This is

Zimmerman, the author of Behind the Black, we begin with Starliner. Starliner is in orbit with the ISS, delayed return. Therein lies a tale. Bob, remind what Starliner means to achieve and what we know about its delays.

Good evening, John.

Starliner is the man's capsule that Boeing has been developing for about a decade.

It's four years behind schedule. It has had to do an extra demo on Mann Mission because it

has problems, numerous problems. It finally did a man launch on June 6th, the first man demo launched ISS.

They docked, had thrust issues during the docking, and several stuff just didn't work.

When they got the ISS, they were supposed to spend a week there and come back on June 12th.

They soon announced they were going to delay the return till June 18th.

Today they announced they're going to delay it again to June 22nd.

And they announced that the delay is so that they could do a static fire hot test of seven of the

eight aft facing thrusters while they were still dock to ISS. This hot fire tests, they'll fire

those thrusters for about two bursts totally in about a second. No, they're not

going to fire them very long because that's the ISS.

And they say this is to perform for future operational missions, but what's really going

on here is they don't want to un- dock with the astronauts on board if there's a possibility

those aft thrusters won't fire when they're supposed to because those thrusters are

involved with de-orbiting the spacecraft. You could end up getting the spacecraft

the orbiting improperly and that could kill people. And so they want to test those

thrusters beforehand to make sure they'll fire. They, I am sure, did not want to fire those

thrusters well under normal conditions they would not be testing those

thrusters while attached to ISS because it causes a lot of other problems

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