SPACE – The Boeing curse does not end. With the hood lost during takeoff of a 737-800 and the door of a 737 Max which came loose in mid-flight due to missing bolts, incidents have multiplied recently for the American manufacturer. And his new challenge, which however had nothing to do with a plane flight since it is the space that Boeing was targeting with its Starliner capsule, fell through with the announcement this Tuesday, May 7 in the night postponement of takeoff. The cause: a technical problem.
As you can see in the video at the top of the articlethis was to take off on the night of Monday May 6 to Tuesday May 7 with two astronauts on board for a first manned test flight. A project that was already four years late compared to SpaceX.
The Starliner adventure began ten years ago. Three years earlier, NASA sent an American space shuttle into space for the last time, ending the program. A decision taken following the explosion of the shuttle Columbia and the death of the 7 crew members in 2003.
NASA therefore needs a new supplier to send its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Two companies are then selected for this contract: SpaceX and Boeing. In order to help them develop their respective spacecraft, the American space agency is allocating $4.2 billion to each of them, with the aim of having the devices by 2017.
SpaceX’s victory
But problems are piling up for both companies and targets are being revised downwards. In 2020, Elon Musk’s company achieved its first manned flight to the ISS. This is a hard blow for Boeing, on which NASA had particularly relied. Especially since the American manufacturer had to abort its first unmanned test flight a few months earlier, because its capsule could not be placed in the correct orbit due to a failure of an on-board computer. She therefore had to return to Earth after two days without even having reached the ISS.
While SpaceX obtains its certification from NASA for human flights, and missions aboard its Crew Dragon spacecraft multiply, Boeing remains behind. It will be necessary to wait until 2022 for its Starliner capsule to finally succeed in reaching the ISS without passengers on board.
But here it is: several problems are detected during the mission. Once returned to Earth, the capsule returns to the factory. This time with astronauts on board, Boeing had no room for error. This test was originally scheduled to be carried out in July 2023. But as the deadline approaches, Boeing ends up postponing its launch to an undetermined date.
Two problems still persist at this date: the first concerns the parachutes used to slow down the capsule during its return to Earth. NASA requires that in the event of a problem, two parachutes out of the three planned can support the weight of the capsule in order to bring the crew back to Earth in complete safety, which is unfortunately not the case for Starliner. The second concerns the adhesive tape which must wrap electrical cables inside the capsule and which happen to be flammable.
These problems are clearly still not resolved: the takeoff planned for Monday was canceled at the last minute due to a technical problem.
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