Sooo...that ship was built by Boeing. Explains the sonar: where they are going, they don't need eyes to see.
Starliner is set to return on the 6th, crewless. What's the over/under for a fiery end?
The idea is to change the software to make it possible for the capsule to return without crew. The change of software is possible and what they are doing, it just take some time. The software to do so is already availabe as in previous uncrewed flight.If the software can't be changed, is there a way for an astronaut to go inside the starliner, depart from the ISS, then hop back to the ISS using an eva suit?
Given how Boeing engineers coded the MCAS software (check the readings of only one of the angle-of-attack sensors), I am highly doubtful the program in Starliner checks all those parametres. The most it checks is there is a suit hooked up to the spaceship within the cabin.EVA suit or IVA suit alone is not enough to "fool" the software, you need to have some devices in the suit to emulate a human so the safty check procedure can pass and be activated and remain activated before the undocking and probably afterwards too so the computer thinks everything is working. The emulation includes oxgen consumption and circulation, body heat to stimulate temperature regulation, simulate moisture from breath and sweat, heart beat etc. None of them exists on ISS. So updating the SW is the only way.
One of the best Horror SciFi movies ever!
Starliner's long space odyssey is over.
The Boeing capsule, named Calypso, returned to early this morning (Sept. 7), touching down in the New Mexico desert at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT; 11:01 p.m. local time on Sept. 6).
"Great landing of Calyspo!" NASA astronaut Suni Williams said on the agency's webcast. "I don't think that could have gone better."
The landing was long-delayed, coming more than three months into an orbital mission originally expected to last about 10 days. And, while launched with two NASA astronauts aboard — Williams and Butch Wilmore — nobody rode it home.
It wasn't supposed to end like this.
Pretty amazing if it happens. At one time ULA was the only choice you had for space launch in the USA. SpaceX killed it. I expected Blue Origin to get ULA eventually.
Pretty amazing if it happens. At one time ULA was the only choice you had for space launch in the USA. SpaceX killed it. I expected Blue Origin to get ULA eventually.