Boeing's Starliner Manned Spaceship's Return Mission in Jeopardy

TapTechNews August 4th news, the success rate of the return-to-Earth mission of the Starliner manned spaceship of the American Boeing Company has been questioned by insiders. This spaceship carrying two astronauts was originally scheduled to be the last test before Boeing officially undertakes the NASA manned mission. However, problems such as helium leakage and multiple thruster failures occurred after the launch.

Despite the intensive tests on the ground and in orbit by Boeing, the root cause of the failure has not been fully identified so far. And according to the inside information of ArsTechnica, The possibility of SpaceX's Dragon spaceship undertaking the emergency rescue mission is significantly higher than the successful return of the Starliner. Once NASA loses confidence in the safety performance of the Starliner spaceship, there are multiple options for astronauts to return to Earth. For example, the upcoming Crew-9 mission of SpaceX can carry two instead of four astronauts, making room for two astronauts. In addition, the CrewDragon can also carry one more passenger in the return flights of the Crew-8 and Crew-9 missions.

This incident is not only about the safety of astronauts, but also about the fate of the entire Starliner project. If this return mission fails, Boeing may need to conduct additional tests, resulting in a total loss of up to 1.6 billion US dollars (TapTechNews note: currently about 11.497 billion yuan). This is also a major blow to NASA, because it will lead to the complete dependence of the US manned space transportation on SpaceX alone, increasing the potential risk.