NASA’s latest attempt to send astronauts to the International Space Station aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule has once again experienced the kind of delay that makes one wonder whether it is a space mission or a metaphor for modern aerospace bureaucracy. The launch, which was originally scheduled for the 1st of June, has now been moved to no earlier than the 5th of June, a date that assumes everything proceeds smoothly, which, in the context of this project, may be a bold assumption.
This latest hiccup involves a “ground support equipment issue” which is NASA-speak for something on the ground didn’t do what it was supposed to do. To be precise, the mission team noted a problem with a pressure regulation valve on the ground side of the launch structure, a component that sounds innocuous until one realizes it is rather important when one is attempting to send human beings hurtling through the upper atmosphere strapped into a large tank of flammable fuel.
Starliner, which is Boeing’s entry in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, is already something of a veteran of launch delays and technical temperaments. Its launch record boasts more zeros than most spacecraft ever dream of, and while it has flown uncrewed missions, a fully crewed launch remains, for now, as theoretical as punctual broadband repair. Veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who had every intention of spending their weekend streaking through the mesosphere, will instead spend a few more grounded days savoring Florida weather and perhaps reconsidering their life choices.
The Starliner project has been plagued with software bugs, parachute concerns, valves behaving like moody teenagers, and a general timetable that seems to be inspired more by geological epochs than by standard Gantt charts. Boeing, for whom this vehicle is supposed to be a rival to SpaceX’s very successful Crew Dragon, has yet to enjoy the kind of consistency in launches that would allow anyone to forget that rival names like “Crew Dragon” and “Starliner” now sound suspiciously like dueling budget airlines rather than cutting-edge space technology.
Assuming all goes well with the valve fix and nothing else decides to spring a leak, make a noise, or register politically inconvenient vibration data during final checks, then the launch could proceed in the first week of June. Of course, in the context of Starliner, “assuming” is doing a tremendous amount of work.
Because in spaceflight, as in comedy and plumbing, timing is everything.