Posted on 04/07/2018 11:31:05 AM PDT by BenLurkin
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....
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
Maybe they need an extra 6 months to figure out how to get the folks back to earth safely.
Bypass testing plan...What could possibly go wrong? /s
Bypass testing plan...What could possibly go wrong? /s
I seem to recall that the President suggested this course of action about a year ago.
There’s actually an emergency Soyuz reentry capsule docked to the ISS that can carry 3 people back. This is usually reserved for a medical emergency, and replaced every six months, so the Russians say. A bit sad how the Russians have pretty much taken over the ISS since Obama slashed NASA’s programs.
Shuttles could have kept going longer, he stopped it on purpose.
Not only did he cancel the shuttle program, but also the Constellation program that was intended to replace the shuttle. That left us for the first time since 1959 without access to space. It also basically handed the ISS to the Russians, which we had mostly paid for. Not that I’m a huge fan of the ISS anyway, or the shuttle. But every time a Republican would mention building a base on the moon or Mars (Newt Gingrich), Democrats poo-pooed it like it was something crazy. This is the party of Kennedy who demanded we go to the moon.
He did it onpurpose to take us out of space. And to pay the russians hundreds of millions to get our nauts up and down from the iss.
I suggest that we start launching OUR OWN astronauts aboard OUR OWN rockets from OUR OWN launch pads.......ASAHP. It’s past time to get back into the launching game. LC39A and LC39B await.
*ping*
Thanks fieldmarshaldj. Well of course NASA does. And NASA wants to make sure Boeing gets paid overtime for doing it.
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