Abandon ship! Starliner to attempt automated return next month. SpaceX Dragon rescue mission scheduled for February.
Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 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.
Bless their hearts! Coping with a what, six day mission now more than six months doing make-work instead of addressing their growing backlog back Earthside?
Have they been wearing the same clothes or did some replacements get sent on the last cargo mission?
NYT Opinion commentary – Boeing’s No Good, Never-Ending Tailspin Might Take NASA With It
What are the odds Artemis makes it to the Moon at all?
From the article: Boeing, the report noted, has failed to meet international standards and is exhibiting quality control faults “largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing.”
“International standards” for space rockets? Moving right along, there is not a word in that article about one of the key changes in Boeing since the glory days – DIE. Pre-Covid, an enthusiastic friend was recommending investment in Boeing stock. I lost interest when looking at the Boeing Annual Report, which figured a photo of the CEO with the latest batch of engineering new hires: in a group of about 30 new college graduates, there were about 2 geeky-looking white males at the back of a group of females & people of color. Clearly, hiring based on merit was not one of Boeing’s core practices.
Nor is there a word about one of the other major changes since the days of NASA’s moon shots. Back then, the rockets were the product of a well-integrated US manufacturing network. Today, following the outsourcing of the former US industrial base, Boeing largely assembles imported parts – with all the difficulties that imposes on quality control.
This is not to excuse Boeing’s management’s preference for self-enriching stock buy-backs instead of investments in R&D and workforce training.
And before DIE there were the MBAs. I knew a mathematician who worked for Boeing for many years. In his view, the beginning of the end was the merger with McDonnell Douglas, which resulted in the bean counters and MBAs becoming ascendant in the company. The corporate move from Seattle to Chicago was, in his view, an attempt to put the engineers at arm’s length. The more recent move to the DC area completed its corporate descent. Please bring your seat backs forward into their full, upright, and locked position and bend forward in preparation for crash landing.
Undocking today 18:04 EDT:
A couple of fresh technical problems cropped up as Starliner cruised back to Earth. One of 12 control jets on the crew module failed to ignite at any time during Starliner’s flight home. These are separate thrusters from the small engines that caused trouble earlier in the Starliner mission. There was also a brief glitch in Starliner’s navigation system during reentry.