You’ll never guess what happened to the Boeing Starliner – BGR

To say that Boeing’s Starliner program did not go as planned would be the understatement of the century. The Starliner spacecraft, which NASA included in the Commercial Crew program alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, failed to meet expectations in just about every way. The spacecraft was already supposed to take 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 yet.

Now like News reports, Starliner will once again miss its launch date, according to NASA. Space agency officials recently provided an update on their active programs, revealing that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will launch its second official crewed mission by the end of April, with April 20 being the earliest possible date for this mission. Starliner, meanwhile, will miss its April 2 launch date by at least a week.

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The Starliner program was an absolute disaster in so many ways that it’s actually painful to remember that NASA poured $ 4.2 billion in taxpayer dollars on Boeing to build the spacecraft. He saw delay after delay, and once the vehicle was finally ready to travel to space for its unmanned test mission, the spacecraft shut down, burned a pile of fuel it didn’t was not supposed to burn and had to come back to Earth without ever. get to the laboratory in orbit.

NASA and Boeing played it as if the mission was a “success” despite the fact that Starliner did not do what it was supposed to do. In the months that followed, NASA took a close look at the Starliner vehicle and its development and came up with a huge list of things it wanted Boeing to address. The company ultimately ticked all of those boxes, but it looks like the spacecraft just isn’t ready for its time in the limelight.

The potential new launch date is no earlier than April 9. A delay of a week may not seem like much, but it’s just one symptom of what is clearly a bigger problem. Keep in mind that Starliner was supposed to be finished in 2017. That was four years ago, and the spacecraft still hasn’t completed an unmanned mission, let alone a crewed trip to space with a full complement of astronaut passengers.

As for NASA, it already has a capable crew vehicle that it can use at any time in the form of the Crew Dragon. The space agency may not be in a rush to add another vehicle to its fleet, but the fact that Boeing is being paid billions (and even more, due to years of delays) for not keeping its promises is a little hard to digest. .

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