Notably, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich obliquely referenced this during his most recent press availability on July 25. Stich was asked whether NASA would certify Starliner for operational missions if the vehicle returned to Earth autonomously but ultimately safely.
“There are a lot of good reasons to complete this mission and bring Butch and Suni home on Starliner,” he said. “Starliner was designed as a spacecraft to have the crew in the cockpit. The crew is integral to the spacecraft.”
Port concerns
The International Space Station has two docking ports for crew vehicles, and these must accommodate both Crew Dragon and Starliner. At present, one of these ports is occupied by the Crew-8 spacecraft, which is due to return to Earth fairly soon. The other port is occupied by Starliner. One source at Johnson Space Center said the concern is that NASA cannot afford to “brick” one of its two crew docking ports.
For this reason, if NASA decides to return Starliner autonomously, it must be certain the undocking software update will work.
As NASA is working to balance all of these risks—the risk to crew on board Starliner, the risk of an uncrewed departure to the ISS, the risk to astronauts on board the space station, and more—Boeing has been lobbying to bring Starliner home with crew. Although NASA and Boeing engineers have yet to identify a root cause for the failure of the thrusters, Boeing has been urging NASA to accept “flight rationale” as a substitute. That is, Boeing believes it has provided enough data to NASA to be confident the thrusters will not fail in a catastrophic manner.
This campaign spilled out into the public on Friday evening when Boeing put out a news release trumpeting all of the testing it has done since the launch of the Crew Flight Test.
“Boeing remains confident in the Starliner spacecraft and its ability to return safely with crew,” the company stated. “We continue to support NASA’s requests for additional testing, data, analysis and reviews to affirm the spacecraft’s safe undocking and landing capabilities. Our confidence is based on this abundance of valuable testing from Boeing and NASA.”
