To say that Boeing’s Starliner program didn’t go as planned would be the understatement of the century. The Starliner spacecraft, which NASA has included in the Commercial Crew Program along with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, has failed to live up to expectations in almost every way. The spacecraft is already said to bring human astronauts to and from the International Space Station, just like SpaceX’s vehicle, but it hasn’t even completed its unmanned test mission to the ISS.
Now, like SpaceNews According to NASA, Starliner will again miss the launch date. Space agency officials recently provided an update on their active programs, revealing that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will launch on its second formal manned mission in late April, with April 20 being the earliest possible date for that mission. Starliner, meanwhile, misses the April 2 launch date by at least another week.
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The Starliner program has been an absolute disaster in so many ways that it is actually painful to remember that NASA dumped $ 4.2 billion in tax dollars on Boeing to build the spacecraft. It has seen delay after delay, and when the vehicle was finally ready to travel to space on its unmanned test mission, the spacecraft shut down, burned a ton of fuel that was not meant to burn, and had to return to Earth without ever going back to Earth. come making the surrounding laboratory.
NASA and Boeing played it out as if the mission was a “success,” despite Starliner not doing what it was supposed to do. In the months that followed, NASA took a closer look at the Starliner vehicle and its development and came up with a huge list of things Boeing needed to address. The company has finally checked all those boxes, but it seems the spacecraft just isn’t ready for its time in the spotlight.
The new potential launch date is no earlier than April 9. A week’s delay may not seem like much, but it’s just a symptom of what’s clearly a bigger problem. Keep in mind that Starliner would be ready in 2017. That was four years ago, and the spacecraft still hasn’t completed an unmanned mission, let alone a manned journey to space with a full group of astronauts.
As for NASA, it already has a capable crew vehicle it can use whenever it wants in the form of the Crew Dragon. The space agency may not be in a rush to add one more vehicle to its fleet, but the fact that Boeing is getting billions (and even more, due to years of delays) for failing to deliver on its promises is a bit hard to digest. .
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