NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore held himself accountable when discussing the reasons for the Boeing Starliner’s failure in crew flight tests last year.
He and his crew member Suni Williams flew to the International Space Station last June for what appears to be as short as an eight-day stay. However, the spacecraft failed to leak thrusters and helium, which ultimately led to NASA’s decision to send the spacecraft home without crew. The pair then stayed at a station that had been flying home for over nine months on a SpaceX Crew 9 mission earlier this month.
“As the spaceship commander, I had a question that I should have asked, and I didn’t do that at the time,” Wilmore said at a press conference on Monday at his first major media event since his return. “I didn’t know I needed it. And maybe you can call wisdom after that, but I’m starting to point with my fingers and I’m blaming me.”
He said the answers to some of these questions didn’t specify what they were, but they might have delayed the launch and avoided what became the national spotlight, but he said Boeing and NASA also share the blame.
“We’re all responsible. We all own this,” he said. “You can’t do this business without trust. You have to have the ultimate trust. For someone to move forward, these different organizations say, ‘Hey, I can get negligent with part of that problem.’ -It goes a long way to maintain trust. ”
But Wilmore said he would fly on the Starliner again.
“Yes, we’re going to fix it, we’re going to make it work, we’re going to make it work,” he said. “Boeing is completely committed. NASA is completely committed. With that, I’m on a heartbeat.”
Williams agreed.
“Spaceships are really capable. As Butch mentioned, there are a few things that need to be fixed and people are actively working on it, but it’s a great spacecraft and there are a lot of capabilities that other spacecraft don’t have,” she said.
Wilmore said he and Williams are scheduled to meet with Boeing’s leadership this week.
“We did this program for six years before launching,” Wilmore said. “We’ve spoken to everyone in a chain of orders, but there’s insight that others don’t have. We want to share as much as possible.”
Wilmore still gushs out about Starliner’s abilities compared to the Dragons of the Soyuz and SpaceX crew.
“Starliner has the most abilities when you think about its ability to pilot automatically,” he said. “I mean, before we started, I jokingly said that we could literally do a barrel roll at the top of the space station.
He hopes Boeing and NASA will enable modifications, perform integration tests and qualify the spacecraft.
“If we can grasp some of the very important major issues with thrusters and helium systems, the Starliner is ready,” he said. “It doesn’t happen overnight, but it has to happen.”
The duo was joined by NASA astronauts and crew nine commander Nick Hague, who flew home earlier this month.
The Hague put a heavy emphasis on the challenges politics faces when they veil the mission, as happened in the allegations made by President Trump and Elon Musk that Starliner astronauts were left at the station for political reasons by the Biden administration.
“Politics… when we’re about to go down an operational decision, they don’t make up for it there,” The Hague said. “Therefore, as the commander of Crew 9, who was responsible for bringing this crew back to safety and safety, I can say that I have set up for that peculiar purpose all this time.”
Original issue: March 31, 2025, 3:09pm EDT
