00:00And liftoff of Starliner and Atlas V, carrying two American heroes, drawing a line to the
00:21stars for all of us.
00:22Commander Butch Wilmer there, calling down to Mission Control.
00:44NASA has decided that Butch and Sonny will return with Crew 9 next February, and that
00:54Starliner will return uncrewed, and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily.
01:04I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data
01:12to make this decision.
01:15We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so
01:22that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access
01:30to the ISS.
01:33Space flight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine.
01:45And a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine.
01:54And so the decision to keep Butch and Sonny aboard the International Space Station and
02:00bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety.
02:09Our core value is safety, and it is our North Star.
02:16The bottom line relative to bringing Starliner back is there was just too much uncertainty
02:21in the prediction of the thrusters.
02:22If we had a model, if we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do for the
02:28undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence,
02:34I think we would have taken a different course of action.
02:37But when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for thruster failures with
02:40a crew on board and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit
02:46burn, which puts the vehicle on an entry, and then immediately maneuvering from that
02:51into a SEP sequence to separate the service module and crew module, it was just too much
02:56risk with the crew.
02:57And so we decided to pursue the uncrewed test flight.
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