VSaramba, failed again! Like the South American revolutionaries in Tintin, the leaders of Boeing can no longer bear the setbacks. For more than four years, the group has been trying to transport two astronauts to the International Space Station in orbit around the Earth.
The night of Monday May 6 to Tuesday May 7 was supposed to be good. Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams sat in the small Starliner capsule, buckled up and waited for the fateful moment. But two hours before takeoff, the countdown was stopped. A small noise was heard on the body of the second stage of the Atlas V rocket, responsible for sending the astronauts. Upon inspection, it was an oxygen valve that was vibrating. The two travelers returned to the waiting room. Sixty-three years after the first human incursions into space, space transport remains as artisanal as ever.
Investigation into the 787
For Boeing, which is already experiencing a series of disappointments with the quality of its commercial aircraft, the black streak continues. Especially since, on Monday, the federal air transport authority, the Federal Aviation Administration, launched an in-depth investigation into falsified inspection documents for its flagship plane, the 787. Now, it is its ancient Atlas rocket V, built with Lockheed Martin, which is not up to par. It took three dry attempts since 2019 for the Starliner to finally dock with the International Space Station. However, NASA had awarded it a contract worth 4.2 billion dollars (3.9 billion euros) to achieve this.
Supremely humiliating, its competitor SpaceX, which only arrived on the market in 2010 and had a budget almost half the size for the same task, managed to send its first men in 2020 and has since conducted nine manned flights.
Europeans cannot rejoice in this situation. They are also the victims of this new space age introduced by Elon Musk’s company. The Ariane rocket, too expensive and uncompetitive, is seeking salvation with Ariane-6, which should be launched at the end of June at the earliest. The space industry is becoming strategic again, but the ticket is still expensive and the flight times are unpredictable.