Boeing’s Starliner lands on Earth – without its astronauts
Boeing’s Starliner lands on Earth – without its astronauts
Nasa’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who flew Starliner amid technical failures, will remain at ISS until February
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed in a New Mexico desert late on Friday, months after its original departure date and without the two astronauts it carried when it launched in early June.
Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch, a Nasa live stream showed, nailing the critical final phase of its mission.
The spacecraft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere around 11pm ET at orbital speeds of roughly 27,400km/h (17,025mph). About 45 minutes later, it deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated a set of airbags moments before touching down at the White Sands Space Harbor, an arid desert in New Mexico.
Still was the right decision not to chance it.
But I bet the astronauts wish they'd been on it now.90Someone who's worked their entire life to not only become trained as an astronaut, but actually go on a space mission. What do you think they prefer? Going home today or staying another few months on an actual space station?
43I think they'd prefer going home. The mission they came up for is long done, they may have important events in their life or their family's lives scheduled for after the planned return, and staying up for months increases the chances of long term damage to their bodies.
I imagine they're pretty bored by now.
250 gravity and living in an enclosed space take a huge toll on one physical and mental being, obviously they wanna go home today, but i bet they also wanna go home in one piece
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and that could have potentially been what caused to crash and burn or burn and crash. choices choices.
anyhow... I'm thinking they want to be home right now, but maybe not riding on a boeing.
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Boeing killed John Barnett
69I like the part where they waited until after markets closing to take a chance. Also note how NASA announced that astronauts were staying after markets closed.
35But number go up?!?
6Meet: The Interrobang. ‽ Combination of two types of punctuation that indicates both at once.
3
Right choice, play it safe. Glad it landed safely, competition in space is a good thing. Better than a monopoly.
26Amazing. Given Boeings recent track record, I didn't expect it to do that.
23People are (rightfully) raking Starliner and Boeing for the shitshow that has been this project so far. But the positive to take from this flight, even landing without the crew, is the fact that the capsule itself performed fine. It was the service module that was being screwy. The actual "capsule" part in "capsule" seems to have had it's issues ironed out. Just fix the shitty service module.
19Alex baumgardner jumped from the balloon from basically space, why haven't they figured out a way to do it from low orbit yet?
6Because he wasn't moving very fast... To be in orbit you need to be traveling around the earth extremely quickly. The problem is slowing down, not the altitude.
21And the ionosphere is the dangerous part. Bellow that, drag slows you down before you burn.
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Because he jumped while in the stratosphere (middle level of 3-level atmosphere surrounding the earth). Therefore he didn't have to manage the friction and heat that space shuttles have to endure when they enter the uppermost mesosphere, then stratosphere, then troposphere.
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👽 Hi
4