The two astronauts of the Boeing Starliner knew to expect the unexpected when they lifted off on June 5 on the spacecraft's first manned mission.
I learned this back in March, when NASA received reporters at the agency Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston for two days. We used four Starliner simulators, spoke extensively with senior agency and Boeing leadership and spoke with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
The duo - professional astronauts and long-serving veterans International Space Station (ISS) missions - were both U.S. Navy test pilots when they started and knew how to build space programs ...