NASA insists stranded Starliner crew is not "stuck"

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Originally published at: NASA insists stranded Starliner crew is not "stuck" - Boing Boing

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There must be 50 ways to leave the space station.

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or at least five.

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Yet perhaps < 1 that gets them home safely.

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They are not technically stuck, in the sense that they are not physically held in place by means of friction or adhesion, so good on NASA for clarifying that. /s

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NASA can bring them back to Earth at any time; it is just that keeping them alive is more tricky.

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Is the Starliner capable of making an uncrewed reentry? This would get it out of the way of the space station’s operations, and free up space for a taxi going to collect the two astronauts. It would also check the safety of the module.

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Good question, well phrased.

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Precisely, Velcro is mechanical.

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We’ll know tomorrow.

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From last year, the options haven’t changed as such:

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Not to mention the more directly relevant lesson they should have learned from Challenger, when they knew they potentially had a leak problem, but chose to ignore it and launch anyway. NASA seems to be really, really bad at learning lessons.

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Ars Technica has been covering this vexing issue quite well and the latest ‘FAQ’ includes this:

Should NASA decide to fly Butch and Suni on Dragon, Starliner will be able to return autonomously to Earth thanks to a software update that has required a few weeks of work.

So apparently, yes, they could pilot ‘starliner’ back without humans aboard. and i’d humbly say that’s the way it should be done. Safety first …please.

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“Roger, go at throttle up.”

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Thanks for the info, and, indeed, God speed, John Glen Safety first, Williams and Wilmore! :hugs:

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The MOOSE concept comes uncomfortable close.

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Fixed with a software update? That’s so Boeing.

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It’s all about the degree of “acceptable risk”. So there’s a helium leak that’s higher than acceptable. But what does that mean to flight performance? What are the failure modes? Could it be weakening the frame? Could it cause unplanned thrust in a vector they can’t compensate for? Whatever it might mean, there are all kinds of possibilities that they have to try to model and measure.

At the end of the day they figure out that it causes the model to fail maybe one time out of every thousand runs. So the betting portion of the discussion begins: is a 0.1% chance of catastrophe considered an acceptable risk? The astronauts are consulted, but so are NASAs leaders, and Boeing’s PR people. Everyone has to sign off, even if the physical risk is considered minimal.

What’s slowing this decision down is that there are safer alternatives. They can stay put as long as needed, where the major risk is another black eye for Boeing.

So yeah, they’re not stuck physically, they’re being held there by red tape.

EDIT: Just read the Ars article and saw NASA has set the acceptable risk for crew loss at 1:270; and the primary concern is thruster failure, not helium leaks. Same math applies either way.

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… do they know where the leak is, and do they have a roll of duck tape? /silly, NOT SERIOUS.

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