'We almost did have a really terrible day.' NASA now says Boeing's 1st Starliner astronaut flight wa

[Timber Rattler]

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/we-almost-did-have-a-really-terrible-day-nasa-now-says-boeings-1st-starliner-astronaut-flight-was-a-type-a-mishap

The first astronaut mission of Boeing's Starliner taxi was a bumpier ride than NASA wanted to admit at the time.

The agency announced today (Feb. 19) that it has reclassified Starliner's Crew Flight Test (CFT) as a "Type A mishap" — the most serious kind, in the same category as the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia tragedies.

"This was a really challenging event in our recent history," NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said during a press conference today, which highlighted the findings of a report into CFT and its issues. "We almost did have a really terrible day."

(snip)

Starliner landed safely, but its departure was not entirely smooth. The spacecraft experienced "an unexpected crew module propulsion failure," Isaacman said, and lacked "fault tolerance" in its thrusters throughout the reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

Williams and Wilmore, meanwhile, stayed aboard the ISS. They came home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in March 2025, having spent about nine months in space instead of the originally planned 10 days. Both have since retired from the agency.

EXCERPT

The actual report: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/nasa-report-with-redactions-021926.pdf

The comments on the original article are good.  I really like this one:

Jared Isaacman needs to order an immediate stand down and have every NASA engineer read Richard Feynman’s Appendix F to the Challenger Commission Report. Feynman warned about this!

Feynman's Appendix F: https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/v2appf.htm

Flashback:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raMmRKGkGD4

[Timber Rattler]

The bottom line is that five of the capsule's five thrusters catastrophically failed. Turns out that the fuel chemicals and oxidizers were incompatible with the seals, causing them to fail and leak. Consequently, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were almost stranded in space and killed.