Imagine you’re going away for work somewhere far from home this summer. The flight out is a bit hectic, but you’re looking forward to being away for a week or so. Then your flight home is delayed. The airline puts you up in a nice hotel but can’t agree on a new departure date. Your employer booked the tickets, so there’s not much you can do about the situation. You’re running out of clean clothes, and everyone at home is wondering when you’re coming back.
After two months, your bosses tell you new travel information. They think they can send you home soon, and with the same airline. Or they may have to book a different airline, and if that’s the case, then hold on: the flight is scheduled for next year. You land eight months later –Months!– after you left.
It’s an absurd scenario, but it’s playing out right now 250 miles above Earth, with two NASA astronauts on the International Space Station. Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams launched in early June in Starliner, a spacecraft built by Boeing. NASA had tasked them with testing the new spacecraft before clearing Boeing for regular missions to carry crews to the ISS. The astronauts were prepared for some surprises, as is to be expected with a new spacecraft. But Boeing’s first crewed mission has now gone so badly that NASA is seriously considering whether Starliner can bring Wilmore and Williams home at all — and trying to decide whether the astronauts should return on SpaceX’s Dragon instead.
NASA officials said yesterday they would make a final decision later this month after weighing Starliner’s chances of returning the astronauts safely to Earth. The effort to get Starliner to the ISS and back was fraught with technical problems even before Wilmore and Williams launched; now Boeing’s already dubious reputation as a capable aerospace company is at stake. The company is said to be a competitor to SpaceX, which has been flying NASA astronauts to the space station and back without incident for several years. But if Boeing can’t recover from this saga, Elon Musk’s company could have a monopoly on astronaut transportation services. NASA has invested billions of dollars in the two companies so they can support each other. The agency probably never expected to face this scenario so soon, or the possibility that a private company could dominate American spaceflight in the post-space shuttle era.
Of all the places to be stuck waiting for a flight home, the space station isn’t the worst — gorgeous views, endless weightlessness, no crowds. Wilmore and Williams are helping the other crew members aboard with scientific research and station maintenance. And they said they’re enjoying the extra time in orbit. After all, they’re both close to retirement, so this could be their last NASA trip. The real drama is on the ground, where NASA and Boeing seem to disagree about the best path forward. Teams have spent several weeks trying to figure out whether some of the Starliner’s engines, which malfunctioned as the spacecraft approached the ISS for docking, would work properly on the return trip. Some test results were “a bit of a surprise to us,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, told reporters yesterday, and “added to the unease” — not exactly what you’d hope to hear. The same goes for Stich’s next statement, that engineers lack a “full understanding of the physics of what happens inside the engines” when their Teflon seals expand and block the flow of fuel.
The Boeing team is confident Starliner can accomplish its mission, even if there are uncertainties about the propulsion system. But some at NASA aren’t so sure, Ken Bowersox, NASA’s deputy director of space operations, said at the press conference. At a meeting of NASA officials this week, “we heard from a lot of people who had concerns, and the decision was not clear,” Bowersox said. The final decision will be made by NASA, not Boeing; a Commercial Crew Program committee will recommend a course of action to Bowersox, and the decision could go all the way up to the head of the space agency.
If NASA chooses SpaceX, the next Dragon mission would launch in late September with two astronauts instead of the originally planned four. Those astronauts would stay on the ISS for a regular six-month stay, and then Wilmore and Williams would come home with them in February 2025. Starliner would come home alone in early September.
That scenario would be a major embarrassment for Boeing and would cast doubt on the future of the Starliner program. Boeing struggled to reach the launch pad this year, let alone orbit. The program has been plagued by poor oversight, technical problems and schedule delays, including a required re-run when Boeing’s uncrewed test flight failed to reach the ISS in 2019. Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy director, once called successfully meeting Starliner’s goals “existential” for Boeing. Assuming the spacecraft makes it back, it is scheduled to be inspected by NASA to clear it for regular operations, but how that process will play out if the vehicle comes back empty is unclear. Perhaps Boeing could address the problems that mission exposed and become a meaningful contributor to astronaut commutes before 2030, when space agencies plan to decommission the ISS and remove it from orbit. Or perhaps SpaceX will transport space travelers alone. If something breaks – and it can happen – SpaceX’s rockets were recently grounded for several weeks after an in-flight incident – NASA astronauts have nowhere to go.
For weeks after the Starliner’s launch, NASA and Boeing officials downplayed the problems. Boeing, in particular, continued to heavily promote the spacecraft even as engineers struggled to understand the cause of the propulsion problems. “The vehicle has really performed outstandingly,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s commercial space program manager, told reporters late last month. (Nappi was conspicuously absent from yesterday’s press conference, a departure from the usual format.) Both the agency and the company are upset by the growing public perception that Wilmore and Williams are stranded or stuck. I still think that’s the case. stranded is exaggerated, as I wrote last month. Pluggedbut becomes painfully more accurate with each passing day.
The astronauts are making the best of the situation, as are all other travelers waiting for their flight. But space travel is far more dangerous than aviation, and will remain so for decades to come. “Even the best-designed, flight-proven vehicles, under the best of circumstances, have an analytical probability of failure that is horrendously high compared to everyday life,” Wayne Hale, former NASA flight director and head of the space shuttle program, wrote in his blog this week. NASA now has a very important decision to make. Better to be stuck for now than to regret it.
