When Boeing Starliner Returned to Earth, It Had Two Empty Spacesuits Inside

An unfortunate metaphor.

Dirty Laundry

Boeing’s plagued Starliner spacecraft wasn’t entirely empty when it gently drifted back down to Earth over the New Mexico desert over the weekend. While NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ seats were unoccupied, their empty spacesuits were sent back down inside the spacecraft.

That’s because those suits won’t be of any help from this point forward. Last month, NASA announced that the two stranded astronauts wouldn’t be returning on board Boeing’s spacecraft due to nagging technical issues.

Instead, Wilmore and Williams will be returning on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft — a journey that will require SpaceX-specific spacesuits.

As it turns out, Boeing and SpaceX’s spacesuits aren’t compatible, a conscious decision by NASA, which tapped both companies to develop different systems to send astronauts to the International Space Station.

But with Starliner’s future seemingly on thin ice, there’s a chance the space agency may be stuck with just SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for the time being.

Space Ballast

Wilmore and Williams’ useless Starliner spacesuits were likely sent down to make more room on board the ISS. NASA didn’t specify that SpaceX and Boeing’s spacesuits had to be cross-compatible, so design differences in how the suits interface with the respective spacecraft’s hardware and software make them fundamentally incompatible.

Even if the pair were to be squeezed into a fully occupied Crew-8 SpaceX spacecraft — an emergency plan NASA has been preparing for — their Starliner suits wouldn’t have anywhere to plug into.

The spacesuits’ unceremonious return is an unfortunate yet fitting metaphor for how Boeing’s first crewed Starliner test flight has gone.

“While this may not have been how we originally envisioned the test flight concluding, we support NASA’s decision for Starliner and are proud of how our team and spacecraft performed,” Boeing executives wrote in a memo.

This weekend’s landing bookended a disastrous couple of months for the aerospace giant that have been filled with bad news and unfortunate revelations. Instead of celebrating the capsule’s successful landing, Boeing’s leadership was pointedly absent from a Johnson Space Center press briefing on Saturday.

Plenty of questions remain regarding Boeing’s commitment to get Starliner certified and ready for regular trips to the space station. NASA is adamant that Starliner will fly again, but given Boeing’s deafening silence on the matter, its contractor may feel differently.

More on Starliner: Boeing Execs Snub NASA at News Conference After Starliner Landing