Thrusters Failed! NASA finally revealed How Boeing Starliner Undock ISS and Back...

How will NASA plan to bring Boeing's troubled Starliner home? Finally, after weeks of debate, NASA has revealed the details on how to bring this big white elephant back, instead of turning it into space junk. Find out everything in today's TechMap episode. But before we begin, let's subscribe to the channel to stay up to date with the latest space news. The name of the Boeing Starliner Calypso reminds us of a nymph from Greek mythology, named Calypso. She lived on the island of Ogygia, where she detained Odysseus for seven years against his will. She promised Odysseus immortality if he would stay with her, but Odysseus preferred to return home. Eventually, after the intervention of the other gods, Calypso was forced to let Odysseus go. This story could be modified a little bit to accommodate the current context. The troubled Boeing Starliner nymph detained two NASA astronauts, Butch and Suni, for more than two months against their will to stay around eight days. She promised two astronauts an indefinite life in space if they agreed to be stuck with her, but Wilmore and William preferred to return home. The reason Boeing can be so arrogant is because they have a powerful god protecting them, named NASA. In reality, during those over two months, despite the public outrage, the U.S. space agency still found all ways to protect its preferred contractor, saying that Starliner didn't have any trouble with its return capability, and the option to order a rescue mission was just a rumor. When the Starliner's problem was getting worse and the media pressure was increasing, NASA ultimately acknowledged that, based on the core value, commitment to safety, Boeing Starliner would make an uncrewed return and let the alternative spacecraft, SpaceX Dragon, bring the astronaut home. This announcement is made by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson through a live news conference on Saturday, August 24, 2024, as well as his tweet on the same day. Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine. Our decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the space station and bring Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety, our core value. Consequently, Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71-72nd's crew through February 2025. They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft, with two other crew members assigned to the agency's SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Starliner is expected to depart from the space station and make a safe, controlled, autonomous re-entry and landing in early September. The CFT's crew will stay up there for eight months in total, and this sparked a lot of concerns for their health status, as living in space for a long time. NASA immediately gave the response to those concerns. Both Butch and Suni have completed long-duration stays aboard the space station on previous missions. A typical stay aboard the station is about six months, and our NASA astronauts have remained on the station for longer-duration missions of about one year. However, keep in mind that unexpectedly extending the time staying on the ISS, such as in this case, is not what NASA expects in the Starliner future missions. Following Starliner's return, the agency will review all mission-related data to inform what additional actions are required to meet NASA's certification requirements. They said, Oh my God, it would be unformidable if NASA still maintains its contract with Boeing, and more surprisingly, they still plan to order the crewed trips on this dangerous vehicle despite the unacceptable problems on the spacecraft. Compared to two other vehicles, NASA's Space Shuttle and SpaceX Dragon, Starliner's achievement is humiliating. The Shuttle spacecraft made the record with 135 flights from 1981 to 2011, including two fatal disasters. SpaceX Crew Dragon has experienced a dozen crewed missions to space in four short years, and 53 astronauts safely launched and recovered. Only disasters were in the testing phases. Meanwhile, Boeing has had only one flight and one disaster, despite being awarded the NASA contract at the same time as Dragon. NASA's current decision might come from NASA's strong confidence in the manager role of the new CEO of Boeing, Kelly Ortberg. Bill Nelson expressed full confidence, stating he is 100% certain that Starliner will launch crews to the ISS again. Not only Nelson but also Steve Stitch, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program also shares the same optimistic view. Starliner is a very capable spacecraft, and ultimately this comes down to needing a higher level of certainty to perform a crewed return, he said. Additionally, from the beginning, NASA always insists on the necessity of two suppliers to make redundancy for the Commercial Crew Program. This partly explains why the incompetent Boeing has been here so far. And of course, it's not the main drive. In 2019, NASA Inspector General detected several issues related to NASA's Commercial Crew Program, one of which was the nearly $300 million that NASA paid Boeing. It is more than originally planned in its Commercial Crew Contract because of agency concerns that the company might drop out of the program, more notably after getting an additional $300 million in December 2019, Starliner failed an uncrewed orbital flight test to dock to the ISS, leading to the second attempt three years later. As far as I know until now, Boeing has no intention of refunding that money. In the OFT-2 mission launched on May 19, 2022, the Calypso spacecraft struggled to dock to the ISS due to the failure of its thruster system. It's unclear why, although two years have passed, Boeing hasn't managed to handle thoroughly the thruster problems leading to the stuck issue on the 2024 launch. Not that enough can't help but mention the undocking software on Starliner. Due to the shift from unmanned to manned mission, the unautonomous undocking software was added, which requires the collaboration with crew on board to safely undock the vehicle. This, though, leads to an ironic situation, meaning that Starliner can't undock by itself unless its software is upgraded to autonomous mode. The bottom line here is NASA's ambiguity about this change, and they just aware of it recently. So the question arises, is it true that NASA did not know about this at the outset of the crew flight test? Perhaps they had some doubts about the software issue, but they guessed that the chance of failure was very small, primarily due to the firm belief in the Boeing contractor, or they were simply too hands-off in watching its troubled giant aerospace industry. It's so weird that for another contractor, SpaceX, NASA tends to be strict. NASA imposes stringent safety requirements on all commercial crewed flights, including those operated by SpaceX. For instance, the agency mandates that the risk of loss of crew must not exceed 1 in 270 flights for missions to the International Space Station, ISS. This reflects a commitment to ensuring that commercial spaceflight is as safe as possible. So, do we have any reasonable explanation for this? Boeing was inherently considered the aristocracy of the aerospace industry. With 100 years of spaceflight history and its mark on the dawn of human exploration, the company easily got the support of many politicians in parliament to enter any NASA significant programs. In the early days of NASA's commercial crew program, Boeing actively lobbied to secure its position as a key provider of crew transportation services. According to Eric Berger's forthcoming book, Reentry, from the start, Boeing clearly showed its ambition to be the sole crewed spacecraft provider. Boeing had a solution, telling NASA it needed the entire commercial crew budget to succeed. Because a lot of decision makers believed that only Boeing could safely fly astronauts, the company's gambit very nearly worked. After a cascade of pro-Boeing opinions swept around the table, a building an unbreakable wave of consensus, NASA's human exploration lead Gerstenmaier took a month to decide, eventually asking for more budget to support two competing efforts. Ultimately, the new entrant SpaceX won the contract, even though it just received half of the funding as Boeing. Given the presence of SpaceX, Boeing expressed concerns about the competitive landscape, particularly regarding SpaceX's rapid progress. The company sought to ensure that it remained a viable option for NASA, advocating for its experience and established track record in aerospace. Boeing's arrogance was also demonstrated in its attitude in listening to the astronauts' response. When the SpaceX engineers could be corralled, they were eager to hear feedback from the NASA astronauts, excited to work with them, and attentive to their suggestions. By contrast, Boeing engineers seemed indifferent to hearing from the four commercial crew astronauts. There was an arrogance with them that you certainly didn't see at SpaceX. Boeing also underperformed. Not only were its engineers overconfident, but the company's management also was not putting skin in the game. Astronaut Hurley did not see any urgency from Boeing's teams. Rather, they appeared to be working part-time on Starliner. It was all about managing dollars and cents from Boeing's perspective, Hurley said. During the summer of 2018 as Boeing worked toward a pad abort test in White Sands, New Mexico, Boeing never flew an in-flight abort test. A significant problem occurred due to a propellant leak. Ultimately, this would delay the company's pad abort test by more than a year. But at the time, Boeing neglected to tell the commercial crew astronauts about the issue. And that just about wraps it up for today's episode. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you next time.