Boeing Starliner commander shares blame for spacecraft failure, but would fly on it again

Yahoo

31-03-2025

NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore put some of the blame on himself when asked who was responsible for Boeing Starliner's failure on last year's Crew Flight Test.
He and crewmate Suni Williams flew up to the International Space Station last June on what was supposed to be as short as an eight-day stay. The spacecraft, though, suffered from failed thrusters and helium leaks that ultimately led to NASA's decision to send the spacecraft home without crew. The pair then remained on the station more than nine months flying home instead on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission earlier this month.
'There were questions that I as the commander of the spacecraft, that I should have asked, and I did not at the time,' Wilmore said during a Monday press conference. 'I didn't know I needed to. And maybe you could call that hindsight, but I'll start and point the finger, and I'll blame me.'
He said the answers to some of those questions could have delayed the launch and avoided what turned into a national spotlight, but he said Boeing and NASA also share the blame.
'We all are responsible. We all own this,' he said. 'You cannot do this business without trust. You have to have ultimate trust, and for someone to step forward and these different organizations say, 'Hey, I'm culpable for part of that issue.' — that goes a long way to maintaining trust.'
Wilmore, though, said he would fly on Starliner again.
'Yes, because we're going to rectify all the issues that we encountered. We're going to fix it, we're going to make it work,' he said. 'Boeing's completely committed. NASA is completely committed. And with that, I'd get on in a heartbeat.
Williams concurred.
'The spacecraft is really capable. There were a couple things that need to be fixed, like Butch mentioned, and folks are actively working on that, but it is a great spacecraft, and it has a lot of capability that other spacecraft don't have,' she said.
Wilmore said he and Williams were scheduled to meet with Boeing leadership this week to discuss how to move forward.
'There's a great deal of work being done, but we have insight that not many other people have,' Wilmore said. 'We worked this program for six years before we launched. We talked to everyone up and down to the chain of command, and we have insight that other people don't have, and we want to share that as much as possible.'
Wilmore still gushes about Starliner's ability compared to the Soyuz and SpaceX Crew Dragon.
'Starliner has the most capability when you think about its ability to maneuver automatically,' he said. 'I mean, I jokingly said a couple of times before we launched that I could literally do a barrel roll over the top of the space station. I would never do that, but you can.'
He expects Boeing and NASA to enable the fixes, do integrated tests and get the spacecraft qualified.
'It is very, very capable. If we can figure out a couple of very important primary issues with the thrusters and the helium system, Starliner is ready to go,' he said. 'That is not going to be happen overnight, but it has to take place.'
The duo were joined by NASA astronaut and Crew-9 commander Nick Hague, with whom they flew home earlier this month.
Hague weighed in on the challenge astronauts face when politics overshadow the mission, as it did during claims by President Trump and Elon Musk that the Starliner astronauts were left behind on the station for political reasons by the Biden Administration.
'Politics … they don't make it up there when we're trying to make operational decisions,' Hague said. 'So as the commander of Crew-9, responsible for the safety of this crew and getting them back safely, I can tell you that the entire time up there, I launched with that singular objective.'