Boeing Starliner Set For Uncrewed Return To Earth Friday

A good decision to send the astros home on a vehicle that doesn’t have outstanding and serious safety questions.

A much bigger though similar decision is coming regarding Artemis II, which intends to send 4 astros around the moon in 2025. The unmanned Atremis I mission demonstrated that the crew-capsule (Orion) heatshield did not perform as expected, taking significant damage.

NASA has kept on kicking the can down the road on that one so far. There is no backup option for that mission, they’ll either cross their fingers and go anyway, or delay the flight for years while the heatshield is redesigned - at which point they either cross their fingers with THAT one or spend billions on another test flight.