NASA astronauts say they’d fly the Boeing craft again: ‘I’d get on in a heartbeat’

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore (Credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Their craft’s mechanical issues led to a stay in space that was 35 times longer than originally scheduled, an eight-day mission that ultimately clocked in at 286 days. Yet both of NASA’s unlikely celebrity astronauts say they’d go again—on the same Boeing Starliner that failed them once.

“We're going to rectify all the issues that we encountered. We're going to make it work,” astronaut Butch Wilmore said on Monday at a news briefing held at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. “Boeing's completely committed. NASA is completely committed. And with that, I’d get on in a heartbeat.”