NASA’s Commercial Crew directorate has announced the results of the Readiness Review for the planned launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner flight test: they are “go” for launch at 10:34 PM EDT on May 6.

Jim Free’s Comments

Jim Free, NASA Associate Administrator, began the press conference by saying, “The first crewed flight of a new spacecraft is a absolutely critical milestone. The lives of our crew members Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore are at stake. We don’t take that lightly at all. The most important thing we can do is protect those two people as well as our crew currently on board the space station. It’s our collective job to ensure we can fly this Mission successfully and to do that it must be safe.”

Free continued, saying that he was satisfied that the Readiness Review was thorough and that Starliner, Atlas V and ISS were prepared properly for the test flight. “Safety has always been our primary core value at NASA,” he said, “And it’s our primary focus during this Readiness Review, all the reviews that have led up to it and the entire development process I can say with confidence that the teams have absolutely done their due diligence.”

Free concluded by summarizing the Review results. “There’s still a little bit of close out work to do, but we are on track for a launch at 10:34 Eastern Daylight time on Monday May 6th.”

Free On Starliner and Orion Shared Technology

Free made an interesting statement about the importance of the Starliner flight: some of the technology used in the Boeing capsule is also used in Orion, which is, of course, used in the Artemis program. “There are many elements of this Mission which have similarity to hardware that will fly on Orion. Parachutes, as an example, so this [the Starliner Crewed Flight Test is] important across our entire agency.”

Ken Bowersox Comments

“May 6th is not a magical date. We’ll launch when we’re ready and we’re looking forward to to when that occurs.”

Ken Bowersox

Ken Bowersox, an Associate Administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate made some comments later in the press conference intended to remind everyone that the planned May 6 launch date is a target date, and not one set in stone. Bowersox is a veteran of five spaceflights, and joined the agency in 1987.

“Butch reminded us how important it is to keep working thoroughly at a job all the way till you’re finished,” Bowersox said, “And Suni reminded us that launch dates aren’t magical dates. The important thing is to launch when we’re ready.”

“I can tell you at this review the team worked thoroughly through every bit of data that we had to look at as a management team, and I know that the teams that reviewed that data before it was brought to us looked at it even more closely, so when we polled today the team decided that we are ready to move forward to the Crew Flight Test.”

“Again, May 6th is not a magical date. We’ll launch when we’re ready and we’re looking forward to to when that occurs.”