Starliner: Another disaster for Boeing?

INTERESTING ENGINEERING SHOP

Boeing has been under intense scrutiny this year due to whistleblowers exposing malpractice in the aerospace giant’s airliner factories.

If the company had hoped its Starliner space capsule would take attention away from its aviation woes, unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

While Starliner has safely carried two astronauts to the International Space Station, they have now been stranded aboard the space station due to problems with the spacecraft’s thrusters. All of this has come at double the price of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon program. More on all of this ahead.

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AEROSPACE ENGINEERING SPOTLIGHT

Boeing’s ongoing Starliner malfunctions

More than 50 days after they flew up to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Boeing Starliner capsule, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are facing an indefinite stay in space.

The NASA astronauts were initially scheduled to stay aboard the ISS for 10 days. However, a thruster malfunction means that they can’t fly back to Earth. Engineers are working to resolve the issue, but there is currently no return date in sight.

“We don’t have a major announcement today relative to a return date,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said during a recent press briefing. “We’re making great progress, but we’re just not quite ready to do that.”

On June 5, Starliner lifted off aboard a ULA Atlas V rocket. The next day, five thrusters malfunctioned as the capsule approached the space station. Four of those thrusters have since been reactivated, but one is still malfunctioning.

Officials believe the problem is likely caused by degraded seals, leading to helium leaks and thruster issues.

Boeing’s Starliner program kicked off at the same time as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which successfully flew two astronauts to the ISS in 2020. 

According to a recent Ars Technica report, the Boeing Starliner program has cost roughly $6.7 billion since 2010, which is at least twice as much as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon program. In that context, it’s hard not to see Starliner as an unmitigated disaster, especially as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has been operational for years and its Crew-9 mission is expected to lift off this month.

Boeing has come under intense scrutiny in recent months for its airliner manufacturing practices. Starliner isn’t doing much to keep that scrutiny at bay.

AERO BULLETIN

The most successful human spacecraft in history

When Boeing and SpaceX were first awarded contracts to develop human-rated spacecraft to carry humans to the ISS, many thought Boeing had a clear advantage over the up-and-comer SpaceX. 

The history of spaceflight is full of twists and turns, though. Given Boeing’s recent spacecraft woes, here are some of the most successful human spacecraft in history. 

Vostok

63 years ago, the first human spaceflight was conducted by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard a Vostok spacecraft. 

After flying to space, Gagarin orbited Earth once before returning to Earth’s atmosphere. Vostok had no landing gear, meaning Gagarin had to eject on reentry and parachute to safety.

The Apollo lunar module

The Apollo lunar module made history by carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar surface in 1969.

24 astronauts ended up flying to the Moon on nine separate Apollo missions between December 1968 and December 1972.

Soyuz

The Soyuz program is the longest-lasting human spacelight program in history. It first launches in 1967, and Russia has since developed ten different iterations of the Soyuz spacecraft.

Every iteration used the same three-part design, which consists of a descent module, an orbital module, and a propulsion module. Soyuz spacecraft have made more than 150 crewed spaceflights to date.

Space Shuttle

NASA’s Space Shuttle was the first reusable crewed spacecraft. NASA flew a total of 135 crewed Space Shuttle missions to space between 1981 and 2011. 

The spacecraft launched 355 people to space, many of them on more than one occasion. It was discontinued in 2011, partly due to the Challenger and Columbia mission disasters, in 1986 and 2003 respectively.

Crew Dragon

Following the end of the Space Shuttle era, the US was without a launch vehicle of its own for almost a decade. In May 2020, though, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule brought human spaceflight back to US soil.

Crew Dragon launches atop SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. Crew Dragon has flown 10 crewed missions to the ISS for NASA, as well as a handful of historic private missions. Later this year, the Polaris Dawn mission could become the first private space mission to conduct a spacewalk.