NASA and Boeing officials pushed back Friday on headlines that the commercial Starliner crew capsule is stranded at the International Space Station but said they need more time to analyze data before formally clearing the spacecraft for undocking and reentry.
Yeah, that’s what we’ve been told.
We were also told this wasn’t an issue to begin with, and issue after issue has happened. So, sorry if at this point I don’t take what Boeing says about their vehicles at face value.
NASA is reliant on manufacturer info for a lot of things, and that is coming from Boeing. We now know for a fact that Boeing has falsified manufacturing and safety information for over a decade with nearly a dozen whistleblowers coming forwards on the airliner side of the business now, and more every day. If you honestly think that the spacecraft side was 100% insulated from that company culture, I’ve got some great stuff to sell you.
They assume it can maneuver. They assumed it would dock correctly the first time, before there were multiple failures as well. The last time it moved was to dock with the station and multiple thrusters were inoperative and took quite a bit of time to get working again to dock in the first place. We don’t know that those will work without issue again. Those thrusters have already failed once while up there, failing again isn’t exactly unlikely.