Boeing delays 1st Starliner astronaut launch for NASA indefinitely over parachute, wiring safety issues
Boeing's first Starliner astronaut flight was scheduled for July 21. It won't fly this summer, but a fall launch is 'feasible.'
![People in blue lab coats working on Boeing's blue and white Starliner spacecraft](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/q5uvnhhuCrGLzgM2bUeuWN-320-80.jpg)
Boeing is standing down from the first-ever crewed launch of its Starliner astronaut capsule for NASA, possibly indefinitely, due to safety issues with the spacecraft's parachutes and wiring that were discovered last week.
The Starliner astronaut launch, already years behind schedule, was most recently targeted to launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on July 21. Now, it likely won't launch at all this summer, and may not get off the ground this year.
"It's feasible, but I certainly wouldn't want to commit to any dates or timeframes," Mark Nappi, Boeing Starliner program manager and vice president, told reporters in a press conference Thursday (June 1). "We need to spend the next several days understanding what we need to go do to solve these problems."
Related: Starliner: Boeing's next-generation spaceship for astronauts
Two major safety issues are driving the latest delay, both of them discovered last week during in-depth reviews of Starliner to certify the spacecraft for crewed flight, Nappi said.
First, Boeing engineers discovered that the "soft links" used on the suspension lines of Starliner's three main parachutes have a failure load limit that is actually lower than previously thought. It turns out that those links, which secure the parachute lines with their anchor tethers on the capsule, cannot handle the load of Starliner if one chute fails. Being able to land safely with two of three chutes is a safety requirement for NASA, Nappi said.
The second safety issue Boeing found pertains to the protective tape covering the wiring harnesses throughout the Starliner capsule. That tape, Nappi said, is flammable and there are "hundreds" of feet of it inside Starliner.
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"It's highly unlikely that we would go in and cut this tape off," Nappi said, adding that doing so would likely cause more potential damage. "So we're looking at solutions that would provide for essentially another type of wrapping over the existing tape in the most vulnerable areas that reduces the risk of fire hazard."
Boeing's latest Starliner delay follows a string of setbacks for the spacecraft. In December 2019, Boeing's first uncrewed test flight of Starliner failed to reach its proper orbit and could not rendezvous with the International Space Station as planned. It ultimately had to land earlier than intended.
A follow-up NASA investigation ultimately tasked Boeing to make 80 different corrective actions to address safety and other issues with the Starliner spacecraft. The company also had to launch a repeat uncrewed test flight, which successfully reached the space station in May 2022 after its own series of delays over valve issues. The flammable tape issue and the parachute soft links issue were both present on that flight, but the mission was a success, NASA officials said.
Meanwhile, two NASA astronauts — Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore — have been waiting and training to fly Starliner's first crewed flight, called Crew Flight Test. At the start of the year, that test flight was targeted for February, but it has steadily slipped later and later in the months since. In 2021, two other NASA astronauts originally assigned to fly on Starliner, Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, were reassigned to fly on SpaceX's Dragon so they could complete their missions. Both have since done so.
In a recent meeting of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, experts raised concerns over Starliner's readiness, particularly its parachute certification since the system flown on the uncrewed test flight was not certified for crewed flight, according to a SpaceNews report.
Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, said the entire team feels the pain of yet another delay.
"I would say everybody is a bit disappointed," Stitch told reporters Thursday, adding that Boeing and NASA engineers discussed the delay together in a meeting this week. "But you could see people ready to go roll up their sleeves and go see what the next steps are."
Boeing is one of two commercial companies picked by NASA to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station through multibillion-dollar fixed-cost contracts with agency's Commercial Crew Program. Due to those fixed-cost agreements, Boeing likely is responsible for any additional costs due to the delays.
NASA's second pick for commercial crew flights is SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, which has been launching astronauts to the station on its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules since 2020. To date, SpaceX has launched seven crewed flights for NASA and three private flights for customers, most recently the Ax-2 commercial flight to the station for Axiom Space that landed back on Earth on Tuesday (May 30).
The traffic to and from the International Space Station is tightly packed over the next few months, Stich said, with crew arrivals, departures and cargo missions to the orbiting lab. If Boeing is able to solve its parachute and wiring issues in the next few months, the next window to fly the Starliner crewed flight will be in the fall, he added.
Boeing is on the hook for at least seven crewed flights for NASA, including the Crew Flight Test and six operational astronaut missions, as part of its NASA contract. Despite the repeated delays, Nappi said Boeing remains committed to its Starliner spacecraft and fulfilling its NASA obligations.
"We've been talking about the future of Starliner and how we're going to move forward," Nappi said. "We know that there's growing pains in developing vehicles and flying vehicles ... This is just part of the business to have these kinds of issues."
NASA wants to have two different spacecraft available for astronaut flights so it is not dependent on a single company to fly astronauts in space, Stich added.
"NASA desperately needs a second provider for transportation," he said. "Our ultimate goal is to have one SpaceX and one Boeing flight per year rotate up to the station."
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gammaboo Anyone else see the astronauts doing an Apollo 1 and putting a lemon on top of the "spacecraft"?Reply -
MicchaelL65 I wonder what is going through the minds of the astronauts scheduled to fly this thing for the first time? It should be obvious to anyone that this ship ain't gonna fly, but Boeing keeps insisting that everything will be fine - eventually. Starliner is another Challenger or Columbia waiting to happen.Reply
How did we get to the point where one of the most iconic aerospace companies - Boeing - become so incompetent. It used to be, 'If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going! Now it's, 'If it's Boeing, I ain't going!' Time to put this thing (Starliner) out of its misery. -
Brad
One of the saddest days in this country when a company like Boeing becomes this irrelevant.MicchaelL65 said:I wonder what is going through the minds of the astronauts scheduled to fly this thing for the first time? It should be obvious to anyone that this ship ain't gonna fly, but Boeing keeps insisting that everything will be fine - eventually. Starliner is another Challenger or Columbia waiting to happen.
How did we get to the point where one of the most iconic aerospace companies - Boeing - become so incompetent. It used to be, 'If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going! Now it's, 'If it's Boeing, I ain't going!' Time to put this thing (Starliner) out of its misery. -
Unclear Engineer The only good thing about Starliner is that it will (would) land on land instead of splashing down at sea. But, Russia has been doing that for decades, so developing that isn't the real problem with Boeing getting its act together.Reply
What I would really like to see is Sierra Space's Dream Chaser get mated to a SpaceX reusable launch vehicle, so that we eventually reuse everything we launch, and landings are back on land for boosters and at regular landing strips for astronauts. -
MicchaelL65
SpaceX Dragon was originally designed to land on land. NASA said, 'No.' I cannot remember what the excuse was. It seemed as if there was some trust issues between NASA and a Private Contractor back then. Obviously NASA and SpaceX have overcome those issues (if they ever existed.)Unclear Engineer said:The only good thing about Starliner is that it will (would) land on land instead of splashing down at sea. But, Russia has been doing that for decades, so developing that isn't the real problem with Boeing getting its act together.
What I would really like to see is Sierra Space's Dream Chaser get mated to a SpaceX reusable launch vehicle, so that we eventually reuse everything we launch, and landings are back on land for boosters and at regular landing strips for astronauts.
Sierra Space has no plans to work with SpaceX, at least as far as I know right now. The plan is to use ULA's Vulcan-Centaur Booster to launch Dream Chaser. I believe that Dream Chaser was to have its first Orbital Test flight later in 2023 That has likely changed due to issues with the Vulcan launch vehicle taking longer than expected.
There is also a planned European Variant of Dream Chaser that will use the upcoming Arianespace Ariane 6 launcher. -
Unclear Engineer Yes, I know the plans as they are, today. But, those plans do not reuse the booster vehicle, so do not have the same potential economies of reusable boosters. And, I don't remember Dream Chaser's current plans getting back to their original goal of it being a crewed vehicle.Reply
So, what I am saying is that a combination of the reusable booster and the glide-return-to-landing spacecraft concepts seems like a good future goal. It would seem that Dream Chaser could be modified to use SpaceX boosters faster than the Vulcan or Ariane vehicles can be made recoverable/reusable or that SpaceX could develop its own glide-return vehicle.
But, either way would be a more economical process than fishing SpaceX capsules out of the water or retrieving Boeing capsules from the desert. So, I expect that someday we will get glide-return space craft launched by reusable boosters.