Boeing Delays Starliner Flight a Week to April 2
Orbital flight test delayed from March 25
HOUSTON (BOEING PR) — Boeing continues to support NASA as it reviews flight readiness products and we prepare the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft ahead of the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) uncrewed mission to and from the International Space Station.
“We appreciate the significant work NASA is undertaking ahead of launch,” said John Vollmer, Starliner’s vice president and program manager at Boeing. “We’re fully engaged in the agency’s review process to ensure confidence in the spacecraft.”
With formal software tests completed, Boeing is continuing with flight preparations. We are ready to conduct a mission rehearsal, using flight hardware and final flight software, to ensure the readiness of the team and combined systems.
Hardware processing is also concluding. We recently moved the spacecraft into the Hazardous Processing Area in anticipation of propellant load. We continue to address final observations and have successfully replaced avionics units affected by a power surge during final checkouts. We continue to ensure product safety of our spacecraft and we are addressing any emerging issues in a timely manner.
NASA and Boeing teams in Houston are now contending with widespread power outages and other winter storm-related impacts in the region. Despite this, the team remains focused on the safety and quality of the spacecraft and a successful launch no earlier than April 2.
4 responses to “Boeing Delays Starliner Flight a Week to April 2”
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Nobody would have believed April 1. 🙂
I’m at the point where getting Dream Chaser in orbit is more important than Starliner. Time to get the crew team fired up, get her flying then cut Boeing loose.
You may be, but Boeing has so much pull in Congress and provides so many jobs for so many people, they’ll never lose the business.
A Crew version of Dream Chaser may yet appear, but if so, I suspect it will do so for reasons mostly or entirely other than transporting people to ISS. For that job alone, I don’t think there would be enough service life left in ISS to recoup the investment after a Crew Dream Chaser was ginned up.
There is also the matter of production limitations. SNC has outsourced a lot of Dream Chaser’s structure to LockMart and I don’t know how many shipsets LockMart can crank out in a year. Perhaps the ISS cargo contract will account for all the hulls LockMart can make?