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Boeing Crewed Test Flight to the ISS May be Upgraded to a Full Mission

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday April 08 2018, @09:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the about-that-short-trip... dept.

takyon writes:

NASA wants to extend Boeing's first crewed flight to the International Space Station

Boeing's first crewed flight to the International Space Station may last a lot longer than originally planned — and the mission may have an extra crew member along for the ride, too. The company's Starliner vehicle is supposed to take NASA astronauts to the ISS for the first time later this year on a two-week trip, but the space agency is considering extending the voyage to six months. Instead of sending just a two-person crew on the spacecraft, a third astronaut could be added as well.

This would completely restructure the first crewed trip for Starliner, which was only meant to be a test flight. As part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, both Boeing and SpaceX have been developing private vehicles to transport astronauts to and from the ISS. But before the companies can start doing full missions to the station, NASA wants each spacecraft to do two test flights to the ISS first: one without people on board and then one with crew. The two-person test flights are simply meant to demonstrate that the vehicles can keep passengers safe on the way to and from orbit. Full operational missions will last for months at a time and have up to four crew members on board.

Now, Boeing's test flight is looking more like a full crewed mission — the kind that it will be doing regularly once its Starliner is qualified for flight. That may be because NASA is running short of ways to get its astronauts to the ISS. NASA astronauts currently fly to the station on Russian Soyuz rockets, and the space agency has seats booked on flights of the vehicle for the next two years. The last Soyuz that will carry NASA astronauts will take off in fall 2019. After that, NASA will need to rely on its Commercial Crew partners to take astronauts to and from the ISS.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Sunday April 08 2018, @11:27AM (6 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Sunday April 08 2018, @11:27AM (#663914) Journal

    this is a test. Remember, if anything goes wrong, you two, oops, sorry, three were expendable.

    Seems like they are taking the worst bits (lack of safety) of the 1950's and 60's with the worst expenditure practices of the 2000's.

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Sunday April 08 2018, @12:36PM

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 08 2018, @12:36PM (#663919) Journal

      Maybe, however it might be that modern methods of space capsule development are far more sophisticated and there is much greater confidence in the reliability of the vehicle.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Sunday April 08 2018, @01:59PM (4 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Sunday April 08 2018, @01:59PM (#663934)

      If there's a life-ending problem it's probably going to be on the way up, or maybe on the way down. If something goes wrong while they're docked at the ISS, they can (hopefully) evacuate to the station. Basically, if people are risking their lives going up and down, they can at least do something useful while they're there.

      I am surprised that they're planning to send crew on the second test flight though - how many automated missions has the SpaceX Dragon capsule already flown and NASA still hasn't authorized a manned test? Guess Boeing gets special consideration thanks to their considerable political connections decades of prior experience. But you wouldn't catch me on the second flight of a mostly untested capsule. This isn't the bad old days of spaceflight where a crew was an important part of the flight control systems.

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