The Starliner crew’s 8-day trip to the ISS could turn into an 8-month stay

The last time we checked the status of the Boeing Starliner, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was considering the possibility of using the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to return the two astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS).

This possibility is looking more and more likely, so Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are planning to turn their 8-day trip into an 8-month journey.

The two astronauts, who have already been stuck in space for more than 60 days, may have to wait until early 2025 to return to Earth – after a trip to the International Space Station that was originally supposed to last only eight days.

NASA also acknowledged that the astronauts who arrived on the maiden voyage of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft may need to be rescued by the rival SpaceX CrewDragon, although that craft will not be operational until February.

On Wednesday, NASA announced another delay in bringing Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home during a press conference. The agency said it is currently looking further into an alternative plan using SpaceX's Crew-9 mission.

If tests in the coming weeks indicate that the trip home with the Starliner proves too risky, Wilmore and Williams would have no choice but to jump on Crew-9's return flight in February 2025, according to Steve Stich, NASA manager for the Commercial Crew Program.

The decision is not final, but There were rumors from the NASA team about Boeing. A lot of trust was lost and the goodwill was wasted.

Although Boeing has long been one of NASA's most trusted partners, the space agency's trust in the company has waned, according to a person familiar with NASA leadership's thinking.

“They just don't trust Boeing anymore,” said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “There were many times when they said, 'This is good,' and it turned out it wasn't good.”

If NASA abandons the Starliner for the return mission and uses SpaceX's Dragon as a rescue plane, it would be another humiliating blow for Boeing. The company's commercial jet program has floundered since the deadly 737 Max disasters in 2018 and 2019, and assembly problems were exposed by an incident in January when a door panel flew off during an Alaska Airlines flight.

An already complex situation is becoming even more complicated: the Starliner's undocking software must be rewritten because the next time the spacecraft undocks from the ISS, the crew will probably no longer be on board.

Although Starliner's flight software provides the ability to undock without a crew, it is currently configured for crewed operations. That is, during undocking and flying away from the space station, the flight software performs certain actions and the crew performs certain actions. This configuration change toward integrated operations between software and crew was made following Starliner's previous autonomous flight in 2022, which flew to the space station and back.

“Essentially, we are asking the team to go back two years in time and restore the software parameters needed to automatically respond to outbreaks near the ISS if there are any problems near the ISS. The software now allows them to do this manually,” [Steve Stich, NASA Commercial Crew program manager] said. “The team is constantly updating this mission data as different things change.”

There has been no work on the autonomous software package since the 2022 flight. Ars reported that it would take about four weeks to complete testing of this configuration change, and Stich confirmed this.

In his latest Substack, Glenn Reynolds examines the institutional skills crisis, concluding that systems become “waterlogged” when no one’s life or livelihood is at stake.

One example is the Secret Service, whose failures in securing Trump's speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, are legendary and, frankly, hard to believe at this point. (And the Butler affair is not the Secret Service's first embarrassment.)

The Navy, whose ships repeatedly collide and catch fire.

The major software provider Crowdstrike, whose botched update brought down major computer systems around the world.

The US government built entire floating ports in Europe to support the D-Day invasion, but was unable to build a functioning floating pier in Gaza.

Hopefully, all systems will be restored sooner rather than later. I look forward to reporting on the Starliner crew's successful return – perhaps in time for Valentine's Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb1k39805bk

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