Starliner’s first manned flight in May

NASA greenlighted the capsule’s first crewed flight on Thursday. Starliner from Boeing, May 6. It will be led from Houston by Canadian astronaut Joshua Katrick. Boeing’s problems with airliners raise many doubts about the Starliner.

” Starliner has nothing to do with Boeing’s current problems,” responded astronaut Butch Wilmore during a news conference Thursday afternoon upon his arrival on a T-38 jet at Kennedy Space Center. NASA No. 2 Jim Free and mission director Emily Nelson gave the same answer to the same question during an afternoon telephone news conference.

Mr. Wilmore will fly with Suni Williams. Both are US Navy pilots.

If a manned flight to the International Space Station (ISS) is successful, Starliner will take Mr. Kutrik on a six-month mission to the ISS in early 2025.

Boeing’s capsule competed Dragon Crew SpaceX, when NASA awarded contracts totaling more than $7 billion to the two companies in 2014 to develop vehicles for its astronauts. Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, NASA has been dependent on Russian capsules. Union get to the ISS.

The wait lasted until May 2020, when SpaceX made its first manned flight. Boeing nearly crossed the finish line first, but it experienced clock problems during unmanned testing in December 2019. The company just saw its 737 Max ground after two crashes. Problems Starlinerwhich were to make another unmanned test flight in 2022, also coexisted with Boeing airliners at the time.

Dragon Team She has already completed a dozen manned flights to the ISS. In particular, SpaceX transported private missions from Axiom there.

Parachutes

The two press conferences raised many more questions about disaster scenarios. Steve Stich, director of NASA’s commercial human spaceflight program, detailed the challenges Starliner which the agency is still working on. The oxygen valve needs to be replaced and checked, and doubt remains as to what will happen if one of the two pilot chutes Starliner did not turn correctly upon re-entry.

Earlier in the day, Butch Wilmore was more aggressive in the face of doubt from reporters. “During our last simulation on Monday, we ran a mission abort scenario before arriving in orbit. All we had to do was press a button and choose to land in Ireland. We added another glitch: some maneuvers had to be performed manually. And yet we landed less than 200 meters from our intended location in Ireland. There is no capsule in the world with greater redundancy. »

Suni Williams added that Starliner looked a lot like a lunar capsule Orion. “If I were a young astronaut with ambitions to go to the moon, I would want to go to the moon. Starliner “, said M.^{to me} Williams.

Mr. Wilmore was equally enthusiastic about the rocket. Atlas V United Launch Alliance, which will bring Starliner into orbit on May 6. The last manned flight of the Atlas rocket took place in 1962. “There is no other expendable rocket that I trust more,” Wilmore said. Atlas V has an early problem detection system that can save lives. »

Interruptions

During the journey to the ISS Starliner will make several attempts to abort the flight at the last minute, especially when docking with the ISS. M^{to me} Williams and Mr. Wilmore will stay on the station for a week before returning to Earth. Emergency manual reentry tests will be conducted upon reentry.

A dozen thefts Starliner flights to the ISS are planned until 2030, in particular with astronauts until 2028, the year when Russia is supposed to withdraw from the international program. Boeing suffered over $1 billion in cost overruns on the Starliner program, resulting in Washington Post last fall to predict it Starliner will not be profitable after NASA’s contracts with the ISS end.

NASA’s commercial contracts with SpaceX and Boeing have cut the cost of sending an astronaut to the ISS in half compared to the space shuttle. Use Union the cost is slightly less, US$80 million per astronaut compared to US$88 million for Dragon Team.