Updates Boeing's CST-100 Starliner

It looks like the current Starliner needs to have a crew onboard, to manually confirm undocking.
While the unmanned flight test Starliner had the capability to do this automatically, this was removed / omitted / ... for the crewed version.

In case the crew would not return onboard Starliner, it would be required to upload and patch the onboard flight software.
I guess this is nothing to do lighthearted.
 
Somewhat off-topic but related to one of the two astronauts stuck in the ISS. While going through Wikipedia, I have gotten to know that Williams carried a lot of elements of Indian and Slovene cultures to the ISS, including a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a copy of the Upanishads, the national flag of Slovenia, a samosa and a Carniolan sausage. This is because she has both Indian and Slovene ancestries. I think she should also carry the Indian tricolour to celebrate her Indian ancestry.
 
Sbb1413 said:
Somewhat off-topic but related to one of the two astronauts stuck in the ISS. While going through Wikipedia, I have gotten to know that Williams carried a lot of elements of Indian and Slovene cultures to the ISS, including a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a copy of the Upanishads, the national flag of Slovenia, a samosa and a Carniolan sausage. This is because she has both Indian and Slovene ancestries. I think she should also carry the Indian tricolour to celebrate her Indian ancestry.
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The maximum mass of the personal payload is limited. And isn't that enough?
 
Urwumpe said:
The maximum mass of the personal payload is limited. And isn't that enough?
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I was thinking the same, but I always try not to be unkind whenever possible :p

Sbb1413 said:
Somewhat off-topic but related to one of the two astronauts stuck in the ISS. While going through Wikipedia, I have gotten to know that Williams carried a lot of elements of Indian and Slovene cultures to the ISS, including a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a copy of the Upanishads, the national flag of Slovenia, a samosa and a Carniolan sausage. This is because she has both Indian and Slovene ancestries. I think she should also carry the Indian tricolour to celebrate her Indian ancestry.
Click to expand...
Yeah, she is of Indian descent. But like Urwumpe said, I also think there is actually enough personal stuff up there.

I am not really a great religious and cultural nerd. But astronauts biographies can be very interesting. Especially this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_Musgrave

And there are also very talented people in that community:



At least in space it is not the worst presentation of our species (y)
 
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Astronauts are specifically trained for possibly unexpected extended long-duration stays during their missions. This had also happened to the crew of MS-22 when their Soyuz has unexpectedly leaked coolant fluid to space, which has prompted them to extend their mission by another six months
 
Sunita was ISS-commander of Expedition 33 in 2012. I remember she was pretty sad when she had to leave the station after - then assumed - her last stay on the ISS.

She grabbed the chance to become a private astronaut, and now she is back on the ISS. Although the circumstances of the extended stay could really be better, I assume she is enjoying every day on board the station!
 
francisdrake said:
Sunita was ISS-commander of Expedition 33 in 2012. I remember she was pretty sad when she had to leave the station after - then assumed - her last stay on the ISS.

She grabbed the chance to become a private astronaut, and now she is back on the ISS. Although the circumstances of the extended stay could really be better, I assume she is enjoying every day on board the station!
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Yeah. She is a real ISS nerd. Usually I don't follow ISS expeditions. I only knew Suni due to her nice video tours she did on the ISS.

 
francisdrake said:
She grabbed the chance to become a private astronaut, and now she is back on the ISS.
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Oh, she wasn't launched to space with Wilmore as a career astronaut. This is what "private astronaut" may imply. That might be the reason why she never flew to space for about 12 years.

Although I have never seen her in-person, she had once arrived in India during the gap years to visit her ancestral village in Gujarat. She had also arrived in my home state, West Bengal.
 
Sbb1413 said:
That might be the reason why she never flew to space for about 12 years.
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Urwumpe said:
Astronaut is not only about flying, preparing and supporting missions takes much more time.
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Just take a look at Story Musgrave for example. He is the only guy that flew with each of the 5 Space Shuttle OVs. His career lasted from 1967 until late 1997. That's about 11.000 days.

Now, flown aboard six Shuttle missions during his career, he has logged 53 days of total mission time during his career...

That's about 99.5% of career-time spend on the ground 😅

It's also interesting for EVA time I guess. Musgrave logged (only) 26 hours of total EVA time. But he had way more simulated EVA time on the ground. Some hundreds of hours I think.

Suni Williams logged over 50 hrs of EVA time btw., and over 388 days in space. She might end up with over 500 days in space 😎 Her career lasts for almost 26 years now. So, that's still about 95% on the ground.

The longest gap had John Glenn I think. Although not a NASA member/astronaut since 1964 anymore, there was a gap of 36 years between MA-6 in 1962 and STS-95 in 1998.

It might even apply to Orbinauts 😅 I spend way more time downloading NASA documents, images, reading and learning stuff, and compiling my own training handbooks and flight plans, than actually simulating missions in Orbiter 🤷‍♂️
 
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GLS said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1823421499686183220
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So a subcontractor built the RCS thrusters to an incorrect specification provided by Boeing, and they didn't catch that until they installed it and flew it with crew? That begs the question: what else isn't built to the correct specification on that vehicle? If Boeing actually has a QC program at all, nothing they have approved should be trusted at all. This would be trash engineering even for something where human lives were not at risk. A lot of people at Boeing need to be charged and tried for criminal negligence.
 
Thunder Chicken said:
So a subcontractor built the RCS thrusters to an incorrect specification provided by Boeing, and they didn't catch that until they installed it and flew it with crew? That begs the question: what else isn't built to the correct specification on that vehicle? If Boeing actually has a QC program at all, nothing they have approved should be trusted at all. This would be trash engineering even for something where human lives were not at risk. A lot of people at Boeing need to be charged and tried for criminal negligence.
Click to expand...

At least changing the specs without telling the supplier sounds very strange. It happens in poor email-based engineering a lot, but Boeing should have better processes to integrate suppliers....
 
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