It is said that a valve problem on the rocket caused Boeing to cancel the first launch of an astronaut. When the countdown stopped, two hours before they were supposed to take off, two NASA test pilots were still in Boeing’s Starliner Capsule.
Eng. Dillon Rice of the United Launch Alliance said that the problem was with an oxygen release valve on top of the rocket. Boeing didn’t say when they would try to launch the rocket again on a different date or time. Their goal is to send NASA test pilots to the International Space Station for a week-long stay. This launch had been pushed back for years because of problems with the capsule.
Rice emphasized how careful they were by saying, “In this situation, if we see any data signature that isn’t something we’ve seen before, then we are just not willing to take any chances with what is our most valuable payload.”
Since the end of the shuttle program about ten years ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to take humans to and from the space station.
SpaceX has been traveling through space for a few years, but Boeing’s test trips have been pushed back or redone several times. Starliner’s first test flight without a crew took place five years ago. The shuttle didn’t go in the right way, though, so it never got to the space station.
After that, Boeing had to do more test flights without a crew before they could move on to tests with a crew. It took that long for the company to fix problems with the capsule. They were ready to fly back into space, but this problem with the valve caused another delay.
