So Did NASA Make the Right Call with Starliner?

So now that the Starliner capsule is back here on Earth, some may wonder if it was necessary to return it without a crew.

Here is what Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, had to say during a post-landing press conference:

If we’d have had a crew on board the spacecraft, we would have followed the same back away sequence from the space station, the same deorbit burn and executed the same entry. And so it would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board.

So that is good news for Boeing, but not likely to thrill Boeing stockholders. No matter how you spin it, only a crewed return would have been seen as a success.

It also appears the flight back was not quite as simple as portrayed by Mr. Stich’s initial statement. For instance, a Quartz article noted that during the capsule’s return another thruster failed and the guidance system blacked out for a moment.

Boeing has been pretty quite on the issue. Its latest update had a simple statement about the landing and an uncertain comment about “next steps”:

Boeing’s Starliner landed safely at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, Sept. 7 (10:01 p.m. Mountain time, on Friday, Sept. 6). After an extended stay at the International Space Station, Starliner’s reusable crew module touched down at its designated landing site, White Sands Space Harbor at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

“I want to recognize the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, re-entry and landing,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program. “We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program.”

The Starliner crew module will be transported back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Boeing teams will analyze mission data.

Maybe when cooler heads prevail over at Boeing we will learn more. I just hope they are still in the game.