Starliner decision expected tomorrow, August 24
According to a NASA update today, the agency will hold “an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review” to discuss whether to return Starliner manned or unmanned on Saturday morning, August 24, 2024 and then hold a press conference immediately afterward to discuss the results of that review.
What makes this review and press conference different from all previous Starliner reviews and conferences is that NASA administrator Bill Nelson will attend.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and leadership will hold an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review on Saturday, Aug. 24, for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. About an hour later, NASA will host a live news conference at 1 p.m. EDT from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The only reason a politico like Nelson would participate in such proceedings is because he has taken control of the decision-making process, and will make the decision himself. The review is likely to educate him as best as can be done in this short time, and he will then decide whether the two astronauts who launched on Starliner, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will return on it in the next week or so, or will stay on board ISS until February 2025 and return on the next Dragon crew capsule scheduled to launch to ISS in late September.
Nelson might have decided to get involved on his own, but I am certain that if so it was strongly “encouraged” by officials above him in the White House. There is an election coming up, and the risks involved in using Starliner to return the astronauts must be weighed in connection not just with its engineering concerns but with its political ramifications also.
Nelson’s decision will also provide us a strong indication of a future Harris administration’s attitude toward space.
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According to a NASA update today, the agency will hold “an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review” to discuss whether to return Starliner manned or unmanned on Saturday morning, August 24, 2024 and then hold a press conference immediately afterward to discuss the results of that review.
What makes this review and press conference different from all previous Starliner reviews and conferences is that NASA administrator Bill Nelson will attend.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and leadership will hold an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review on Saturday, Aug. 24, for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. About an hour later, NASA will host a live news conference at 1 p.m. EDT from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The only reason a politico like Nelson would participate in such proceedings is because he has taken control of the decision-making process, and will make the decision himself. The review is likely to educate him as best as can be done in this short time, and he will then decide whether the two astronauts who launched on Starliner, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will return on it in the next week or so, or will stay on board ISS until February 2025 and return on the next Dragon crew capsule scheduled to launch to ISS in late September.
Nelson might have decided to get involved on his own, but I am certain that if so it was strongly “encouraged” by officials above him in the White House. There is an election coming up, and the risks involved in using Starliner to return the astronauts must be weighed in connection not just with its engineering concerns but with its political ramifications also.
Nelson’s decision will also provide us a strong indication of a future Harris administration’s attitude toward space.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Anyone taking bets? I’d like to place 300 quatloos that NASA pushes the date again come 8/24. Any Takers?
Pushes the date of the return or pushes the date of announcing the date of the return. I bid 1000 quatloos on the latter. Like our recently deposed prexy, Nelson doesn’t quite seem to be in the moment whenever they wheel him out for these “important announcements. Whoever is” running things, ” it ain’t him.
“Whoever is” running things, ” it ain’t him.”
Too many cosmic rays!
I’ll never forget the look on his face when one of our space commentators introduced himself to him at a news conference as the “Angry Astronaut”!
1000 quatloos says they kick the can down the road till after election day, but before Thanksgiving.
The NASA announcement calls it an “internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review” and only mentions the attendees as “Nelson and leadership.” If it is internal, is Boeing there? If it is only Nelson and leadership, is Boeing there? If not, can it really be a FRR? If Boeing is not there, then this has become strictly political and not technical, and the term “flight readiness review” is meaningless, as no one would be there to answer the questions regarding actual readiness. A political discussion could be performed without Boeing, but Boeing would be unable to defend itself.
I am eager to hear the results of this meeting, especially the attendees. Will the news conference say who attended the FRR?
A few days ago, the Starliner/Dragon question was supposedly kicked down the road again to the end of the month. Now, it looks as though the decision will be rendered tomorrow – a row-back of one week. I suspect, therefore, said decision has already been made and it will be to bring Starliner back empty and launch Crew-9 with two occupants and a pair of empty SpaceX suits for Butch and Sunni with a view toward their returning home next February or March with their new crewmates. The “review” will be, in effect, a scripted stage play. Everyone involved will speak their lines on cue, then Administrator Nelson will make the big announcement and that will be that.
I heard that the Boeing space suits will not fit in the Space X dragon.
I do not know if this is because they will not fit in the seats or if they will not hook up to the Space X life support system.
Either way I can see Space X running a couple of suits that fit them up and sending their old Boeing suits back on the Boeing craft.
Sorry I didn’t scan down and see Dick Eagleson’s post about the same thing.
Sorry about that.