Me too, though after serving on the frontline in this battle for many years (product lifecycle management systems, formerly known as product data management systems), I have seen many ways to turn this into hell.
Although Crew Dragon is known for its reliability, I still fear that another Challenger is coming in its reentry avatar. I think there should be a universal spacesuit for the entire universe.
Yes, apparently. In a Crew-8 emergency departure, that is.
How exactly do they "rig makeshift seating" on a Dragon? I've driven old pickup trucks with a milk crate for a seat and a screwdriver for a key, but I'd expect something a little more crash worthy for a space craft. Can they cannibalize seats from Starliner?Harwood said:
This is a continuing PR disaster for Boeing. If everything goes well for the autonomous return they might be able to limit PR damage to the program and do forensic analysis on the vessel and actual improve themselves. But if the thing loses control or does anything else untoward during that re-entry that leads to loss of or extreme damage to the vehicle, they are going to be in a world of hurt.
The thrusters in question are in the "service module" (or whatever it is called), that burns up in the atmosphere. The problem is that the deorbit burn and separation sequence are close together time wise, and that doesn't allow enough time for a thruster reconfiguration to work around any possible thruster degradation that might occur. The degradation is caused by overheating, from firing the thrusters themselves, or from firing the big engines that do the deorbit burn.
It would seem that for any contingency on the ISS, they would need to go unsuited into the Crew 8 Dragon. They can't even use the Starliner as a shelter even in situations like potential debris hazard to the ISS because there is a possibility that the station could be damaged and they would actually need to separate and return to Earth. If they did this and the station lost pressurization, there would be no way for them to transfer over to the Dragon. At that point, they'd have to try to return to Earth on Starliner and hope it didn't kill them during the process.
