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Call me crazy but hoping for two innocent astronauts to die on the off-chance things improve isn’t something I would consider morally gray.
Call me crazy but hoping for two innocent astronauts to die on the off-chance things improve isn’t something I would consider morally gray.
Yeah that’s right, they’ve decided to not use one of the 5 again because of performance inconsistencies.
The people in every one of these Starliner threads seemingly hoping for the worst case scenario to occur just so they can dunk on Boeing for it are disturbing
Completely untrue. There are currently only 3 human-rated spacecraft docked to the ISS and none of them are set aside as some sort of emergency capsule. There’s no trickery here. The number of astronauts on board is equal to the number of seats available for them to ride back home in. The only reason they aren’t stranded is because Starliner is still fully capable of undocking and taking them home whenever necessary. If it wasn’t, then they would actually be stranded with no alternative way back beyond straping them to the floor of Dragon.
The helium leaks weren’t and still aren’t an issue for the mission. They are an issue that should be addressed in the future, but they pose no safety risk as things currently stand. While Starliner is docked, it won’t even be leaking any helium. The tanks are sealed shut when they aren’t in use, and since the leaks aren’t on the tanks themselves, they aren’t losing any helium as long as they stay docked.
The thruster failures are also not necessarily related to the leaks. They don’t know why the the thrusters shut down, but they were shut down in software and not due to some piece of hardware failing. Their current goal is to figure out why the software shut them down, and why 4 of the 5 that shut down were able to be restarted without issue. They aren’t just assuming it can maneuver either, they know it can because the thrusters aren’t broken. It didn’t require any physical repair work to get them firing again, it took a restart.
Remember, this is just a test flight, and nothing that’s happening is outside the scope of the test.
They’re not stranded because Starliner is capable of reentry and is already cleared to be used in emergency situations. In fact, the two astronauts had to prepare for an emergency undocking earlier this week when a Russian satellite broke up and the station’s crew was ordered to take shelter in their respective spacecraft.
The helium leaks are also still not an issue either. The new leaks aren’t “new”, they’re just so much smaller than the first one that they took much longer to be detected.
It’s still docked to the ISS, not because it can’t leave, but because they don’t want it to leave until they collect all the data they need. Part of this data collection process is supposed to involve 2 spacewalks to examine the service module, but those spacewalks haven’t been able to happen yet. Technical issues with the EVA suits prevented the first one they had scheduled from happening. The ship is still fully capable of maneuvering too, they are only down one RCS thruster out of 28.
They scrubbed, investigated, found it was acceptable, launched, and discovered previously unknown issues. The original leak isn’t getting worse, they discovered more, smaller leaks, that still don’t pose a danger to the mission.
Discovering the cause of the 5 RCS thrusters shutting down with only 4 of them being able to restart is the current focus of things, because the spacecraft is no where near running out of helium.
It’s all still within the scope of this test flight’s objectives, so they technically aren’t wrong to say things are going well even when they’ve found issues.
As Business Insider previously reported, helium supports Starlink’s reaction control system thrusters, which allows them to fire.
Can’t even get the spacecraft’s name straight
This headline makes me think maybe AI isn’t as useless as I once thought
Haha I came here to insult the Samsung keyboard but you’ve already done my job
No, they aren’t correct. The leaks are still insignificant, and this article is sensationalizing a pretty mundane reason for the return trip delay. They’re only “stranded” insofar as NASA wants more time to collect data, and the spacewalk they were planning to do just that had to be postponed because one of the astronauts couldn’t get comfortable in their EVA suit.
This article seems to be playing up the idea that the astronauts are in some sort of danger, but NASA has repeatedly stressed that is not the case. These extensions are for research and information gathering, so improvements can be made that properly address the issue in the future.
I’ve also lost trust in Boeing, but a lot of the reporting surrounding this mission is starting to get annoying. It almost feels like they want a disaster just so they can write about it.
I like this article on the most recent docking extension more. https://www.space.com/starliner-astronaut-mission-landing-delay-july-2024
When they announced PC support was coming, I really wanted to get one just for that, but when they revealed all the features that won’t work on PC, it started looking like a worse deal than the Quest 3 and more like a side-grade from the Quest 2.
Sounds like solid life advice tbh
Any chance they move to the fediverse?
I don’t know how far things have come since the aptly named Acer AH101-D8EY, but that was the last time I tried to be “productive” in VR and it was absolutely not working.
IIRC, these things exist to exploit a legal loophole around vehicle registration in Japan as well. Safety is not the highest concern lol
Do they have a case here? Are they entitled to have that money returned if they paid it out already?
They go to cloud storage for 90 days. You can then save it locally from the Xbox website or app.
I’m not talking about people who just want Boeing to fail, I’m talking about the ones who think the best path to changing things is if they publicly kill two astronauts. eg. See the “morally gray” comment below