to abort the mission if this occurred. He made an informed decision based on his risk analysis.
I admire the people who know the risks of spaceflight and despite those risks, go anyway. That is the America I grew up in and hope to see again before I die.