offbeat
Inspector General's report says time is running out for the Calamity Capsule
Place your bets, because it looks increasingly unlikely Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will carry astronauts again, if a NASA inspector general's report is anything to go on.Published on Tuesday, the OIG report on NASA's management of its Commercial Crew Program (CCP) examines how SpaceX and Boeing have performed in providing crew transportation to the International Space Station. The report notes that SpaceX worked through its own technical challenges getting humans into space and to the ISS. Boeing’s Starliner, a.k.a. the Calamity Capsule, on the other hand, featured extensively in the writeup, with the OIG calling into question whether it’ll ever get past the testing phase.
“Boeing has been unable to obtain human-rating certification for its Starliner capsule and Atlas V launch vehicle, conducting two orbital flight tests and one crewed flight test that suffered significant issues and was ultimately classified as a serious mishap,” the OIG report said. “With over 11 years invested and about 4 years of crewed operations aboard the ISS remaining until the Station’s planned decommission in 2030, NASA and Boeing have limited time and resources to realize the value of their significant investments into Starliner.”
