Next, two astronauts who should have been back on Earth
weeks ago said this Wednesday that they're confident of Boeing's
space capsule can return them safely in spite of breakdowns.
NASA test pilots Bush Wilmore and Sonny Williams
launched aboard Boeing's new Starliner capsule early last month.
They were the first people to ride it.
They should have been back by now.
But they are still, as you can see,
in a state of weightlessness
in orbit here at France 24.
Caitlin Kelly with this
confident that if we have a mission only scheduled for
eight days now rolls into its 5th week.
As the Boeing Starliners return journey has been repeatedly postponed
due to leaks and thruster failures,
astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams are confident they can
return home after testing.
In the meantime, their spirits are high aboard the International
Space Station.
We've been thoroughly busy up here,
integrated right into the crew and
every every about once a week we get to jump
into Starliner and talk to our control team there.
The system that enables the capsule to back away from
the space station into the Earth's atmosphere is faulty.
Boeing have branded this moment as advantageous,
a chance to do further checks while the craft is
still in orbit.
This is this is the,
the world of test. This is a tough business that
we're in.
Human spaceflight is not easy in any regime.
And there have been multiple issues with every spacecraft that's
ever been designed.
And that's the nature of what we do.
You know that mantra you've heard?
Failure is not an option.
That's why we are staying here.
Now we, we did have some degradation and,
and our thrusters and we know that and that's why
we're staying because we're going to test it.
That's what we do. A year behind schedule and
$1.5 billion over budget, this NASA Boeing mission had experienced
technical issues before it left Earth.
After multiple incidents and two high profile crashes in recent
years,
Starliner, Boeing's first manned expedition,
was pegged as a reputation rebuilder.
With no timeline for return,
the astronauts might have to jump aboard
Spacex's Dragon spacecraft to get home.
Thanks to Caitlin Kelly for that report.
Let's get some broader analysis.
David Mamoon brings us his from Toulouse,
joining us live. Professor Moon,
thanks for being with us.
Thank you. Clarify for me because
from a layman's perspective, I feel like I'm having the
wool pull over my eyes,
as the French would put it.
I've been sort of rolled in the flower kind of
thing.
What would you say to that?
No, I actually,
we, we've got good reasons to believe what the astronauts
said,
what
Butcher, Butcher Wilmore said. Because actually this is a,
this is a flight which is designed to test the,
the, the readiness of the,
of the overall systems. And so it's not absolutely unusual
to get some,
some problems. Typically when you compare to other system tests
like specifics,
you've got also failures.
And what happens in this time is that they,
they just scenarise the failures and tell you,
wow, look, it blows off
and, and now they're, they're just staying plain and brain,
OK, we've got a problem we are going to investigate.
So basically what you're seeing here is a different ways
of
coping with the difficulty of of light systems.
Elon Musk, well known as a self promotionalist,
and of course SpaceX According to him is absolutely fantastic,
no problems whatsoever. But it appears to be working
is the big issue with this and I'm satisfied by
your explanation.
I should put away my natural scepticism,
but when you look at Boeing's record down to earth
with the issues of various aircraft,
understandably people might have doubts.
Absolutely, absolutely. I think there are two two underlying things
behind that. First, as I said,
it's not unusual to get some issues and here there
are two types of issues.
There is a pressurization of tanks with ilium is ilium
is a very
is a very light gas.
And so it's when it's very easy to get a
leak to get the pressurization one.
The the more problematic issue here is that you may
they,
they've got experience problems with the trusters and the the
trusters did not work correctly.
And so they had to,
they had to duck with by hand
so that they were able to do that very,
very efficiently. But on the other hand,
and I think you're right,
there is another old doubt on the
old space and the Boeing ways of doing things,
because actually some people say and
that Boeing hasn't been more focused on making profits rather
than cure engineering.
And here at Shupeo, of course we are.
We're raising engineers and we're
training them to be the,
the, the best efficient. And of course,
from an engineering point of view,
we want to the engineers to be in charge and
not the,
the financial ways of seeing things.
And that's probably one of the underlying issues behind this
skepticism about the,
the, the problems of, of,
of the system. But the Starliner will be
actually, the explanation is, is absolutely correct.
They will when the, when the Starliner will go back
on Earth,
they will destroy actually the module
with the trusters. And so they want to get some
more data
while they're still in orbit in order to get to
get some corrections for the next flight that will happen,
as they say, probably one year from now.
You mentioned that you mentioned that docking by hand.
That sounds incredibly primitive. It's not as as silly as
I'm imagining it.
Is it docking by hand?
Yeah, kind of really. There are there are backups and
backups and backups.
The actually there are systems that,
that automated systems that can help
docking, that can make the docking,
which is very, very precise.
I mean, it's a, it's a
fraction of a centimetre. And what they said
is that the, they're finally,
with the help of their systems,
they were, they were in control of the systems in
order to get the,
the docking. But the docking was incredibly
precise and efficient. But that's a problem when you've got
too much failure,
you, you need to be able to count on
the, the an experienced crew.
And that's what happened, actually.
Debbie Moon of Space Systems to Lose.
Thank you, Sir, for joining us and giving us that
very detailed and clear explanation about what is happening all
those miles above us in the atmosphere.
Thank you very much indeed.
You're watching for all developments as they come back down
to Earth.