Private Spaceflights | Technical problems forced Boeing to postpone carrying people to the ISS space station

Aerospace industry the company Boeing was supposed to start taking astronauts to the ISS space station with its Starliner capsule on Saturday, but the launch was delayed for at least a day due to technical problems. The news agency Reuters and several US media outlets report on the matter.

The Starliner test flight has been delayed for almost a month due to various reasons, which is already a long delay even in space flights.

Judging from the several delays in May, the ship still has birth defects. The problems have been related to leaks and adjustment of various valves.

Now it was decided to carry out the flight, even if one valve year a little helium.

The leak came from a gasket the size of a button.

“Even if the seal were to leak a hundred times, it would not hinder the flight,” assured Nasan Steve Stich from the beginning of the week.

The leak affects only one of the 28 controls that control the altitude of the launch vehicle’s trajectory.

Another the private space company SpaceX’s ship Crew Dragon has been taking astronauts to the station since November 2020, always four astronauts at a time.

Its transport to the ISS station and back to Earth has been flawless.

Crew Dragon get a competitor now. Roughly speaking, it could be said that commercial taxi traffic into space is starting.

The development of both private capsules has been funded by the US space agency NASA. In 2014, it signed a multi-billion dollar deal with both SpaceX and Boeing.

Of the two, Boeing’s Starliner has been delayed by years. It was supposed to fly to the space station already in 2017.

NASA astronauts Suni Williams (front) and Butch Wilmore train in the Starliner simulator at the Johnson Space Center in November 2022. Picture: nasa

ISS space station has been orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 400 kilometers since 2000. Astronauts have lived there all this time.

Astronauts are usually replaced every six months.

This time NASA’s experienced astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunny Williams stay at the station for only ten days. Then they return to Earth on the same ship.

Seven astronauts could fit aboard the Starliner at once.

The same Starliner can be used again and again if its heat shield can withstand the return trip to Earth.

Commercial the capsules are to replace the space shuttles, which until 2011 carried astronauts to the space station.

NASA discontinued the shuttle program in 2011. After that, American astronauts had to buy round-trip tickets to the station from the Russian spaceship, Soyuz.

Soyuz is reliable, but its technology is outdated. In the future, the US space programs will rely less and less on the Soyuz or it will no longer be needed at all.