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This is possibly the biggest safety decision NASA has had to make in decades. The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, during which seven astronauts died, has weighed heavily on the minds of the Starliner mission managers, many of whom were involved in that failed flight, Ars Technica reported.
“I’ve been very hyper-focused lately on this concept of combating organizational silence. If you look at both, unfortunately, Challenger and Columbia, you can see cases where people had the right data or a valid position to put forward, but the environment just didn’t allow it,” Russ DeLoach, the chief of NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance said in a briefing about the Starliner mission on August 14.
During the press conference, Nelson acknowledged that NASA has made mistakes in the past.
“Space flight is risky,” he said. “Even at its safest. Even at its most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine. So, the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station, and bring the Boeing Starliner home un-crewed, is a result of a commitment to safety.”
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NASA funneled $4.2 billion into Starliner’s development. The contract is part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, an effort to give NASA multiple US-based options for human spaceflight rather than depending on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
The Starliner’s original mission was to prove that it could safely ferry astronauts to and from the ISS regularly. The failure of that mission is a serious blow to Boeing’s space business, but NASA’s comments on Saturday seem to indicate that it plans to continue working with the company.
Both Boeing and SpaceX have spent a decade working with NASA on their Starliner and Crew Dragon vehicles, respectively.
NASA always insisted the program was not a competition or a race, but if it had been, SpaceX would’ve won by a landslide. Not only did the company complete its first crewed test flight four years ago, as CEO Elon Musk pointed out ahead of Williams’ and Wilmore’s launch — it did it for cheaper, only costing NASA $2.6 billion.
After years of delays, technical issues, and rising costs, this Crew Flight Test was the last hurdle Boeing had to clear for NASA to certify Starliner for human spaceflight.