Posted on 08/05/2024 11:52:06 AM PDT by george76
Well, here's another nice mess NASA and Boeing have gotten us into.
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space station docking ports as the most expensive and coveted parking spots on or above the Earth because that's exactly what they are. There are only a handful of them, reaching one costs tens of millions of dollars, and they're reserved months or even years in advance. And, needless to say, there's no possibility of double-parking. Every docking port needed by the next vehicle must first be vacated by the current one.
The dock currently occupied by Starliner is needed by a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and its four astronauts set to fly the Crew-9 mission. Crew-9 is set for Aug. 18
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every delay in getting another capsule up to ISS has cascading effects down the line and that the station is nearing the end of its service life and will be deorbited in 2030.
This morning I learned that NASA is now considering bumping Crew-9 from Aug. 18 to Sept 24, which space journalist Eric Berger (the best in the business) called "a significant slip." The reason for the possible delay is a virtual confession that Wilmore and Williams will not be coming home on Starliner this week, next week, or ever.
Boeing needs the extra time to prepare Starliner for self-destruct.
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If they decide Starliner is unfit — assuming they haven't already and are just being mum for now — then Starliner will have to be software-piloted to disembark from ISS and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. And Wimore and Williams will have to hitch a ride home on a Crew Dragon.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Maybe Elon can save NASA
DEI will be the death of us all.
The government just isn’t good at anything.
Now they’re just littering.
If the Starliner doesn’t bring these astronauts home, it will never fly again.
It might not anyway. It’s pretty clear SpaceX has won.
Boeing is a shameful shell of what it once was…
Minute you bring in the hedge fund folks to try to run an engineering company you wind up destroying it…
Every, single, time…
How the Boeing CEO and board still have their jobs at this point tells you all you need to know.
Send some Boeing management up to ride Starliner back down. That will change how they see the DEI program!
The hits just keep on comin’ and 50% of this country can’t put 2 and 2 together.
The elephant in the humiliation room is not SpaceX.
They may not have anything ready to go.
The elephant is Soyuz, who were the only way to the ISS for 10 years.
Oh the huge matinee!.....
Sure they can, it's 22. Right? /sarc
Well, the Apollo missions were successful (mostly).
I surmised a month or so back that burning it up was on the table. Shame and a major embarrassment if that is how it goes down, but Astronauts safety is obviously the priority. Elon to the rescue!
> DEI will be the death of us all. <
The owner of that Titanic explorer mini-sub hired only young and diverse people. He specifically said that he wasn’t interested in old white guys, no matter how experienced and qualified they might be.
Five people died on that sub. That should have been a wake-up call. But I guess five dead isn’t nearly a big enough number.
That was a different era, post 80's the government can't do anything right.
Toured Cape Canaveral 15 years ago, in what is now a museum to the Apollo program.
What struck me was that each company involved - Sperry-Rand, IBM, Grumman, etc... each had their section of seats, which were displayed clearly, covering the entire control center
It was really a collaboration organized by NASA, employing the diverse knowledge and energy of various sectors of American society and private business.
“Five people died on that sub. That should have been a wake-up call. But I guess five dead isn’t nearly a big enough number.”
From what I can tell... there isn’t a big enough number.
Not sure why they don’t send it back sans crew at the least to collect test data and get experience.
It’s good to have a backup to SpaceX but the backup is not doing well so far...
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