When a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January, leaving a huge hole in the side of the plane. The main question after the plane landed safely, of course, was how the hell could something like this happen? Long story short, turns out Boeing delivered the plane to Alaska Airlines without four bolts that keep the plug in place. But at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing last week, Boeing admitted they still don't know who removed the plug for repairs in the first place or when it was reinstalled, minus those crucial bolts. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy was none too pleased.

What happened on the in between? We don't know. That's a problem.

Factory employees also told the NTSB about a chaotic company atmosphere where speed was prioritized over safety. One said, quote, the planes come in jacked up every day. Boeing continues to say it's making improvements to quality control protocols going forward. But the company's problems are not limited to 30,000ft.

New today, NASA and Boeing admit they still don't have a clear return date for those two astronauts that got up there on the Starliner. They're not technically stuck up there, but it sure seems like they might be stuck up there...

As we post this, two astronauts who went up to the International Space Station on a Boeing spaceship remain up there more than seven weeks after they were supposed to return home. And we learned on Wednesday they might have to extend their stay until 2025. My guest is CNN space and defense correspondent Kristin Fisher. She's going to tell us why. Nobody can seem to agree on a plan to get them down. And what the whole episode tells us about the future of private space travel. From CNN, this is One Thing. I'm David Rind.

So, Kristen, I brought you in here for a truly crazy story. But I want to start, like, at the beginning. How did we get to this point?

So it all starts in 2014, when NASA decides to start a commercial crew program, a first of its kind in which NASA, for the first time, was not going to be responsible for ferrying its own astronauts back and forth from the International Space Station. Instead, it wanted to focus on bigger missions, like going to the Moon or Mars. So with the Commercial Crew program, they decided to outsource the ferrying of astronauts to and from the International Space Station, or I.S.S.. I'm going to abbreviate it now. Yeah, and they doled out two contracts in 2014 to Boeing and SpaceX. At the time, almost all the astronauts and everybody at NASA thought that Boeing would be the first to fly because they were, you know, a legacy contractor with NASA.

We've done this kind of thing before, more or less.

Yeah, with, you know, the shuttle and other projects. Nobody thought that SpaceX would be the one to beat Boeing. But lo and behold, in 2020, SpaceX became the first commercial crew, partner to fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. And since then, they have flown, you know, multiple crewed missions to and from the International Space Station and private astronauts as well. But Boeing was dealing with so many issues at the time. They had technical issues. They had financial issues years behind schedule. Finally, you get to the moment. In 2024, after years of delays and two uncrewed test flights, meaning there's no astronauts on board, you get to June of 2024. And, they did deal with some helium leaks on the launch pad. There were some scrubs, but finally.

Starliner. Godspeed, Butch and Suni.

You had the day where, after all this time, ten nine, you had Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the two veteran NASA astronauts finally launch aboard, Boeing's Starliner up to the International Space Station.

And liftoff of Starliner and Atlas five carrying two American heroes. drawing a line to the stars for all of us.

But very shortly after lifting off, the Starliner spacecraft started to run into some issues. First, there were a string of helium leaks, helium being the fuel that's used on the spacecraft to propel it. And then the other issue were some thrusters misfiring, and thrusters are essentially very small rocket motors that are used to sort of fine tune the spacecraft's direction and orientation. These are absolutely critical for, some very dynamic maneuvers, things like docking with the International Space Station or reentering the Earth's atmosphere.

While its CEO was answering tough questions on Capitol Hill yesterday, its engineers were grappling with issues dealing with their Starliner spacecraft.

And so very early on, we knew that there were issues. But Boeing and NASA, said that they felt confident that these were issues that they'd be able to work through. The two astronauts, Butch and Sunny, had flown the spacecraft manually, and they said they felt like it was performing well. They felt confident that they'd be able to return to Earth on Starliner at some point.

Just minutes ago, Starliner officials said they haven't yet figured out a permanent fix for those issues.

The astronauts have been in space now for 50 days on a mission that was supposed to last only a week.

We don't have a major announcement today relative to, to a return date.

So this was only supposed to be an eight day mission. And, you know, every bit of time that would increase, we'd get these, you know, weekly updates, sometimes longer from NASA and Boeing. And every time we would learn that there were, you know, either more concerns about what they were seeing or there was a need to do more testing.

NASA always has contingency options. We know a little bit of what those are, and we haven't worked on them, a whole bunch.

But so at some point they decided, hey, we are going to try to recreate the issues that these thrusters are having up in space, down on the ground. And so they started doing they started testing these thrusters. NASA and Boeing out in, White Sands, New Mexico. And they were able to replicate some of the conditions that were happening up at the International Space Station. And they are hopeful that they have found the root cause. But in the background, you know, when reporters would ask the question of NASA and Boeing, you know, are these astronauts, do you think that these astronauts are still going to be able to get back to Earth on Starliner? Boeing and NASA would say it's already cleared for them to come back in an emergency situation. We we just need to make sure that they can come back under normal circumstances.

So they're saying like, if worse comes to worse, they could hop in there, but they're not ready to just put them in. Exactly. That seems worrying to me.

Exactly.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today for a status update on the International Space Station and Commercial crew programs. I'm Leah Cheshire.

And so now what we learned at this most recent press conference on Wednesday was, and this is the first time NASA is publicly saying this is that there is deep internal divisions within NASA. There is an ongoing debate about whether or not Starliner is indeed safe to take these astronauts home.

People with various levels of experience, look at uncertainty differently. And so the real disagreements are how much uncertainty they view in the data and how much risk level they view, relative to Starliner. And now we.

And, you know, essentially, the crux of the issue is these thrusters are not performing properly. And just to kind of give you a worst case scenario of what we're talking about, these thrusters are needed at the critical moment of the deorbit burn right before reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. When the spacecraft returns to Earth, it has a heat shield, but the heat shield is only on one side of the spacecraft. That heat shield needs to be facing in the direction.

of the heat.

Earth. Exactly. If it's positioned the wrong way, that heat shield will not protect the astronauts, and the spacecraft could burn up. And that's what some people at NASA are so worried about.

And so we have to compare all those risks. And we'll weigh all that as we make our final decision.

Now, Boeing has said they think it's fine, but these are NASA astronauts. And it is ultimately the NASA administrator, Bill Nelson's call as to whether or not those astronauts are going to go home on Starliner.

And so if it's not Starliner. Are there other options to get them off the space station?

'So this is NASA. There's always contingency plans, right? But NASA has really been sort of downplaying these contingency options and contingency planning, saying that, you know, for the most part, they're fully focused on these astronauts returning on Starliner. But for the first time, again, at this press conference on Wednesday, NASA officials really detailed what the contingency plan is. And it is using Boeing's prime competitor, Space-X, putting these astronauts on a SpaceX Dragon capsule and getting them home that way. But here's the catch. In order to have enough seats on a Dragon capsule for these two astronauts, you would have to use the next spacecraft, the next Dragon spacecraft that's going up to the International Space Station. That was supposed to be crew nine launching right about now in mid-August. NASA just announced they've pushed that back until mid September to provide them maximum operational flexibility. And what that means is they're trying to buy themselves time to see if they need to eliminate two crew members from crew nine, so that you have two empty seats, so that that dragon could then bring Butch and Suni home. And if that's the case, if that happens, that means that Butch and Sunny will not be returning to Earth until February of 2025. So that 8 day...

February 2025, it was supposed to be eight.

Days. That eight day mission would then turn into an eight month mission. Can you imagine?

Good God. I mean, that's so crazy. So what have Butch and Suni been doing all this time while they're up there?

Station, this is Chelsea Biot with NASA communications. How do you hear me?

Chelsea, we have you loud and clear. How about us?

So they say they've been having a great time. They're getting these bonus days in space. You know, there's a lot of work to do up to the International Space Station. Scientific experiments.

I got to do some gene sequencing. I think you got to do some other science experiments as well with a moon microscope. That was 3D printed. So we've been thoroughly busy up here. Integrated...

But they don't have their toiletries. Butch and Suni had, you know, they had their personal items inside the Starliner capsule, including two suitcases that had their toiletries. Well, at the last minute, there was an issue with a pump that recycled the astronauts urine and turned it into water up at the International Space Station. And there was literally bags of urine, bags of astronaut urine just stacking up at the International Space Station. So at the last minute, NASA decided to take Butch and Sunny's two suitcases out of the capsule, which contained their toiletries, and put this replacement pump inside instead. So what was supposed to be an eight day mission obviously has turned into, you know, 60 plus days, and, Butch and Sunny don't have, a lot of the stuff that they, intended to initially fill up with, although there are replacement soaps and, you know, shampoos up at the International Space Station.

Like I said, we've practice a lot. So I have a feeling I have a real good feeling in my heart that, the spacecraft will bring us home. No problem...

Said, so they're good on supplies. It's just the mental piece, right? And, I mean, these are astronauts. They trained for this sort of thing, but it is a big difference going from eight days to eight months.

We are very close and, friends with those that are making these decisions. And we trust them. We trust their integrity. We trust their technical, acumen. And, we trust that the tests that we're doing are the ones that we need to do to get the right answers, to give us the data that we need to come back.

I mean, I know you said that Boeing believes that they could hop in the Starliner right now if it was an emergency and get back home safely, but they're not having them do that. So are they stuck because they sound stuck to me.

So NASA would say they are not stuck. They are not stranded. The language they would prefer to use is that, you know, these astronauts are kind of in limbo. At some point it becomes a semantics battle. Right? They are not stuck or stranded in the sense that there is a backup option with a another American spacecraft, the SpaceX Dragon, but.

Just one that's going to come like months and months later.

Would it be fair to say that they are, you know, potentially now stuck in space for, you know, until February 2025? You know, there are people who could certainly argue that that that is indeed the case. But, you know, one other thing I would add to that point is that, you know, for the first time in human history, we are now at a point where you have this option, right. There are two American made spacecrafts that have the capability of flying astronauts to and from the ISS. That's never happened before. And so NASA says that's also weighing into their decision making. Right. Like what level of risk, what level of uncertainty is acceptable when there is a perfectly good and safe option available to them?

I mean, that's kind of what I wanted to ask, because in this new reality where NASA is relying on these private companies like SpaceX and Boeing to supply rockets and technologies to bring astronauts up, does there need to be a better system to make sure everything is buttoned up before something like this happens? Because this seems like kind of a cluster.

There are going to be so many reviews, of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft whenever it gets back to Earth, crewed or uncrewed. You know, I think from NASA and certainly Boeing's perspective, this was already way over budget, way behind schedule. There is so much on the line for Boeing as a company. I mean, you know, what's happening with their their aircrafts and the.

Yeah, it is it has not been a good year for their airplane business.

Right. So space is a different part of the company. But I mean this would be a huge black eye for Boeing. It already in many ways kind of is. And so you know, I do think there is a valid question of what happens to the Boeing Starliner program if this first crewed test flight is indeed a failure in the sense that it's not capable of bringing its crew back home?

Space sounds hard, Kristin.

You know, everybody always says that, right? Space is hard and it's people in the space industry kind of like roll their eyes at it. It's become such a cliche, but it really is.

Well, it's a new frontier for space travel and a lot of new questions that it's bringing along with it. Kristin, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

You bet. Thanks, David.

One thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our senior producer is Faiz Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dzula is our technical director. And Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Leni Steinhart, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundage and Katie Hinman. As always, if you like the show, just leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen will really help other people discover the show. And hey, that's what we want. The more the merrier here. We'll be back on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.