For Those of You Keeping Score on Earth, the Astronauts Boeing Stranded in Space Have Passed the 50 Day Mark, With 'No End in Sight'

This is of course, the speech JFK made to a Joint Session of Congress 63 years ago, declaring a new national initiative that was meant to unite all Americans in a common purpose. Everyone remembers his words at the 0:30 mark where he declares, "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon." While we tend to gloss over the secondary, but by no means less important part of the plan, which was "... and returning him safely to the earth." 

That was really the key. Hell, the Soviets were launching dogs and chimps into orbit, with no intention of bringing them back. As any astrophysicist will tell you, getting a thing up into space on a one way trip is the easy part. It's keeping them alive through the landing that's the trick. Which Boeing found out early last month:

Joe Raedle. Getty Images.

If you don't recognize these two in the flight suits with the unmistakably Freudian, phallic rocket patches, you should. These are Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. Who recently put their lives in the hands of the engineers at America's newest partner in space travel. 

Since the people they trusted are quite literally rocket scientists, you'd be safe in assuming those are the best possible hands to put yourself in. On the other hand, since those brainiacs are drawing paychecks from Boeing, which is having a bit of an issue with keeping air passengers and whistleblowers alive, as Billy pointed out:

The last time we checked in, Williams and Wilcox were awaiting word from NASA as to whether the kinks were worked out and they could fly Boeing's latest piece of tech without ending up like one of its jetliners:

… or being fried like both Death Stars upon reentry. Or, failing that, having Elon Musk send up an actually dependable rocket up to rescue them like the Carpathia picking up the survivors of this space Titanic. And while the literal rocket scientists are working to sort that out, the two brave, intrepid souls who put their trust in Boeing passed a milestone:

Source - A pair of Astronauts remain trapped in space with no end in sight to their near two month long ordeal while engineers try to fix their faulty Boeing spaceship.

Sunita Williams and Barry 'Butch' Wilmore have had their stay on the International Space Station extended indefinitely after hoping to visit the orbiting lab for 8 days.

On Friday July 26, they hit day 51. …

Thruster failures and helium links on Boeing's new Starliner capsule has prompted NASA and Boeing to keep them in orbit for longer over fears a trip back on the spacecraft could end in disaster.

NASA confirmed earlier this week that they are not ready to announce a return date. …

The work being done on the Starliner is also being performed remotely - with no engineer sent to space to work on the actual craft itself.  

Well that ought to bring Williams and Wilcox some comfort. The company that can't keep a jumbo jet in the air without unexplained plunges to the surface of the ocean and doors falling off, is fixing their spacecraft remotely. Like your IT guy taking over your screen for a few minutes to find out why your laptop keeps crashing and losing all your work. So they sent these two courageous explorers up to the ISS without as much as a Geek Squad to roll up and restore their files. I mean, just because they company has a consistent record of failure at virtually everything else they're doing, why not trust them on this one, right? 

This is what you get when you're dealing with a government contractor who turned in the lowest bid. And if I was Suni or Butch (and as stand here with both feet blessedly on terra firma, I'm glad I am not), I'd cut Starliner loose "accidentally." In the same the way the whistleblowers keep turning up dead. And then I'd happily wait as long as it took for SpaceX to show up with a landing craft I can trust. JFK had his priorities right in 1961, and Boeing is still figuring it out.