Starliner: First manned flight of Boeing’s spacecraft in April 2024 at the earliest

The first manned flight of Boeing’s space shuttle Starliner will now take place next spring at the earliest and then only if the launch vehicle is ready and there is space at the International Space Station. Boeing and the US space agency NASA announced this on Monday, and it is the latest in a series of delays. Although progress is being made in resolving the recently identified problems, the work is still very time-consuming. Boeing therefore assumes that the space shuttle will be ready for launch in March, and there will be space on the ISS from April. Only then could the flight ideally start.

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More delays

Actually, the Starliner was supposed to fly into space for the first time with people on board on July 21, NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams are ready for that. A few weeks before this date, the US aviation group had postponed the start again because problems had been discovered and the specified safety margin could no longer be maintained. It had been recognized that the connections of the three parachutes for the landing were weaker than assumed and, in the worst case, they could tear. It was also discovered that under certain conditions, wiring protection could catch fire. Boeing is making impressive progress in solving these problems.

Boeing’s Starliner, like its competitor SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, is the result of NASA’s efforts to outsource manned spaceflight to the free economy. For a long time, both manufacturers were largely on par in the development of their space capsules. Boeing’s spaceship completed the unmanned maiden flight, which did not entirely fail but was also unsuccessful, at the end of December 2019. Since then, however, the crisis company has lost touch. The second start of the Starliner, which had become necessary, was delayed more and more and only succeeded last year. Since then, the first manned flight has been prepared. Meanwhile, SpaceX has been doing regular flights for NASA since the end of 2020 and has already brought 26 people to the ISS.

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