At that time, officials misjudged the risk. Seven astronauts died, and the Space Shuttle Columbia<\/em> was destroyed as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas. Bowersox, Stich, and Cain weren\u2019t the people making the call on the health of Columbia<\/em>\u2018s heat shield in 2003, but they had front-row seats to the consequences.<\/p>\n Bowersox was an astronaut on the International Space Station when NASA lost Columbia<\/em>. He and his crewmates were waiting to hitch a ride home on the next Space Shuttle mission, which was delayed two-and-a-half years in the wake of the Columbia <\/em>accident. Instead, Bowersox\u2019s crew came back to Earth later that year on a Russian Soyuz capsule. After retiring from the astronaut corps, Bowersox worked at SpaceX and is now the head of NASA\u2019s spaceflight operations directorate.<\/p>\n Stich and Cain were NASA flight directors in 2003, and they remain well-respected in human spaceflight circles. Stich is now the manager of NASA\u2019s commercial crew program, and Cain is now a Boeing employee and chair of the company\u2019s Starliner mission director. For the ongoing Starliner mission, Bowersox, Stich, and Cain are in the decision-making chain.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n All three joined NASA in the late 1980s, soon after the Challenger <\/em>accident. They have seen NASA attempt to reshape its safety culture after both of NASA\u2019s fatal Space Shuttle tragedies. After Challenger, <\/em>NASA\u2019s astronaut office had a more central role in safety decisions, and the agency made efforts to listen to dissent from engineers. Still, human flaws are inescapable, and NASA\u2019s culture was unable to alleviate them during Columbia<\/em>\u2018s last flight in 2003.<\/p>\n NASA knew launching a Space Shuttle in cold weather reduced the safety margin on its solid rocket boosters, which led to the Challenger <\/em>accident. And shuttle managers knew foam routinely fell off the external fuel tank. In a near-miss, one of these foam fragments hit a shuttle booster but didn\u2019t damage it, just two flights prior to Columbia<\/em>\u2018s STS-107 mission.<\/p>\n \u201cI have wondered if some in management roles today that were here when we lost Challenger<\/em> and Columbia <\/em>remember that in both of those tragedies, there were those that were not comfortable proceeding,\u201d Milt Heflin, a retired NASA flight director who spent 47 years at the agency, wrote in an email to Ars. \u201cToday, those memories are still around.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI suspect Stich and Cain are paying attention to the right stuff,\u201d Heflin wrote.<\/p>\n The question facing NASA\u2019s leadership today? Should the two astronauts return to Earth from the International Space Station in Boeing\u2019s Starliner spacecraft, with its history of thruster failures and helium leaks, or should they come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule?<\/p>\n Under normal conditions, the first option is the choice everyone at NASA would like to make. It would be least disruptive to operations at the space station and would potentially maintain a clearer future for Boeing\u2019s Starliner program, which NASA would like to become operational for regular crew rotation flights to the station.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n But some people at NASA aren\u2019t convinced this is the right call. Engineers still don\u2019t fully understand why five of the Starliner spacecraft\u2019s thrusters overheated and lost power as the capsule approached the space station for docking in June. Four of these five control jets are now back in action with near-normal performance, but managers would like to be sure the same thrusters\u2014and maybe more\u2014won\u2019t fail again as Starliner departs the station and heads for reentry.<\/p>\n A week and a half ago, this dissent in the halls of NASA caused managers to delay a high-level meeting to review the spacecraft\u2019s readiness to come home with Wilmore and Williams. NASA senior leaders would like to build unanimity among engineering teams before committing the astronauts to flying back to Earth on Boeing\u2019s crew capsule.<\/p>\n The latter option\u2014to bring the Starliner astronauts home on a different spacecraft\u2014is an alternative that was, at least on its face, unavailable to managers of the Space Shuttle program at the time of the Columbia <\/em>accident. If Starliner comes back without its crew, this would almost certainly lead to debate within NASA about whether to require Boeing to complete yet another Starliner test flight before clearing the spacecraft for operational missions, as NASA cleared SpaceX to do in 2020.<\/p>\n Despite the pitfalls, many people at NASA believe this is the safer choice, although Boeing says it is confident in the Starliner spacecraft\u2019s ability to return the crew to Earth.<\/p>\n But ultimately, it\u2019s NASA\u2019s call. The lives of two government employees are in the balance, and taxpayers paid Boeing for most of the Starliner spacecraft\u2019s development costs. So far, NASA and Boeing have committed at least $6.7 billion to the program.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n Ken Bowersox, head of NASA\u2019s spaceflight operations directorate, chairs a flight-readiness review before a SpaceX crew launch to the International Space Station in August 2023.<\/p>\n Credit: Officials believe they understand the cause of the helium leaks and have a plan to manage them on the flight back to Earth. But there are still uncertainties about the thrusters.<\/p>\n In a press briefing last week, Stich said NASA is making progress on a plan with SpaceX to return Wilmore and Williams on a Dragon spacecraft. Recent tests of a Starliner thruster at White Sands, New Mexico, produced some surprising results and left engineers still lacking an understanding of the fundamental cause of the overheating thrusters on Starliner in orbit. The majority view is that the overheating comes from rapid pulses of thrusters inside insulated doghouse-shaped propulsion pods on Starliner\u2019s service module.<\/p>\n Inspections of the thruster tested at White Sands showed bulging in a Teflon seal in an oxidizer valve known as a \u201cpoppet,\u201d which could restrict the flow of nitrogen tetroxide propellant. The thrusters consume the nitrogen tetroxide and mix it with hydrazine fuel for combustion. Despite the tests, however, engineers still don\u2019t understand precisely why the bulging is occurring and whether it will manifest on Starliner\u2019s flight back to Earth.<\/p>\n This discovery \u201cupped the level of discomfort\u201d among managers responsible for the Starliner test flight, Stich said.<\/p>\n While engineers continue assessing the thruster situation, NASA delayed the launch of the next SpaceX crew mission more than a month, to no earlier than September 24. This bought some extra time for NASA, although Stich said he would like the agency to make a decision by mid-August. That means a decision will likely come this week. Deciding now would allow time for SpaceX to reconfigure the internal cabin of the Dragon spacecraft for two astronauts rather than the normal complement of four crew members.<\/p>\n The scenario here would involve the Starliner astronauts staying at the space station until February, when the next SpaceX crew is slated to depart and come home. Wilmore and Williams would become fully integrated members of the station\u2019s long-term crew, taking the seats of two astronauts currently training to launch next month on SpaceX\u2019s Dragon.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n If NASA goes this way, the Starliner spacecraft must undock from the space station without any astronauts aboard before the launch of the SpaceX crew mission next month. It will also take time for NASA and Boeing to update parameters in Starliner\u2019s flight software to enable an unpiloted undocking and reentry.<\/p>\n Questions about the end game for the Starliner test flight began circulating more widely at the end of July, when the thruster tests at White Sands proved inconclusive. In the weeks prior to the thruster tests, NASA and Boeing engineers worked on developing \u201cflight rationale\u201d to show that Starliner was acceptably safe to return home with Wilmore and Williams, despite the thruster problems and helium leaks.<\/p>\n \u201cGood flight rationale describes the set of information that manifestly shows the part, subsystem, or operation will perform as required with requisite safety margins intact,\u201d wrote Wayne Hale, a retired NASA flight director, on his blog last week. \u201cAlternatively, poor flight rationale includes unproven assumptions, incomplete testing, or analysis that contains flaws.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, in the real world of spaceflight, there is seldom perfect flight rationale,\u201d Hale continued. \u201cSometimes there is good flight rationale. More often the rationale proposed for a flight contains ambiguities. Someone must exercise judgement to determine whether the flight rationale is adequate or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, a meeting of key engineers at NASA known as the \u201cProgram Control Board\u201d ended with no agreement on flight rationale for Starliner to return to Earth with its two-person crew.<\/p>\n \u201cWe heard from a lot of folks that had concerns,\u201d Bowersox said. \u201cWe heard enough voices that the decision was not clear at the Program Control Board.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve Stich, manager of NASA\u2019s commercial crew program, inside the launch control center at Kennedy Space Center in May 2020.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Based on all that, Stich said the chances have increased that Starliner will come home without its crew, and Wilmore and Williams will instead return with SpaceX.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n The Starliner decision will come down to senior leaders at NASA Headquarters. Normally, Bowersox, who chairs NASA\u2019s flight readiness review, would make the final call. He will hear briefings from NASA\u2019s engineering and safety teams, program managers, and representatives of the astronauts themselves. If officials present differing opinions to Bowersox, as they would have if the readiness review was held last week, the decision could go to NASA\u2019s most senior civil servant, Jim Free, or to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former Florida senator who flew on the shuttle mission immediately preceding the Challenger <\/em>accident.<\/p>\n \u201cI chair that review, we\u2019ll poll everybody, see where we are,\u201d Bowersox said at a press conference Wednesday. \u201cI\u2019ll state what my position is at that time. If we have dissenting voices out of that meeting, then it can go to the associate administrator, and if there\u2019s a desire to go even further, it can go to the administrator.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, Nelson told Ars he has confidence in NASA\u2019s decision. \u201cI especially have confidence since I have the final decision.\u201d<\/p>\n The people in decision-making positions on the Starliner mission were all at NASA at the time of the Columbia <\/em>accident.<\/p>\n Stich was a flight director on Columbia<\/em>\u2018s final mission. He manned one of three shifts of flight control teams monitoring Columbia<\/em>\u2018s activities in orbit on its 16-day research flight. NASA engineers, analyzing imagery from the Columbia<\/em>\u2018s launch on January 16, 2003, discovered that a suitcase-sized piece of insulating foam fell from the shuttle\u2019s external fuel tank and struck a portion of the orbiter\u2019s left wing.<\/p>\n Engineers didn\u2019t know the damage a piece of relatively light foam could do to the shuttle\u2019s head shield when it struck the wing at more than 500 mph. Efforts to use spy satellites to take a picture of Columbia<\/em>\u2018s heat shield were quashed by NASA management. At the time, NASA managers believed there was no way to rescue the crew, even if they found the heat shield catastrophically damaged.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s flight directors, responsible for the minute-by-minute operation of Space Shuttle missions, got the decision on what to do about Columbia<\/em> from higher-ups at NASA. Stich emailed Rick Husband, Columbia<\/em>\u2018s commander, a week into the mission to inform him of the foam strike. \u201cExperts have reviewed the high-speed photography, and there is no concern for RCC (Reinforced Carbon Carbon) or tile damage,\u201d Stich wrote. \u201cWe have seen this same phenomenon on several other flights, and there is absolutely no concern for entry.\u201d<\/p>\n Stich wrote that his reason for emailing Husband about the problem was to make the crew aware of it during an upcoming press conference. \u201cThis item is not even worth mentioning other than wanting to make sure that you are not surprised by it in a question from a reporter.\u201d<\/p>\n LeRoy Cain, now at Boeing, was the flight director on console in mission control at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center <\/em>during Columbia<\/em>\u2018s reentry on February 1, 2003. In real-time, over the course of about 10 minutes, Cain received updates from his team suggesting a cascading series of sensor failures on the shuttle, all clustered in Columbia<\/em>\u2018s left wing. Then, mission control lost contact with the shuttle and its crew.<\/p>\n In an interview with Ars earlier this year, before the launch of the Starliner spacecraft, Cain said he would not hesitate to voice concerns about Starliner\u2019s safety. He is the top Boeing official in charge of day-to-day Starliner mission operations. \u201cI would stand up and say we\u2019re not ready, and here\u2019s why,\u201d Cain said.<\/p>\n Cain presumably concurs with Boeing\u2019s official position that Starliner is capable of safely coming back to Earth with its two-person crew.<\/p>\n LeRoy Cain, Boeing\u2019s Starliner mission director and a former NASA flight director, during a mission simulation in 2019.<\/p>\n Credit: Bowersox was flying more than 200 miles above the planet, in command of the International Space Station. The grounding of NASA\u2019s Space Shuttle fleet after the loss of Columbia<\/em> forced his crew to return home in a Soyuz capsule. And it was a wild ride. The capsule suffered a technical malfunction during reentry, causing its guidance system to revert to a steeper so-called \u201cballistic\u201d descent, subjecting Bowersox\u2019s crew to higher-than-normal g-forces. They touched down nearly 300 miles short of their intended landing zone in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n There\u2019s one important distinction between NASA\u2019s decision about what to do with the Starliner spacecraft and the agency\u2019s mulling of the situation with Columbia <\/em>more than 21 years ago.<\/p>\n Back then, the people in charge of the shuttle program weren\u2019t aware of the damage to the leading edge of Columbia<\/em>\u2018s left wing. All of the data coming back from the shuttle showed it to be in excellent shape for reentry and landing. Today, managers know there are problems with Starliner.<\/p>\n \u201cThey frankly were fairly clueless on Columbia<\/em> or certainly didn\u2019t give it the same level of scrutiny, as they never thought foam shedding was an issue,\u201d a former NASA astronaut told Ars. \u201cAlso, on this one, Boeing is confident there isn\u2019t a big issue with crew returning safely on Starliner, yet some within NASA certainly don\u2019t feel that way.\u201d<\/p>\n Starliner\u2019s Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters also had problems on an unpiloted test flight in 2022, and software problems caused Starliner\u2019s first test flight in 2019 to end prematurely. This \u201ccheckered history\u201d could easily lead to some at NASA not having 100 percent confidence in the vehicle, the former astronaut said. \u201cSo there are some dissenters because there can be.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott Hubbard, a former director of NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center and a member of the Columbia <\/em>Accident Investigation Board, said the \u201cdearth of information\u201d about the 10-inch hole in the shuttle\u2019s left wing led to a bad decision.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the current case with Starliner, much is known about the RCS (and) helium leaks, albeit not the root cause,\u201d Hubbard told Ars. \u201cBased on public information, there are some tests of the valves which indicate that in an extreme case, there could be failures of the RCS system, which would be catastrophic.\u201d<\/p>\n Once the Starliner test flight is over, one way or another, Hubbard urged NASA and Boeing to revisit their decision to launch the spacecraft with a known helium leak. The craft\u2019s service module ended up leaking in five places. \u201cWas the decision well-supported, or did someone have \u2018launch fever?\u2019\u201d Hubbard said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As soon as this week, NASA officials will make perhaps the agency\u2019s most consequential safety decision in human spaceflight in 21 years. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are nearly 10 weeks into a test flight that was originally set to last a little more than one week. The two retired US Navy test […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[670,524,1545,190,1306],"class_list":["post-44953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing","tag-commercial-crew","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-nasa","tag-starliner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The decision chain<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/KSC-20230821-PH-KLS01_0007large.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n NASA\/Kim Shiflett<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/49942791678_fe2b254e3f_k.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFamiliar faces<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/47158925061_b54ce13ac1_k.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n NASA\/Frank Michaux<\/p>\n<\/figure>\nKnown unknowns<\/h2>\n