2024-09-03 18:14:30
Murphy’s Law struck veterans Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams as NASA stripped them of their suitcases at launch to send a urine recycling pump to the ISS
The US space agency NASA has announced that the two astronauts whose Starliner mission began in June will not return until February 2025 with a planned flight to Earth provided by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. The reason is that there is no assurance that Boeing’s ship is completely safe, as assured by the main aircraft manufacturer.
Confirming that all is not well with the crashed vehicle were also the strange sounds that the Starliner has been making for several days now. They resembled something like sonar pulses, and astronaut Butch Wilmore turned on a loudspeaker so that the Houston headquarters could hear them.
“Strange noise,” he noted. For hours, all sorts of speculations ran on the web – from an impending space apocalypse to “space ghosts”. A little later, NASA clarified that the noise was caused by the acoustics between the ship and the International Space Station.
Nevertheless, and because of all the vicissitudes surrounding the ill-fated ship, the decision was made at NASA headquarters these days to return the Starliner on September 7 without a human crew and not to risk the lives of Sunny and Butch, just to save Boeing’s image.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams turned out to be the go-to guys to fly the Boeing Starliner. The 58-year-old lady and her 3-year-older colleague hardly suspected that instead of their mission lasting one week, as planned, it would last 9 months – until February 2025. The two certainly don’t have time to be bored The International Space Station, because NASA immediately engaged them in various experiments.
One of them is how to most effectively water plants in a weightless environment. The two took turns observing and recording how the roots of different plants absorbed water in microgravity conditions.
In addition, the tandem was immediately integrated into the Russian-American crew of the ISS, and along with the daily maintenance of the station, they are busy repairing the crashed Starliner. Outside of this fun part on board, Butch and Sunny will surely be secretly wondering why this happened to them for a long time to come. On the other hand, they had one thing in mind, because their mission was formulated exactly like that – an end-to-end test. That is, they will stay as long as necessary to check all the pros and cons of the machine.
Although the Starliner did well in the unmanned tests, on June 5, before it even took off from Cape Canaveral, engineers detected unexplained helium leaks. After a short commotion on this occasion, a start was given. The logic behind this strange decision is this – in a mission, a thousand things can go wrong at any time, and if everything has to be perfect, it will probably never happen. Therefore, the industry has accepted that there are risks that are negligibly small and are accepted as normal. Also, helium is not a reactive gas, meaning a few leaks shouldn’t cause a problem with rocket fuel. But in space, the gap between theory and practice is huge. After the missile launch, the situation suddenly became complicated. The number of leaks began to grow, and the next day, June 6, when the capsule was due to dock with the ISS, the thrusters unexpectedly shut down. This literally made the hairs of NASA and Boeing engineers stand on end, who saw that from that moment on the failure was programmed. Then came the hard part – warning the public and seasoned space wolves Butch and Sunny that there was no way they were coming back in seven days.
The reason was that on return they would most likely not be able to adjust the ship’s orientation or orbital parameters, which in the worst case scenario could lead to severe overheating that would kill the astronauts on board. According to scientists, this is unlikely to happen, but it could still pose a serious risk to Butch and Sunny. Also, until a few months ago, it was believed that this way engineers would never know exactly what went wrong and why these defects did not show up in unmanned tests.
In other words, in this hypothetical situation, if the two astronauts had been returned to Earth, the Starliner would have jettisoned its service module upon re-entry as it flew towards land on Earth. Because it is not designed to be launched into the ocean like the SpaceX Dragon capsules, the part of the spacecraft with the most important information about the defects will burn up. Then it will be very difficult and even impossible for engineers and scientists to understand what went wrong and how to correct the flaws in the future.
Until recently, NASA also did not want the astronauts to return until the causes of the accident were understood. Moreover, the Agency is reluctant to give up its project with Boeing because it does not want to be completely dependent on Elon Musk, who could become a dangerous space monopolist if there is no competition. NASA was already in this role when it paid the Russians 86 million dollars for each flight to the ISS. In 2010, however, it became fed up with these prices and entered into simultaneous contracts with Elon Musk and Boeing as part of its commercial flight and “space taxi” program.
In the name of this visionary goal, NASA loosened the purse strings and financed SpaceX and Boeing with about 4 billion dollars each.
Unlike Musk, who after many failures established himself as the undisputed leader in this sector, things did not take off with Starliner. It was supposed to be ready by 2017, but after an unsuccessful attempt in 2019, the unmanned flight was postponed to 2022. During this time, Musk recorded a successful mission with a crew of the Dragon capsule, and realistically, from 2020, no one can to stop him – he takes the lion’s share of all orders from the Western world and it is no coincidence that his devices are called space taxis – with five manned missions to the ISS and 30 cargo ones.
With Boeing, the situation developed differently. Although an established and long-standing partner of NASA in the field of space shuttles, this time the company stepped on the wrong side. Whether this is related to the extreme stress associated with frequent accidents with her planes, including a falling door in flight, or just something lame in her space unit, it’s hard to say.
Unfortunately, this unimaginably bad turn of events scuppered all of Butch and Sunny’s plans to return to Earth. Until August, the thesis was launched that they could eventually return with an Elon Musk device, but for a number of reasons, this possibility fell through. And that would have been a real slap in the face for its competitors from Boeing, as well as for NASA. The ones in the public eye will long be the object of ridicule, and the space agency will be accused of not exercising enough oversight and wasting taxpayers’ money.
In this complex visionary-commercial-image mix for a minimum of 4.2 billion fell the two stoics Butch and Sunny. And they really are, because just before they took off, NASA removed some of their suitcases from the Boeing spacecraft because the ISS urgently needed a new pump for the urine recycling system. Thus, their personal belongings had to be thrown away and the two left literally with the subsistence minimum for 7 days. However, the mission dragged on unexpectedly long.
During this time, the two must be gritting their teeth because, as you know, you can’t do laundry on the ISS. Many say this is probably the least of their problems, and this was soon confirmed. On June 26, the Russian Earth observation satellite Resurs-P1 broke into a hundred pieces near the ISS, and Earth warned astronauts to take shelter on the Starliner in case the station was hit by any debris.
Including being ready to leave if the situation becomes critical. A little later, when the trajectory of the debris was calculated, the center relented and allowed the crew to return aboard the International Space Station.
Since then, Butch and Sunny have managed to recover 4 of the 5 failed boosters, but they still have work to do before they are cleared to return to Earth. In this whole critical situation, the two seem to be the most positive people and constantly give courage to everyone else. “We’re having a great time here at the ISS,” they said smiling during their first teleconference. “It feels good to float around.”
A completely normal reaction for experienced veterans who proved that NASA did not choose them by chance. Butch Wilmore is a military fighter pilot who spent 6 months in space in 2009 and 2014. He is married with two daughters who can hardly see him without the usual smile on his face. In contrast, his colleague Sunny Williams has twice as much experience. Not only is she the first woman to pilot a new orbital spacecraft, but she spent nearly a year in weightlessness with two expeditions in 2006 and 2012. Also, few would guess that this friendly and dignified lady is a retired US Navy captain . She is married and genuinely proud to have an elementary school in Massachusetts named after her.
Day after day, the two worked and cleaned the ISS side by side with American and Russian astronauts, drawing the admiration of the whole world. And they never seem to forget that a situation could always be much worse. As happened with their colleague Frank Rubio. He will make history with his flight aboard the Soyuz MS-22 on June 21 along with two Russian cosmonauts. His mission was planned to last 6 months, that is, he was supposed to return in early 2023. However, a malfunction in the spacecraft unexpectedly extended his stay until September 27, 2023. In this way, he broke the previous record for the longest stay with his 371 days in space.
The conclusion of these stories is that complications can always occur above, but there will always be heroes who will inspire us with their coolness and optimism.