[DEI woke = going broke...] Why are the Boeing Starliner astronauts still in space?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6pp29gdwe6o

The two astronauts testing out Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft were 
supposed to begin making their way back to Earth on Wednesday night but 
instead they will stay on the International Space Station (ISS).

The vessel's return to Earth had already been delayed because of issues 
with some of its thrusters and leaks of the helium gas which pushes fuel 
into the propulsion system.

Nasa is carrying out a high-level review of the technical problems before 
deciding when to bring its astronauts home.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are in no danger, but what has gone wrong 
with the spacecraft and what does this mean for their journey home?

Starliner was launched on 5 June despite there being a small leak of 
helium gas. Helium is used to push propellent to the thruster systems used 
for maneuvering in space and slowing down to re-enter the Earth’s 
atmosphere.

The leak was extremely small and engineers believed that it would not 
affect the mission and so went ahead with the launch.

But four further helium leaks developed during the mission and five of its 
28 maneuvering thrusters cut out during the approach to the space station, 
four of which were restarted.

The mission was supposed to have lasted eight days, but the return date 
was postponed as engineers investigated the issues.

Then on 18 June Nasa announced that Starliner would start its journey home 
at 22:00 EST on Wednesday 26 June (03:00 Thursday 27 June BST).

Nasa had earlier stated in a blog post that the leaks posed no safety risk 
to the astronauts because: “Only seven hours of free-flight time is needed 
to perform a normal end of mission, and Starliner currently has enough 
helium left in its tanks to support 70 hours of free flight activity 
following undocking.”

But just a few days later, following high-level meetings, Nasa concluded 
that the scheduled return should be "adjusted" to a date in July. No 
additional information was given as to why the decision had been changed.

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Nasa stated that flight engineers wanted to study the spacecraft to get to 
the bottom of the faults before it re-entered into the Earth’s atmosphere.

That's because while the crew capsule will parachute to the ground, 
Starliner’s faulty lower 'service module' will burn up upon re-entry, 
meaning the loss of some information on what went wrong.

The space agency stressed that the astronauts were not stranded and that 
Starliner was certified to return to Earth in the event of an emergency on 
the ISS.

What happens next will depend on the outcome of the agency review.

The sequence of events raises questions about whether the launch should 
have gone ahead in spite of the leak.

Dr Adam Baker, who is head of Rocket Engineering, a UK company 
specialising in rocket propulsion systems, says he understands why the 
launch took place but says it would have been better to have got to the 
bottom of the cause of the leak and repaired it.

“There is a risk of trying to get things too perfect and ending up taking 
too long and it being too expensive and as a result, public and political 
support disappears," he said.

“But what I feel is that they may not have sufficiently considered the 
worsening of the leak after launch. This is something that Nasa and Boeing 
probably should have done.”

That would have been tremendously expensive, as it would have involved 
taking the rocket off the launch pad and taking the propulsion system out 
of the spacecraft.

Another issue for Nasa’s review is why these issues were not identified in 
any of the two previous uncrewed flight tests of Starliner, according to 
Dr Simeon Barber, who is a space scientist at the Open University.

“The problems we have seen in the last few weeks are not the kind we would 
have anticipated at this stage of the development programme for 
Starliner,” he says.

“The whole point about this was to test what putting astronauts in the 
loop of controlling the spacecraft would do in terms of performance. 

Instead, we seem to be dealing with rather more fundamental issues that 
really should have been ironed out by now.”

Finally, for Nasa, there is the critical issue of identifying the 
underlying cause of the helium leaks and thruster problems. Until they do 
that, all the analyses of the risks of a safe return of the astronauts and 
any contingency plans will be incomplete, according to Dr Barber.

“Unless the root cause is understood, they are having to make a judgement 
about the return based on incomplete information. If you don’t fully 
understand the cause of any failure then you can’t say for sure that you 
have not got a systematic problem that will affect not just the primary 
propulsion system, but also the back-ups.”

As a last resort, Nasa and Boeing can return their astronauts on SpaceX's 
Dragon capsule, which would be hugely embarrassing for Boeing. But we are 
not in that territory yet, according to Dr Baker.

“With new spacecraft you should expect the unexpected,” he says. “This is 
an entirely expected bump in the road and I don’t think it to be a major 
concern, other than it needs to be analysed and fixed before the next 
crewed flight.”


-- 
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