The Boeing Starliner has been, technically, One bit belong to One chaoticIts development is hindered by Boeing’s greedand now the spacecraft is stuck on the International Space Station, unable to take its astronauts home. The ship is now scheduled to undock and return home this weekend, but a new problem has arisen since that announcement: Starliner is plagued by unexplained noises.
Ars Engineering There is audio recorded by astronaut Butch Wilmore aboard Starliner, in which a repetitive “ping” can be clearly heard coming from the module’s speakers. Neither Wilmore nor the ground crew have been able to explain the noise:
Wilmore, who appeared to be floating on the Starliner, then raised his microphone to a speaker inside the Starliner. Immediately afterward, there was a rather distinctive audible ping. “Okay Butch, it’s coming through,” mission control radioed to Wilmore. “It’s like a pulse, almost like a sonar ping.”
“I’m going to do it one more time, and I’m going to let you guys scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore replied. The strange sonar-like noise then repeated. “Okay, your turn. Call us if you figure it out.”
So far, noise doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it’s just another issue in a long list of problems facing Starliner. Somehow, a company run by Elon Musk is our best chance at actually making space travel feasible right now. Damn it, Boeing.
You could say we are actually living in the future, because conversations like this sound so futuristic. Exactly It’s like the calls you get when a friend buys a crappy car against your advice and starts asking you for help with every problem. They’ll call you, stick a speaker up to the engine, play you some horrible noises, and ask you to diagnose it right there—only by 2024, we might have space canisters.
