Credits to: @mattblaze@federate.social
EDIT: they’ve changed the article’s original title :(
Jesus Christ, the astronauts aren’t stranded. The first manned flight of a new vehicle and there were some issues on the part that gets jettisoned and burned up, so they can’t inspect it afterwards. They’re trying to analyze it while they have it, and even with the leak they could be to there a month with no issue.
Boeing deserves the bad press they’re getting on the planes lately, but this is crap.
As Business Insider previously reported, helium supports Starlink’s reaction control system thrusters, which allows them to fire.
Can’t even get the spacecraft’s name straight
This comes up on every one of these articles. The astronauts are in no way stranded.
There’s a common sense operating rule on the station: every person on board ISS must have a dedicated seat in a ride home that is ready to undock and leave within 30 minutes notice.
Right now, the Starliner capsule is certified and ready for that role for the two test pilots. The crew dragon and soyuz are docked to handle the rest of the station crew.
Earlier today there was an emergency shelter event on the station when some debris got unusually close. In this type of event all crew evacuate to the escape spacecraft and close hatches. So if something does hit the station, it’s less likely someone gets hurt during a depressurization.
Starliner served as an emergency shelter for this exercise, because it is certified for emergency reentry, and the five identified helium leaks are not close to preventing it from returning safely.
To get from ISS to a landing site requires no more than 5 hours of RCS operation. There is plenty of margin in the helium system to cover 5 hours.
No commentary on the fact that they launched them with a helium leak in the first place? Seriously? They found the problem and scrubbed a launch, only to go forward with it when they couldn’t figure it out. WTF man.
Now the helium leak is worse, and you’re just gonna give them a pass.
They scrubbed, investigated, found it was acceptable, launched, and discovered previously unknown issues. The original leak isn’t getting worse, they discovered more, smaller leaks, that still don’t pose a danger to the mission.
Discovering the cause of the 5 RCS thrusters shutting down with only 4 of them being able to restart is the current focus of things, because the spacecraft is no where near running out of helium.
It’s all still within the scope of this test flight’s objectives, so they technically aren’t wrong to say things are going well even when they’ve found issues.
Question: If you had to design a bridge, and you did, and it was built, and then you noticed it sways in the wind, would you tear it down?
And if you answer yes: This is normal. Bridges are designed with a certain level of flex in mind, and they have redundancies to allow for this. Too much is a problem of course, but a certain amount is normal and budgeted for.
And it’s similar here: The helium leaks were not planned to be there, but there’s a certain redundancy in the system which means that a certain level of helium leakage is not an issue.
