> it wasn't simply broken -- it had unexpected behavior.

Unexpected behavior for NASA was broken enough to send it back empty. That was not the plan to start with. The mission was supposed to be a few days only not this long.

> what we should expect NASA to do: make engineering decisions to minimize risk and maximize chance of mission success.

The criticism is of both NASA and Boeing on what they should have done prior to the trip. How the money was spent and such. I don’t think anyone criticizes NASA for opting to keep the astronauts safe by delaying their return. It’s about what happened before that point.

> Unexpected behavior for NASA was broken enough to send it back empty.

It's not a question of broken / not-broken. It's a question of known-risk / unknown-risk. The return mission had too much of the latter.

I'm as much of a Boeing skeptic as anyone here, but the knee-jerk-ism to vilify them over this is unreasonable.

NASA manages risk.

SpaceX blows up rockets, so they can move fast, until they get it right.

Boeing is trying to operate as a legacy space company (read: endlessly trying to reduce risk) while also competing with SpaceX.

I'm glad they launched Starliner for a crewed mission!

No one died, because it was safe enough.

No one would have died, had they returned on it, because it was safe enough.

And why should NASA have delayed a manned test flight further when there was an acceptable Plan B?

> it had unexpected behavior. It ended up landing fine

By this measure the door blowing off the Alaska Airlines flight wasn’t an emergency.

If it had been a test flight using test pilots: yes, it wouldn't have been.

There's a reason astronauts for higher risk missions tend to be selected from operational and test naval aviation backgrounds, like both of the Starliner CFT astronauts were.

>It ended up landing fine.

Were the astronauts in it when it landed?