You might want to sit down for this, unless it is a window seat on a Boeing aeroplane. New Delhi: The main question here is about the culture of engineering at Boeing, and if the company is even oriented towards safety after the nightmare that Muilenburg left the company in. This lack of trust in Boeing to get even the basics right is bleeding over to the Boeing Starliner mission, in a totally different domain, where the general public at least trusts a little bit in NASA to handhold this wayward private company through the rigorous testing requirements of NASA, but here, NASA themselves do not have a great track record, especially when it comes to private suppliers.
There is no miscommunication or lack of transparency, and that is not what Boeing needs to do better. Boeing needs to commit better, repair better, maintain much better, regain trust, and make absolutely sure anything that comes out with your branding on it, actually works. That is not the case this time, again.
When the global media pulls NASA and Boeing Down for not sticking to their original mission plan, it is a justified question, even though NASA and Boeing triple underlined the fact that this was supposed to be a minimum 8 day mission that has been extended indefinitely. Space missions are meant to be precisely planned, this is the bare minimum expectation for space travel. It’s great that more science was done, but stay focused on the Starliner, and the engineering culture at Boeing.
We, the entire plan.