NASA: Crew Coming Back On SpaceX Ship. Boeing No-Show At Presser But Insists Crew Could Still Fly.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson's Announcement NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew nine next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well boing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at if it saf safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and to boing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this How Can NASA Ever Trust Boeing Again? decision you know I'll start I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess kind well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now we the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back uncrewed it needs to land at the white sand uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the NASA and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to executed orbit burn it has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did and Mark uh trust is a two-way street and it's built uh upon a relationship and I think uh as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think you should understand the the trust is two When Did Nasa Finally Make The Decision? ways so we're going to sit down with Boeing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing uh did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the gation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we a avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer pop at Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propellant so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dogghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500 lb Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the Adent thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with AET um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to find mitigation for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the Whit s results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the other uh and I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner uh with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I How Did Boeing Vote? What Percentage? think um so um the the uh the polling uh was unanimous amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or uncrewed um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voice from the technical authorities folks that are asked not to think about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situation of of loss and feeling like you lost something and we haven't in the ultimate long-term view we have not lost anything because Boeing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission you've worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done uh in human space plan in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have a crew eight uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew 9 launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do Will NASA Ever Launch A Crewed Starliner Mission In The Future? 100% uh because of what this uh panel has already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing of finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and uh Boeing's willingness to carry through on this How Much Did NASA’s Lack Of Safety Culture During Challenger And Columbia Play Into The Decision? program well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Colombia where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics uh going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah in Morton thol were begging their management not to launch because of the cold weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Colombia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they' inspect the Orbiter and they as a matter of fact uh my commander Hoot Gibson said it he he'd look at subsequent flights and he would uh look like that a shotgun had been shot on the delicate silicon Miles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of What About Butch And Suni Missing So Much? All The Holidays, The New Year? that I I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I talked about with but andan that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the National Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in the arena obviously it's a little different it's challenging um you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to pave the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing fine what do you say to their families I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the resilience to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go forward and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for the what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore Why Does NASA Let Boeing Continue To “Rip Off” The Tax Payers And Keep Getting Rewarded space to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and development on in a very unforgiving environment space that is very hard and is Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the companies Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fixed price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much additional Boeing has had to to spend so uh my answer you're you're posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this program is working like it should now if your question pretends something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting Will Boeing Be Required To Complete A Full Crew Mission Before NASA Will Certify Starliner? at uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test Red inance Review was that we would get in into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we we we have not you know made a total determination yet of what objectives are um in front of us or or what we've fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for 2 and A2 months which we didn't intend so we've got a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point so yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the data and be driven by that in our next decision uh but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize is we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path Can You Tell Us The Actual Yay And Nay Votes? well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we pulled um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the nasan engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at uh NASA headquarters the ISS program the commercial crew program the engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Insurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody I missed on that list I think you got just about everybody I think I get everybody and that was and that was again uh everybody concurred with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here Is Starliner Considered A Failure Since Its Coming Back UnCrewed? by Steve stressed on previous press conferences we we'll look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh I'd save and pose to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back (Dumbest Question Of The Day) Why Did you choose Crew Dragon To Rescue Butch And Suni? I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting Butch and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was due to the uncertainties due to the inability to predict with certainty that Thruster performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we started looking at various options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best option was to uh configure the crew9 vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats as SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew 9 and then we really wanted to give the crew you know a suited return like we always have in US space flights so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up two empty seats have bu and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew 9 that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us I'll see if Dana has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing that this was a test flight we made the decision a couple years ago to uh train and keep but and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do spacewalks robotics some of the research so um we had them trained they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon spacecraft is highly automated um as you all know we've used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew n and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to develop um not just the capability to go back and forth to space station but a generic capability to go back and forth to low earth orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment uh and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to Boeing Keeps losing Money. What About Dream Chaser? (My First Typo In The Video Too) develop on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point uh on NASA's part uh in the question that you pose which is basically that they've spent X will they spend y to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about Sierra space um Sierra's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo Mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Russia Says It Won't Ride On Starliner Until It's Proven Safe. What Are You Doing To Calm Russia's Nerves? Dragon sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of with what to do with Starliner crude or un cruded and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintained that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do with Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is the the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight Test 2 have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um see degradation in fact you What Are The Risks Of An UnCrewed Vehicle During De-Orbit Burn? know one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the debber burn was successful on oft uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the maneuver is required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off in the dobit burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made to data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence has minimized the changes required on Mission data loads uh they were going to take the actual software that we plan to use and and put it through its Paces in um in the uh facility that's a hardware software integration facility that Boeing has the team has been doing um practice runs uh in a training facility when I say the team the ground team has been doing runs just to make sure they understand the differences between the uncrewed and uncrewed and and really I think it's um I would say a unconnecting muscle memory almost if you've been training for two years to do things a certain way with the flight control team on the ground with the crew on board where you can make calls to the crew to do certain actions they now have to take those actions and so they've been doing those practices and there's an integrated simulation next week on Wednesday with the ISS flight control team the undock sequence is always a an orchestrated a series of events between how ISS gets configured uh how we depress the interface between Starliner and the ISS how we configure the the guidance navigation control for the space station and the software and so they're going to do that integrated practice next Wednesday and we'll take our time if that goes well you know we'll we'll pick an undock dat and if it doesn't we need more simulations we'll we'll go ahead and pivot we've laid out a schedule that allows us the opportunity to to have some flexibility in Starliner on do and that's been very important for Dana and What Official Data Convinced You A Crewed ReEntry Was Just Too Dangerous? I um if you look at it we we knew going in that the um crude flight test uh was probably a little higher risk than a uh typical uh rotation with uh with dragon uh where we've flown multiple flights um that's why we called it a flight test right um we had the issues coming uphill and and that raised our risk level and our uncertainty and how much more risk there was um anytime you change from your nominal plan that you've spent uh years developing you increase risk on the other side and the type of risks I'm talking about are uh that um uh something that we've uh analyzed for contingency return with the crew uh on the on the mid deck of the dragon or um the the um necessity of sending up new suits where the crews weren't able ble to try out the the pressure suits on the ground so that they would have suits on the dragon uh those types of things raise your your risk a little bit on that side and so now both of your risk levels have gone up uh and you knew going in that one was a little bit higher and you've got uncertainty on just where it fits so so you have to really dig in to understand um what the the Baseline risk change is and that's what the team has been working so hard this last couple of Mons months um for me one of the really important factors is that we just don't know how much we can use the thrusters on the way back home before we encounter a problem because of the heating effects that happened on the way uphill but Steve can tell you a lot more yeah thanks Ken yeah I'll just mention a couple things uh one we had uh some Thruster experts come in and and talk to us a few weeks ago and and we are clearly operating this Thruster at a higher temperature at times than it was designed for I think that was a factor that as we started to look at the data a little bit more carefully um we're operating the Thruster outside of where it should be operated in um understanding could we have could a Thruster just fail off gracefully or could there be another failure mode that is Not So Graceful I think that was an important factor as we talked about the two differences um I mentioned the starboard uh dogghouse and for some reason the heating is higher in that starboard doghouse that we we do not understand when an omac Thruster fires the other thrusters get heated at a much higher rate than we expected um we don't we don't have a Clos Loop model to predict the performance we we tried we worked very hard of trying to Anchor a model based on what we saw at wh Sands and then knowing what you had in the uphill phase knowing that you have a model that can replicate what we saw can you didn't predict the downhill we really just couldn't get there uh over the last number of weeks um also how close we were to a to a cliff in other words we've damaged the Teflon on some thrusters so when we start to fire them again will that damage repeat uh or get back to a point where now the thrusters are at the levels we saw uh on the on the docking day very quickly and then really it's the consequences of failure when we started thinking about um the kind of failures we might get uh we had those on docking day and those were in a even though we were 200 M from station it's a very benign environment this sequence when the deit burn has to execute and then you get into the sub sequence it's a very rapid sequence from the completion of the burn to then getting into the separation a number of minutes later and there's no real time to reconfigure so when we laid it all out that's where the propon of of the risk was to not put a crew on the What’s The Longest Butch And Suni Can Stay At The ISS? vehicle see for the first first part of your question um just at a high level from a a programmatic standpoint we protect for about four months of what we call consumables reserves so food water um different kinds of consumables we have on board those are those are the two biggies um four months for four crew is what we protect for so we always stay above that amount we do that intentionally so that if we had a problem with the delivery a cargo flight that didn't make it for example we'd have margin um so we always have a little more than than what we need for some period of time it's not Limitless in this particular case we did have a resupply mission in fact just a few weeks ago the North grman 21 flight came up so we had our eye on that flight and so once we realized the team was working through issues and we were likely to have Butch and sunny on board we changed that flight's manifest so we added more supplies to keep us above that Reserve um level we've also got the SpaceX 31 cargo flight coming up around the corner so we've got extra supplies on that and so we've been able to modify and adjust um our cargo Mission supplies to accommodate uh the extra the extra Mals were feeding no one has had to go on a diet or calorie restrictions um so we haven't had any limitations there in terms of duration on board you know you ask an interesting question one of the things as an agency that's really important for us is to understand the impacts of long duration space flight on the crew and so so far our experience experience base and that of um The cosmina Experience base is up to about 12 months uh give or take and so we understand very well uh performance implications and what it looks like for operations and in crew Health there so you're asking the question about how long is too long I don't think we as an agency know the answer to that we can tell you that we understand what 12 months does we're interested in that from Moon to Mars and those are some of our research objectives and what we're trying to learn in the microgravity and but no specific concerns with 8 months or or even up to a year and so far data suggests that as long as we've got the right mitigations on board exercise you know the crew spends about two and a half hours a day with cardio and and weightlifting and as long as we can keep them um in shape with rigorous routines Etc uh we've done a pretty good job keeping the crews Health up with long duration stay Why Didnt You Fix Starliner After Its First Failed UnCrewed Mission? yeah I'll take the question I yeah I think if we look back at of2 now with this newer lens of what we learned at Whit Sands uh C certainly could we have explored of2 in a little more detail either uh leading to some redesign of the dogghouse to get the thermal environment lower or operate the thrusters differently I think it's it's easy to do that in hindsight you know if we went back and and thought about the the whole integrated problem a little bit more uh could we have done some kind of testing what what I would say is it's it's very difficult to test uh the dog housee environment on the ground you've got thrusters that fire in multiple directions and it's very hard on the ground to have a a test facility a vacuum chamber that accommodates Thruster firings in multiple directions so and then get the thermal right uh in that dogghouse and keep the thermal up so there was no easy way to do that test on the ground we thought obviously we had done enough analysis to show that the thrusters would be within the the temperatures that they were qualified for clearly there was some misses back in qualification we're going to go through that data in more detail uh a postf flight and then figure out what we can do to go fix them and then also look at our process I would say we're going to look at the certification process I know Boeing's looking at their process as well on how they got here we're doing the same thing on the NASA side What Are The Differences Between Crewed And UnCrewed UnDocking? yeah I can answer the question so normally we would back away from the space station um essentially go uh out in front and then above the space station and then eventually end up below the space station and then on a trajectory that that goes beneath and then out in front of the space station that was our normal normal plan to undock um uh heading into the flight before the flight now what we're going to do is execute a a small number the undocking itself with the NASA docking system will be exactly the same we'll use the same uh techniques the software will command undocking will drive a sequence of hooks they'll open up after we've uh depressurized that area in between uh the vehicles and then we'll we'll undock and there's some Springs that push the vehicle away um what we'll do is we'll go through a a SE sequence that puts us on I would say What's called a a pag grade trajectory and so we'll end up going essentially phasing out behind the space station to a safe distance and then we'll get away from the space station execute the de at burn so we've used that kind of Step sequence in the past and other vehicles uh We've tested this step sequence it is already in the software it's it's one of the breakout sequences that are already in the software and so what we'll do is just go command that sequence early uh and use that to get away more quickly um and so it's it's it's pretty simple pretty elegant it was a great idea by the Boeing team Was White Sands The Turning Point? so let me start with the first question I think um the Steve was talking about how we process the data I was talking about being encouraged by the fact that we had new data anytime you have new data it means that you can analyze it and find out that that things are um um proceeding uh well and and you can converge the team with that new data what Steve found was it may be a little bit different and that's why it probably sounded different um how we reacted yeah I would say at at Whit hands we we were excited and that was really a turning point in that we were able to replicate uh the loss of thrust uh we simulated the the uphill profile in other words how the thrusters fired from the launch sequence into on orbit all the way to docking we did two of those uphill sequences and then we did a number of downhills and so we were encouraged when we saw that we could actually see thrust degradation in those downhill runs what then was new is once we took the Thruster apart and we looked at the the valve on the oxide oxidizer side we saw this swelling um on the Teflon seat which uh when we talked to the the vendor ajet rodine they had never seen this before in this particular Thruster and so I think that's where there was a change in the risk posture initially we were some excited by replicating the damage but or the degradation and the thrust but then when we looked a little more closely we saw this swelling on the Teflon and then that gave us a whole new uh idea of the physics involved in the failure mode and then that led us to study that failure mode a lot more in the last few weeks um relative to the four-person Starliner crew uh you know we haven't really had those discussions yet we need to get the vehicle back we need to work through our our sequence of events on what changes we'll make both for the helium leaks and the thrusters and then we'll make a decision on the next flight it's a little premature to discuss (BEST QUESTION) Since SpaceX Is So Good At This And Boeing Is So BAD, Why Do You Keep Boeing Around? that for the obvious reason that number one we need two spacecraft to uh have the redundancy in case one is not available to take crew to and from the International Space Station number two this is according to a arms length contract and a contract that is a fixed price contract and number three Boeing has been a great partner for NASA over the years as a matter of fact uh the the big uh space launch system the SLS rocket is overall managed by Boeing and there has been a long history with Boeing uh the fourth reason is that they were the successful bidder along with um uh SpaceX because we had wanted to so for all those reasons that's why ma NASA does business with Boeing so I'd also like to add Boeing operates the space station for us as well as the prime contractor for space station and that's in its 25th year so um we have a a long and storied history with them there also yeah Boeing's been a great partner with us on space station and and and I think the key word is partner a lot of people want to focus on the contractual relationship where we're buying something from a company this isn't completely like that right I mean we have a contract with Boeing but it's to work together to develop this capability for our country um and and and we've had two good partners Boeing and SpaceX when it comes to commercial crew and when they have problems we don't just uh throw rocks at them or tell them that we don't like them we work with them to get through those Why Didn’t Boeing Show UP To Their Own Press Conference, AGAIN? problems well I'll take the first part and it looks like Jim's getting ready to take the second part um but uh the reason Boeing's not here is is is it was a NASA decision today crude un crude that was the focus of this review and so we thought it was reasonable to have just NASA on this panel Jim anything you want to add I I I think that's correct Ken and then I'd add I think Ken and Steve have characterized that Boeing was part of the decision process they've characterized what Boeing's position uh was so uh that and and we're here to communicate the overall NASA Did Politics Play A Role In The Decision? position Bill if anyone knows you know that NASA is not only bipartisan it is nonpartisan uh and that's the way we've tried to operate uh this agency as long as I've been here uh I can tell you unequivocally from a personal standpoint uh that politics has not played any part in this decision what I said earlier uh about Challenger in Colombia and the lessons learned and what we've tried to change in a culture in order that safety is our nor North Star uh is what we are trying to do uh in a very hostile environment in which you if you make a mistake it's very unforgiving so I can tell you unequivocably uh I have seen some speculation in the press that because we are in an election season that decisions may have been made with regard to uh this announced today with regard to an election AB absolutely has nothing to do with it and as long as I'm around here it's not going to