The decision to proceed with the historic crewed launch of a new spacecraft is made by Boeing and NASA.

The decision to proceed with the historic crewed launch of a new spacecraft is made by Boeing and NASA.

The Starliner capsule was created by Boeing for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The spaceship appears as it would in orbit in this rendering.

Finally, after a bewildering array of test flight mishaps and years of delays, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is scheduled for its first crewed launch.

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are scheduled to launch from Florida on May 6 and reach the International Space Station. This might be a historic and long-awaited win for the struggling Starliner program.

During a press conference on Thursday, Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing's Starliner program, stated, "Design and development is hard—particularly with a human space vehicle." "There were several unexpected obstacles that we had to go past along the route. The team became extremely strong as a result of it. They have triumphed over every challenge we've faced to get us here, and for that I am incredibly proud.

Officials from NASA and Boeing decided on Thursday to proceed with the launch attempt in less than two weeks. But May 6 is "not a magical date," according to Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate.

He declared, "We'll launch when we're ready."

If it is successful, the Starliner will regularly travel to the space station alongside SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, ensuring that astronauts from NASA and its partner space agencies are stationed there.

The US space agency has long awaited a situation where Crew Dragon and Starliner are both constantly in flight.

Regarding the planned Starliner mission, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stated at a press conference on March 22 that "this is history in the making." "The space exploration era is now upon us."

Through a collaboration with private sector contractors, NASA's Commercial Crew Program enabled SpaceX and Boeing to develop their own vehicles. The space agency's goal was to have both businesses up and running simultaneously from the beginning. In the event that one of the spacecraft was grounded due to technical difficulties or other setbacks, astronauts would have the option to continue flying thanks to the Crew Dragon and Starliner spacecraft acting as a backup to each other.

NASA did not, however, initially anticipate that until Boeing's Starliner made its first crewed test flight, SpaceX's Crew Dragon would run autonomously for almost four years.

Early on in the initiative, which saw contracts handed to SpaceX and Boeing in 2014, NASA had given preference to Boeing, a longstanding partner that dates back to the middle of the 20th century, over SpaceX, which it perceived as a relatively new and erratic upstart.

The vision of NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing

NASA was scheduling in 2016 with the expectation that Starliner would arrive at the launchpad before Crew Dragon.

However, by 2020, the competition between SpaceX and Boeing had clearly changed. Following a disastrous Starliner test flight the previous year, officials from NASA and Boeing were left scratching their heads over what went wrong. On that trip, software glitches prevented the Starliner from docking with the space station. One such bug involved the spacecraft's internal clock, which was 11 hours off.

With the launch of its Demo-2 test flight in May 2020, SpaceX created history by sending astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on a two-month mission to the International Space Station.

Since then, SpaceX's Crew Dragon has been making regular flights with NASA astronauts as well as paying passengers and tourists. There have already been thirteen crewed orbital flights of the spacecraft.

But Boeing has faced a number of difficulties over the past few years, including a number of problems that were discovered in 2022 during the spacecraft's second unmanned test flight. A number of scandals that have hurt Boeing's reputation have also beset the company's commercial aircraft segment, including as the 737 Max crisis and the most recent quality control problems brought to light after a door plug blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

At one point in 2020, NASA representatives even acknowledged that they had become more attentive to SpaceX and its unconventional practices while problems with Boeing's Starliner went unnoticed.

In July 2020, during a press conference, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, Steve Stich, stated, "Perhaps we didn't have as many people embedded in that process as we should have."

"It's common for a human being to devote more time to a newer approach when one provider (SpaceX) has it, and perhaps we didn't take the time we needed with (Boeing's) more conventional approach."

The difficulties of Starliner

Officials at NASA and the US aerospace giant have consistently attempted to draw a separation between Boeing's space division and its commercial airline team.

Additionally, NASA officials have stated that they are collaborating with Boeing more closely than before, with employees at Boeing sites in the field supervising some of the adjustments the company has done in advance of the next Starliner mission.

"This is a crucial NASA capacity. We're going to do this and succeed at it because that's what we signed up to do, Nappi declared on Thursday. "I consider it more in terms of what's important for this program than I do in terms of what's important for Boeing."

Nevertheless, Boeing and NASA have a backlog of problems to work through.

For instance, engineers discovered that the suspension cables on the Starliner's parachute had a lower threshold for failure than originally anticipated during the last flight test in 2022.

Although parachutes will be a key priority as they work through a few last-minute checkouts before liftoff, NASA and Boeing engineers tested a cure for that problem earlier this year, according to Stich on Thursday.

Boeing had to replace approximately a mile's worth of tape that was also used to shield electrical harnesses after it was discovered to be flammable, according to Nappi.

Because of corrosion problems, Boeing might even have to rebuild a few of the spacecraft's valves. But that update isn't likely to be in place until, at the earliest, the second crewed trip, which is scheduled for 2025.

Instead, Nappi stated in March, Boeing will employ a “perfectly acceptable mitigation” for the first crewed flight in May, which should keep the valves from sticking.

Safety and Starliner

Williams and Wilmore, two seasoned NASA astronauts at the center of the Starliner's first crewed mission, said they are as confident as ever upon arriving at the launch site, despite the lengthy journey to the launchpad.

Wilmore stated, "We want the general public to think it's easy, but it's not—it's way hard," on Thursday after seeing the launch pad for Starliner in Florida. If we weren't prepared, we wouldn't be here. We're prepared. Both the teams and the spaceship are prepared.

During a press conference in March, Wilmore stated that he does not anticipate any "failure modes" for the Starliner spaceship.

He said at the press conference, "But if something were to occur — because we're all humans, we can't build things perfectly — if something were to occur, we have several downgrade modes," which are modes that allow the astronauts to take more manual control over the spacecraft in the event that something goes wrong.

"We wouldn't be sitting here if we didn't feel — and tell our families that we feel — confident in this spacecraft and our capabilities to control it," Williams stated at a news conference in March.

"I have all the confidence in not only our capabilities and the spacecraft's capabilities, but also our mission control team, who's ready for the challenge," she continued at the Florida news briefing on Thursday.

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