Starliner must return to Earth before the Crew-9 mission launches to ensure a docking port is available on station.
Huh, so once again, the ISS will (briefly) have more people on it than there are seats on a ride home.
Yep, the backup lifeboat plan then will be for them to ride back without suits on the floor of Dragon. That’s apparently less risky than riding back on Starliner, which says a lot. Known risks vs unknown unknowns, I suppose.
That’s apparently less risky than riding back on Starliner
Not necessarily. The dangers involved in coming home packed like unsuited sardines in the back of a Dragon only come into play if they need to evacuated the ISS to begin with, so they’re saying the odds of abandoning the ISS and the Dragon capsule loosing it’s atmosphere are better than the odds of a catastrophic failure of the Starliner
I’ve been wondering why there’s such a big gap between Starliner’s expected departure (“early September”) and the launch of Crew-9 (no earlier than 2024-09-24).
My least bad guess is that NASA doesn’t see much difference in the risk of having Butch & Suni return as (little more than) cargo inside Crew-8’s Dragon capsule, and the risk of them returning in the actual standard/proper crew configuration in this Starliner capsule. In which case they might as well get Starliner back ASAP, while making no attempt to bring the Crew-9 date forward (which could have been doable given that the plan as of last month was to be ready by 2024-08-18).
Has anyone got a better guess?
I do know that a standard Starliner departure involves waiting for a suitable opportunity / time window. But there must be suitable opportunities much closer to the 24th, right? Why aren’t they waiting for the last possible (or maybe penultimate) opportunity? In the unlikely event of Starliner failing to undock or whatever, it’d be no big deal to delay Crew-9 again, so I don’t think that would be the reason.
I had been imagining a much greater level of dependency or ‘coupling’ between the two events. Perhaps with NASA looking at the Crew-9 launch weather forecasts before deciding whether to undock Starliner about 3 days earlier, or something. Or even (less seriously), the Crew-9 crew strapped into their Dragon, on the launchpad, and hearing on their comms system something like “Starliner has successfully exited the ISS’s Keep Out Sphere, so NASA is ‘go’ for propellant load on Falcon 9”.
I was hoping somebody would ask this question during the press conference, but they didn’t.
Space missions are heavily constrained by weather and the timing of orbits. It’s probably risky to assume there will be a good window particularly close to the Crew-9 launch date.
wondering why there’s such a big gap between Starliner’s expected departure (“early September”) and the launch of Crew-9 (no earlier than 2024-09-24)
Yeah, that struck me as a bit odd as well.
the Crew-9 crew strapped into their Dragon, on the launchpad, and hearing on their comms system something like “Starliner has successfully exited the ISS’s Keep Out Sphere, so NASA is ‘go’ for propellant load on Falcon 9”
LOL, this scenario sounds super cool!
Can’t wait for the headline in a month: ‘Boeing’s Starliner burns up on re-entry due to ignored safety concern’
“The door blew off mid-flight, causing a total failure”
I wonder if it will crash and burn on its own.
Me too. I had thought we were talking about a 1% chance or something like that.
But at the press conference, one of the journalists seemed to be asking about the probability of disaster, and gave 10% as an example. None of the NASA people took the opportunity to say “no that’s far too high”, or “I’m very confident the uncrewed return of Starliner will be successful”, or anything like that.
I’m hoping this doesn’t make me a bad person but now that there are no lives at risk I’m kinda hoping it does? I’m so fed up with corporate cost-cutting (even when it affects people’s safety!) and companies surviving just based on inertia. I feel if the legal system isn’t powerful enough to set a precedent against this sort of corporate practices, maybe the Starliner is. Maybe that’s its purpose, and maybe that’s how it makes space travel better.
