Why the Starliner Astronauts Are Still in Space

[00:00:00] If only life had a remote control, you could pause or rewind.

[00:00:04] Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome, but prediabetes does.

[00:00:08] Take the one-minute risk test today at doihaveprediabetes.org.

[00:00:12] Brought to you by the Ad Council and its Prediabetes Awareness Partners.

[00:00:18] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Wednesday, August 21st.

[00:00:22] I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal.

[00:00:25] Apple is opening up its tab-to-pay technology to competitors.

[00:00:29] But will banks and payment apps be able to convince consumers to switch to their digital wallets?

[00:00:36] And then, Butch and Sunny are in limbo.

[00:00:39] We'll tell you about the two U.S. astronauts spending more time on the International Space Station than they expected.

[00:00:46] And what the delay in their return means for NASA and Boeing.

[00:00:53] But first, Apple announced last week that app developers in the U.S. and six other countries

[00:00:59] will soon be able to make use of its devices near-field communications, or NFC technology,

[00:01:05] and certain security features.

[00:01:07] These changes will allow developers of payment apps to handle in-store, tap-to-pay transactions.

[00:01:13] But our Heard on the Street writer, Telus Demos, says that doesn't mean the iPhone maker

[00:01:18] won't still be central to the digital in-store payment ecosystem.

[00:01:22] Telus joins us now.

[00:01:24] So why is Apple opening up its tap-to-pay technology?

[00:01:27] Apple has been under pressure from lots of its competitors over the last several years

[00:01:32] to share some of the technology that allows it to power the seamless experience that Apple Pay has enjoyed,

[00:01:39] where you go to the store, you simply hold your phone out, you tap it, it sees your face,

[00:01:45] all those things.

[00:01:46] It enables very easy payments.

[00:01:48] Rivals, other people who make digital wallets, would like to be able to do that with iPhones.

[00:01:53] iPhones are a huge part of the market, especially in the United States,

[00:01:56] which is the biggest market for a lot of other companies in the payments realm.

[00:02:01] And so while they could do tap-to-pay with other devices like Android devices,

[00:02:06] it wasn't really worth their time necessarily to invest in that experience without being able to do so for iPhones.

[00:02:14] And so it was something that had been on the minds of certainly regulators in some parts of the world,

[00:02:20] like in Europe, where Apple has already made some agreements to open up its NFC tap technology to others.

[00:02:28] But Apple has gone ahead and made the decision now to do that on a much wider scale.

[00:02:32] How could tap-to-pay benefit companies like PayPal?

[00:02:36] For PayPal, it's a way basically to open up a new market, that is to move in-store.

[00:02:41] So PayPal has been working on doing that for a long time.

[00:02:45] Obviously, other wallet apps, Cash App, for one example, all of those would like to be used not just digitally,

[00:02:51] but also in-store more often at more places.

[00:02:55] The other thing is that for a lot of these payment apps,

[00:02:58] part of what they're doing is not just trying to be something where you pay,

[00:03:02] but do lots of other financial things.

[00:03:03] You might take out one of those buy-now-pay-later installment loans from them.

[00:03:07] You might look at your account balances.

[00:03:10] And so really, anything that's getting you engaged with their app more often is good for them

[00:03:15] because that just gives them more opportunities to kind of serve you up with this variety of services.

[00:03:21] So it sounds like having tap-to-pay could be a big win.

[00:03:24] But in your column, you write that before counting all these potential new transactions,

[00:03:29] these companies could have a few things to consider.

[00:03:32] What are they?

[00:03:33] Well, first of all, Apple Pay and Apple's wallet have been going in the same direction.

[00:03:37] You can do a bunch of different things with your wallet.

[00:03:39] You can store other kinds of not just payment cards, but tickets, IDs, things like that.

[00:03:46] Apple offers a way to keep cash and save.

[00:03:49] So not only would competing wallets need to replicate that technology experience,

[00:03:53] they'd have to kind of incentivize you or convince you to use their wallet over Apple's wallet when you're doing other stuff.

[00:04:00] In addition, in the sort of developer documentation,

[00:04:02] it seems like you would need to switch what your default payment app is.

[00:04:06] So there's like a little bit of a hump for a user to get over.

[00:04:08] And in payments, we see this again and again where the people really get used to doing things in a certain way.

[00:04:16] Apple Pay and other things were not an overnight success.

[00:04:18] It took a long time to get people to move away from like swiping their credit card.

[00:04:23] Habits are really sticky in the world of payments.

[00:04:26] And so getting someone to go through the trouble of switching out the default might be a big hurdle to overcome.

[00:04:32] What does this move mean for Apple's role in the space going forward?

[00:04:36] It seems like one way or another, Apple is going to be central in the way that a lot of payments evolve,

[00:04:42] whether it's as the software with the wallet, whether it's as the hardware where,

[00:04:46] OK, maybe using someone else's app, but you're obviously using your iPhone.

[00:04:51] And the other thing is that Apple, what it said in the announcement is that for other developers to use this technology,

[00:04:58] that they would need to have a commercial agreement with Apple and to pay any associated fees.

[00:05:02] And so we don't know what those are yet.

[00:05:04] We'll see what the details are over time as this plays out.

[00:05:07] But it seems like one way or another, Apple is going to be involved in that transaction.

[00:05:12] That was WSJ heard on the street writer, Telus Demos.

[00:05:16] Coming up, for two U.S. astronauts, extending their stay on the ISS might not be so bad.

[00:05:23] But for NASA and Boeing, it's raising questions about future space plans.

[00:05:28] That's after the break.

[00:05:35] If only life had a remote control.

[00:05:38] You could pause or rewind.

[00:05:40] Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome.

[00:05:43] But prediabetes does.

[00:05:44] Take the one-minute risk test today at doihaveprediabetes.org.

[00:05:48] Brought to you by the Ad Council and its prediabetes awareness partners.

[00:05:55] Two U.S. astronauts, Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, arrived at the International Space Station in early June.

[00:06:03] The pair, who sometimes go by their nicknames Sunny and Butch, are both experienced astronauts who have been to the ISS before.

[00:06:11] This trip was only meant to be eight days.

[00:06:14] But they have now spent months in orbit.

[00:06:18] Issues with Boeing's long-awaited Starliner spacecraft, which brought them to the ISS,

[00:06:23] have raised questions about whether the vehicle can safely bring the astronauts back to Earth.

[00:06:29] Boeing and NASA are working to come up with a plan to bring them home.

[00:06:33] And they might have to wait for a SpaceX flight in February.

[00:06:37] Joining us with more on this story is our reporter, Aylan Woodward.

[00:06:40] So what are conditions on the ISS like for Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore?

[00:06:45] Frankly, the ISS is able to hold that many astronauts and cosmonauts.

[00:06:50] There are currently nine of them up there.

[00:06:52] Obviously, it is a little bit cramped.

[00:06:55] There's about 14,000 cubic feet of habitable space.

[00:06:59] And the ISS is essentially a bunch of different modules connected by passageways and the like.

[00:07:05] They have to do daily maintenance repair work and scientific experiments and whatnot.

[00:07:11] So life up there is a combination of science and chores.

[00:07:16] They communicated with the media in July.

[00:07:18] And they said that they had basically become integrated into the ISS community.

[00:07:23] They were given jobs.

[00:07:26] They were given daily tasks.

[00:07:27] They have other sets of clothes that they can wear.

[00:07:31] They both said coming back here is like coming back home.

[00:07:35] It's a great place to live, a great place to work, a great place to be.

[00:07:38] Aylan, NASA turned to two private space sector providers, Boeing and SpaceX, to build spacecraft.

[00:07:44] How have things been going with them?

[00:07:46] SpaceX certainly has shown its capability in that regard.

[00:07:50] And this Starliner test flight was supposed to be Boeing's big moment.

[00:07:55] And unfortunately, it did get bungled a little bit.

[00:07:58] And right now, the process is working as intended, right?

[00:08:02] The astronauts are up there and NASA and Boeing are working together basically to make a decision about whether or not Butch and Sunny can come back on Starliner or if they should wait until February.

[00:08:14] NASA certainly has some of its past tragedies top of mind.

[00:08:19] You had the Columbia and the Challenger shuttle incidents where people died.

[00:08:23] And they just want to make sure that they know the risks and they know what's going on.

[00:08:30] And they're testing Starliner and they're trying to figure out what happened with the flight up there to the ISS and making a decision accordingly.

[00:08:38] And it sounds like that decision is certainly forthcoming in the coming weeks.

[00:08:43] It's very important to make clear that Butch and Sunny aren't stranded in space.

[00:08:49] A lot of the cover surrounding this saga has intimated that.

[00:08:54] And the reality is, is they're not stranded, right?

[00:08:57] Starliner is there.

[00:08:58] It's docked to the spaceship in an emergency situation.

[00:09:01] The two of them could get on Starliner and bring it back home.

[00:09:04] It's really just the two astronauts are stuck in limbo as the agency and the company make a decision about what to do.

[00:09:11] This is the process working as intended.

[00:09:13] And a former astronaut who knows the two of them quite well was like, to them, this is like being stranded in Hawaii.

[00:09:20] This is great.

[00:09:21] The sort of sadder aspect of it is the time that they're missing out with their families that they didn't expect.

[00:09:27] Aylan, flaws in Starliner's propulsion system emerged after the vehicle launched.

[00:09:32] So what's the thinking now between NASA and Boeing about dealing with the propulsion problem?

[00:09:37] NASA is making it plain that its faith in Starliner is less secure by sort of delaying this decision.

[00:09:44] Boeing remains bullish and confident that Starliner can do its job and safely return these astronauts.

[00:09:51] And it bears mentioning that Butch and Sunny, as test pilots, worked very intimately on the development of this spacecraft with the engineers.

[00:10:01] They had a hand in the hardware and software almost along every step of the way.

[00:10:06] So when the two astronauts speak of Starliner, they speak of it almost like loving parents, where it's pretty clear that they believe that Starliner can bring them home safely.

[00:10:17] And so it's really just a matter of Boeing and NASA trying to make a decision, getting more data from Starliner as it's up their dock to the ISS,

[00:10:26] as Butch and Sunny sort of run various tests on it, take a look at the craft.

[00:10:32] Big picture, what does this mean for NASA's future?

[00:10:35] The commercial crew program, it was ideated in 2015.

[00:10:39] This idea that other parties could ferry astronauts to and from space, it's a key link to sort of lowering costs and multiplying the options that the agency has to get folks from U.S. soil up into space and back down into U.S. soil.

[00:10:57] Because after the shuttle program ended, there was almost a decade long period where the only way U.S. astronauts could get to and from the space station was aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

[00:11:08] And of course, the conflict in Ukraine has put that relationship into murkier waters.

[00:11:13] So it's important that the U.S. has means with which to get folks up into space and back down.

[00:11:20] And Boeing's Starliner was supposed to be another option.

[00:11:24] So as they work through the sort of aftermath of this whole Starliner incident,

[00:11:30] there are certainly ways that we can get astronauts to and from space still.

[00:11:36] But it's just a little disappointing that this alternative option now has this whole saga attached to it.

[00:11:42] But that certainly doesn't take Starliner off the table in the future.

[00:11:46] All right, that was our reporter, Aylan Woodward.

[00:11:49] And that's it for Tech News Briefing.

[00:11:51] Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Catherine Millsop.

[00:11:56] I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal.

[00:11:58] We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute.

[00:12:01] Thanks for listening.