“I think we all knew that it was going to go longer than that.”

Yes Stranding

It’s been 75 days since NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the International Space Station. But while they were supposed to spend just eight days on board the orbital lab, technical difficulties plaguing their ride, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, have delayed their return journey indefinitely.

And while NASA has insisted that the pair aren’t “stranded,” it seems pretty clear that they are, by any normal understanding of the term.

Boeing officials, who have been adamant that Starliner could return the two at any point, are equally defensive about the spacecraft, which has already left a multibillion-dollar hole in both the company and NASA’s budget.

That’s not to mention months of bad press, piled on top of Boeing’s existing troubles with management and its global fleet of commercial jets.

Now, in an interview with the New York Times, Boeing Starliner program manager Mark Nappi says he’s not surprised that the spacecraft is stuck up there — and says he regrets not managing expectations up front.

“I think we all knew that it was going to go longer than that,” he said. “We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about how much longer, but I think it’s my regret that we didn’t just say ‘We’re going to stay up there until we get everything done that we want to go do.'”

Weighing Risks

NASA has yet to announce a plan of how to get Williams and Wilmore back to the surface. The agency is considering two options: either risk their return inside Starliner or — in a deeply embarrassing turn for Boeing — make space for their return on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft early next year.

“It’s getting harder with the consumables we’re using, and the ports we’re using, those types of things,” NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox admitted during a teleconference call last week. “We’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call.”

The stakes are high: as some experts have suggested, if Starliner’s hobbled propulsion system were to malfunction after undocking from the space station, it could spin out of control and even crash into the orbital lab.

We should expect word from NASA sometime this week. The agency has previously given itself until mid- to late August to come to a decision, so stay tuned.

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