TNASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who are stuck aboard the International Space Station (ISS), won’t be coming home anytime soon. During a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, August 24, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the space agency has abandoned the idea of bringing Wilmore and Williams home aboard their troublesome Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which has been experiencing engine problems since its launch on June 5. Instead, the Starliner will be flown home unmanned, and Wilmore and Williams will fly back to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that will launch to the ISS in September for a five-month stay and return in February. This extends the planned eight-day ISS stay for Wilmore and Williams to a whopping eight months.
“NASA worked very hard with Boeing to reach this decision,” Nelson said. “The decision is the result of a commitment to safety.”
The decision was based on what’s called a flight readiness review (FRR). As NASA leadership explained at a press conference on August 14, FRRs are typically held before launch, when officials come together to make a final decision on the planned mission.
“We bring together representatives from all the centers involved, the technical authorities, NASA engineering and flight operations from the safety center,” said Ken Bowersox, a former astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Directorate of Space Operations. “We listen to the status of the mission, go through some specific topics and at the end we ask everyone if they think we’re ready to do the mission.”
On one occasion, this panel’s decision resulted in disaster. On January 15, 1986, the FRR for the Space Shuttle Challenger’s final mission took place, and the ship was cleared to launch. Thirteen days later, on January 28, the launch took place, ending with a fuel tank explosion and the death of all seven crew members just 73 seconds after the ship left the launch pad. This tragedy, followed by the breakup of the shuttle Columbia and a similar loss of all crew on February 1, 2003, left NASA much more risk-averse than before.
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“We didn’t have the governance structure with technical authorities that we have today,” said Russ DeLoach, head of NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance Division, during the press conference earlier. “So back then, program managers had essentially unilateral decision-making authority. And so if there were opinions that maybe a path we were taking wasn’t the right one, there really wasn’t a strong additional authority that could step in and say, ‘Wait a minute.'”
That extra authority today comes in the form of mission-long FRRs—though they often go by another name: Mission Risk Acceptance Forum. Whatever they’re called, the official bodies are supposed to conduct the review of an FRR at any point between the crew’s liftoff and their return to Earth. In recent weeks, NASA has been under pressure to make such a decision about the stricken Starliner—and quickly. The spacecraft’s batteries have a limited lifespan, and if the craft weren’t deemed fit to bring the crew home, it would soon have to fly back empty.
The FRR that led to the decision not to bring Wilmore and Williams home on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft took place on August 23, and Nelson was on the case. If there are dissenting opinions during the review, the decision goes first to Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator. After him, Nelson could step in, and he obviously did.
Before the decision was finalized, it was still possible that NASA could surprise the public—not to mention Wilmore and Williams—and announce that the stranded astronauts would fly home on their dodgy Starliner. But that was never likely. NASA’s institutional grief runs deep—stretching back well before the Challenger and Columbia disasters, to the launch pad fire on January 27, 1967, that claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee as they conducted a dress rehearsal for the launch of their Apollo 1 spacecraft. Shortly after that tragedy, legendary flight director Gene Kranz gathered grieving NASA employees for a somber but heartening postmortem.
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“From today on, flight control will be recognized by two words: tough and competent,” Kranz said, writing the words on a chalkboard with chalk. “Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or don’t do. We will never neglect our responsibilities again. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. Mission control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today, go to your office and the first thing you will do there is write ‘tough and competent’ on your chalkboard. That will never be erased. Every day when you enter the room, those words will remind you of the price Grissom, White and Chaffee paid. Those words are the price of joining the ranks of mission control.”
That price still stands. NASA could have spared Boeing the embarrassment of flying its Starliner home empty, and Wilmore and Williams the ordeal of spending another six months in space, but that’s not the path the agency chose. The astronauts’ lives are at stake. A contrite NASA decided not to risk them again.
