Nevertheless, after astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams finally reached the station, Boeing officials declared success. “We’ve accomplished a lot, and really more than expected,” Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s commercial crew program, said during a post-docking news conference. “We had a great day today.”
In the weeks following the summer of 2024, NASA mostly supported Boeing, saying that its primary option was to bring the crew home on Starliner.
Ultimately, in early August, NASA publicly relented and acknowledged that Wilmore and Williams could return aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Yet Boeing stood firm. On a Boeing website titled “Starliner Updates”, which was taken offline until August 2, 2024, the company was announcing that its “confidence remains high” in Starliner’s return with a crew (see archive).
Actually, it wasn’t excellent
However, on August 24, NASA made it official and decided that Wilmore and Williams would not fly back on the Starliner. Instead, the crew will come home on Crew Dragon. Wilmore and Williams eventually returned safely to Earth in March 2025 as part of the Crew 9 mission.
The true danger the astronauts faced on the Starliner was not publicly disclosed until they touched down and flew back to Houston. In an interview with Ars, Wilmore described the tense moments when he had to take control of the Starliner as its thrusters began to fail one after another.
Essentially, Wilmore could no longer fully control the Starliner. But simply abandoning the docking attempt was not a happy solution. Just as the thrusters were needed to control the vehicle during the docking process, they were also needed to position Starliner for its deorbit burn and re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. So Wilmore had to consider whether it was risky to approach the space station or attempt to fly back to Earth.
“I don’t know if we can get back to Earth at that time,” he said. “I don’t know if we can. And in fact, I’m thinking we probably can’t. So there we are, loss of 6DOF control, four rear thrusters down, and I’m imagining orbital mechanics. The space station is nose down. So we’re not exactly level with the station, but below it. If you’re below the station, you’re going faster. That’s orbital mechanics. It’s going to take you away from the station. So I’m doing it all in my mind. I don’t know what control I have. What if I lose another thruster?
One thing that has puzzled outside observers since the publication of Wilmore’s harrowing experience is how NASA, knowing all this, could seriously entertain bringing the crew home on the Starliner.
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