It's been ten months since NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams traveled to the International Space Station on board Boeing's issues-riddled Starliner spacecraft.

After years of delays, Starliner finally launched from Space Launch Complex-41 at NASA's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on June 5, 2024, following three separate scrubs and the discovery of several helium leaks.

Things didn't improve once the capsule reached space. Docking procedures with the ISS proved harrowing due to reaction-control thruster malfunctions.

And according to a new Ars Technica interview with the two astronauts, the situation was even more terrifying than was reported at the time.

"I don't know that we can come back to Earth at that point," Wilmore told Ars' Eric Berger. "I don't know if we can. And matter of fact, I'm thinking we probably can't."

News that NASA had actively bent flight rules to allow Starliner to continue attempting to dock with the station — despite multiple thrusters failing — highlights the real danger Wilmore and Williams were in, and how close they were to simply turning around.

It's a damning new revelation, especially considering how much of a disaster Boeing's Starliner project has already been. The aerospace giant has poured billions of dollars into the project and has yet to complete a single, successful crewed mission to and from the station.

While the pair said the launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas rocket went more smoothly than anticipated, things started to go haywire when reaction control system thrusters started failing one by one, making docking procedures a lot more difficult.

During briefings preceding the launch, Wilmore had already been made aware that thruster issues could land them in a "situation where we're in space and can't control it," as he told Ars.

While trying to dock with the ISS, Wilmore recounted that the crew became single fault tolerant, meaning that the mission was one failing thruster away from losing full control of the capsule's movement.

"We're single fault tolerant, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, we're supposed to leave the space station,'" Wilmore told Ars. "Because I know the flight rules."