So Starliner finally docked with the ISS today, a little after 12:30pm Eastern, about an hour later than it was supposed to. I had NASA TV up in a background tab most of the morning while I was supposed to be doing actual work, which, if youve read this blog for more than about six months, you know is a pretty normal Thursday for me.
Quick recap for anyone who hasnt been following: Boeing launched its CST-100 Starliner capsule yesterday morning from Cape Canaveral with two actual humans on board, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. This is the first time Starliner has flown with a crew. It is also, and I say this with real affection for the people who built the thing, absurdly late. This program was supposed to be ferrying astronauts to the station years ago, back when it was still racing Dragon for the job. Dragon won that race a long time ago and has been flying people routinely since 2020. Starliner is just now getting its first crewed test flight in, after an uncrewed demo that didnt go great and a couple of scrubbed launch attempts this spring alone.
And even this flight wasnt clean. There was already a known helium leak in the service module going into launch, one NASA and Boeing decided was small enough to fly with (theyd been tracking it for a bit and concluded the risk was acceptable, which is one of those sentences that sounds fine until you think about it for more than five seconds). Then during the final approach to the station this morning, several of the capsules reaction control thrusters started acting up and had to be worked through before the docking could happen, which is why it slipped by about an hour. Wilmore ended up flying some of the approach manually to test things out, which honestly sounds like exactly the kind of stress test nobody wants happening for real on a crewed test flight, but here we are.
They docked fine in the end. Hatch opened, Wilmore and Williams floated into the station, hugs all around with the current crew, the whole ceremonial bit. Everyone's fine. I dont want to make this sound more dramatic than it was, because as of right now it's a genuine success story, first crewed Starliner flight, first crewed docking, big deal for Boeing after a rough few years of headlines that had nothing to do with spacecraft. But watching the live commentary try to keep the tone relentlessly upbeat while thrusters were dropping out in real time was a specific kind of uncomfortable I dont think I'd fully braced for.
Heres my actual opinion, since apparently I have to have one: I think this mission is a genuinely big milestone and I also think the coverage of it has been weirdly muted compared to how much attention it deserves, mostly because it's sharing headline space with SpaceX doing SpaceX things this week too. Everyone's phone is more interested in rockets that go boom or dont anymore, and a capsule doing its job competently, if a little late and a little leaky, just doesnt clip as well. Which is a shame, because "two people flew to space on a new vehicle for the first time" used to be the whole news cycle by itself. I remember when this blog was young, over a decade ago now, and a crewed launch was an actual event, appointment viewing, the kind of thing you told people about at lunch the next day. Now it's one docking recap buried under a dozen unrelated stories.
Anyway. Wilmore and Williams are staying on station for about a week or so before Starliner undocks and comes home, which will be its own nervy moment given the thruster stuff today. I'll be watching that one too, probably from the same background tab, probably while pretending to do something else. If youre the type who likes rewatching this stuff, NASA usually reposts the docking footage a few hours after the fact, worth a look if you missed the live version. The station arm operations and hatch opening are honestly kind of soothing to watch, in a way I cant fully explain and wont try to today.