When the two American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) last June because their return vehicle had a problem that could not be fixed, I wailed to my friend Jim Batterson (a former employee at NASA) that they were going to die. How could they survive if they couldn’t get back? Batterson (“Bat”) reassured me that there were plenty of vehicles that could bring them home, and there was nothing to worry about. But their one-week visit turned into nine months of waiting, and my wailing increased. (To be sure, they did seem happy to have an extended stay on the ISS, since they like being in space.)
Well, it now looks like they’re coming home, so I have one less thing (among millions!) to worry about. I got the good news from Bat yesterday in an email, and asked him to expand it as a post, but also to keep some of the wording in his orginal email to me, which is beneath the asterisks. Bat’s post, original and fleshed out, are indented.
In 2014, contracts were awarded to SpaceX and to Boeing to each develop ways to take human crews to the International Space Station (ISS) and return them safely to Earth. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule was developed and has been operating successfully since 2020. It’s also used (along with Russian vehicles) to effect crew rotations of the ISS about every six months. The Boeing Starliner capsule, after much delay, underwent a crewed test flight to ISS last June with two senior NASA astronauts onboard: Barry (Butch) Wilmore and Sunita (Suni) Williams. The mission called for them to rendezvous and dock with the ISS and to stay aboard ISS for a week. But unexpected anomalies on the Starliner during rendezvous and docking led to NASA delaying their return until Boeing could understand and fix the cause of the anomalies.
After several months of testing both the docked Starliner and ground-based models, the problem was neither understood nor resolved, to NASA’s satisfaction. The astronauts could not be safely returned on this vehicle, so Starliner returned to Earth, uncrewed, in September 2024, having a soft landing in the New Mexico desert. Astronauts Butch and Suni, as veterans of previous ISS missions, were integrated into the standing ISS crew to work and await the appearance of two future capsule seats for return to Earth.
Those seats finally appeared when the Crew 9 SpaceX capsule with two astronauts and two empty seats docked with the ISS in Septemberl, 2024. The Crew 9 capsule is scheduled to undock and return to Earth with four astronauts—including Butch and Suni—in the next week or so. Meanwhile four fresh astronauts (Crew 10) are scheduled to launch in a SpaceX capsule on Wednesday, March 12 and spend a week getting the ISS duties handed over to them.
This has been an excellent use of the ISS as a “safe haven” for astronauts, an idea that came about after the Columbia Shuttle accident for situations in which there are safety concerns about a return vehicle, allowing astronauts to await a rescue vehicle or simply another set of available return seats. While there is constant danger in space, NASA decided that spending time on the ISS was deemed safer than returning on the Boeing Starliner ship.
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But now Bat is worried that I might have been right: the returning astronauts might be in some danger. From Bat’s original post:
But NOW: Jerry,
You may have been right all along, as it is unfortunately turning out.
Now I also worry about Butch and Suni. USA Today described tomorrow’s launch (Wednesday March 12 at 7:48 PM EDT – I usually go to Space.com to get a link or C-SPAN may carry it) of Crew-10, the replacement for Butch and Suni and the two Crew9 astronauts as routine. But Jeebus…nothing about human spaceflight is routine, and as soon as people start thinking it is, we are closer to losing a crew due to inattention. Then there is Musk, who in the past few weeks has exploded two suborbital spacecraft, raining debris down on the National Airspace System and on populated Caribbean islands, leading to significant flight delays and endangering 100’s if not 1000’s of air passengers. I am convinced that Musk’s inattention to his launches led to at least the second failure and maybe both since it appears to me that he is the kind of hands-on boss whose constant physical presence makes a huge difference. So with him running all over the world as Trump’s chief of federal gov’t chaos, his space operations are running on autopilot for maybe the first time. Both the booster rocket and the capsule for Crew 10 tomorrow are SpaceX products as is the Crew 9 capsule, currently docked at Station, which Butch and Suni are scheduled to return to Earth in sometime in the next several days.
And of course NASA has just announced a Reduction in Force per Trump’s and Musk’s actions, which has to get pretty much everyone’s (in NASA) attention.
Here’s Butch and Suni talking about their return. Look how her hair stands up in zero gravity!
Thanks for this.
Were Musk a reasonable person, the two (!) explosions should have dragged him from his gov’t overlording back to SpaceX to do whatever he does (standing there physically present projecting a charismatic aura looking here and there?) to make the critical difference, instead of advertising his Teslas in front of the White House.
However much in detail he inserts himself in inspecting and evaluating hardware and operations, he can’t do everything, just as Christopher Kraft individually could not re: the Apollo 1 January ’67 launch pad fire (faulty capsule wiring and 100% oxygen atmosphere) and Apollo 13 (dropped service module and mistakenly installed insufficiently rated circuit breaker IIRC). Is his immediate physical presence more motivating to SpaceX personnel than their regard for professional work and safety? Is the gov’t still saving money going commercial?
Last month the Washington Post reported the gov’t had given Musk $38,000,000,000 in various forms. Last fall CNN reported Musk’s net worth in excess of $300,000,000,000. Unless he has a severe cash flow problem, perhaps he should consider paying back a few pennies. Were it another commercial space flight outfit doing this, explosions or not, would Doge Musk recommend defunding that outfit?
The next (successful) SpaceX launch, the control room should breathe a quiet collective sigh of relief instead of whooping and hollering as if at a tent revival.
SpaceX is not being subsidised by the US government, and the government is not paying for the Starship development.
SpaceX does indeed have government contracts, with NASA and the DoD, but it wins those by being the best, most reliable, and lowest bidder. It is estimated that SpaceX has saved NASA about $30 billion by providing cheaper launches. That’s because the Falcon 9 is the best, most reliable and cheapest rocket in operation today.
Indeed, it is Boeing and Lockeed Martin (“United Launch Alliance”) that have been effectively subsidised, by NASA and the DoD paying them triple the cost that SpaceX would have charged. (NASA and the DoD have been willing to pay multiple billions extra to ULA to keep them going, in order to have at least one alternative to SpaceX.)
Despite this, SpaceX are so far ahead of the competition that Boeing have effectively given up (wanting to sell their space division).
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 dominates the launch market today, and it is the cashflow from that (mostly commerical clients) that is being used to develop Starship.
Short summary: SpaceX’s re-usable rockets are far better and far cheaper than any current alternative. If SpaceX did not exist then it would cost the commerical sector and the US government about triple what launches are currently costing them.
“Defund Elon Musk!”, “Cancel SpaceX’s contracts!”
Well yes, good plan, except that a viable alternative (1) doesn’t exist (unless you ask the Russians or the Chinese), and (2) would cost you at least triple.
Forgot to say:
NASA is indeed developing its own “Space Launch System” for its future moon missions. It has flown once. The problem is that it costs $2.5 billion per launch, with no real prospect of that decreasing.
SpaceX’s Starship is estimated to be costing about $100 million per launch (since SpaceX is a private company that figure isn’t fully known, but that’s generally regarded as a fair estimate). Further, if they get it fully working and reusable, then the cost is estimated to fall to about $10 million per launch. Even if that’s over-optimistic, it’s still a totally different ballpark for the SLS.
And as far as I know the unexpected cratering in the Orion heat shield is still unmodeled and unexplained. Will they launch a crew regardless??
On another note, I would feel better if musk would do a test deconstruction of a realistic starship mockup at altitude and take data on the drift time to earth for the debris so there would be at least one datum reference point for FAA to designate a debris area “cold” and open to aircraft operations again after a test Starship RUD.
Jim, that mockup test sounds like a good idea. Is that what NASA did in the past? Juan Brown (blancolirio) covers the FAA’s response and AHAs and DRAs to the breakup here:
Reply to Jackie t: i do not know if NASA did any such experiments. I do recall that on trips to Station, Shuttle flew northeast over the uninhabited atlantic and was to orbit in just over 9 minutes and several hundred miles off the Virginia capes – for night launches, we used to cook burgers and drink beer on my back deck which was 30 feet above the james river looking northeastacross the chesapeake bay to the atlantic and we would spot shuttle’s bright main engines’ flame at about 8 minutes after its launch from cape canaveral, FL and follow it to main engine cut off a minute or so later.
Btw, juan browne (blancolirio) along with mover and gonky are two of my trusted sources on aviation incidents and accident analysis. I find them to be pretty objective.
+1
Full agreement with Coel, nothing to add. Thanks for clear perspective.
I’d just like to ask the people who believe “the gov’t had given Musk $38,000,000,000 in various forms” if their employer had given them a paycheck for doing nothing in return.
+1
Danger sign when test and development programs take on an operational sheen with schedule being entered into launch decision-making. The role of less technically competent program managers and totally technically inept politicians in creating havoc is related in the late Thiokol engineer Alan McDonald’s “Truth, Lies, and O-rings” about decisions and pressures leading to Space Shuttle Challenger’s ill-fated launch and engineer and retired NASA astronaut Charlie Camarda’s recent “Mission Out of Control” about program management disregard for technical expertise in the loss of and follow on flights to Space Shuttle Columbia. Charlie is a thermal structures engineer retired astronaut who flew on the return to flight mission after the Columbia tragedy.
There is nothing routine about human space flight. Inattention can kill, so I will be holding my breath in suspense until the two astronauts are safely back on earth.
Musk Derangement Syndrome.
SpaceX has launched and retrieved over 400 missions on Falcon 9, the first three attempts of which blew up. The subsequent 397+ amount to a spectacular display of competence, intelligent engineering, and care of infinite details. The excellence is so stupendous, it makes NASA fumbling shamefully clear.
The partial destruction of the two test flights of Starship are part of the process of achieving the same competence. Two vehicles suffered system errors and were then exploded by command and as specified in the planning, should such a need occur. These tests were NOT FAILURES.
Elon Musk is living through an irrational and vitriolic smear by the envious and jealous Establishment of the stultified Administrative State, not to mention all variants of the MarxistSpectrum.
Disgusting.
There also appears to be a Deranged Musk Supporter Syndrome.
Nope. No derangement. No vitriolic smear. No jealous. No marxist. No administrative state, etc etc. actually greatest admiration for what he has accomplished. Just want him to keep his eye on the ball and keep on accomplishing safely.
Right on! Thanks for this write up and thanks to PCC(E) for including it. I find all this fascinating. I appreciate the discussion very much, too. Nobody gets off easy on this blog and that’s what keeps it high calibered.
What Debi said.
You’re funny.
BTW . . .
As for Elon not standing over SpaceX’s every move and detail, do the critics think that is what produces the spectacular competence of SpaceX projects?
No.
The answer lies somewhere else, and goes by the name of Gwynne Shotwell.
Comment by Greg Mayer
The launch for today has been scrubbed.
GCM
Thanks greg. Glad that caution prevailed.
Just read at Space.com: as of 2am this morning (thurs), rescheduled for 7:08 pm edt friday march 14.