The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that if you feel a bit nervous boarding a Boeing jetliner these days, think about how Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams feel. The Globe's Gus Carlson writes that they are the astronauts aboard NASA's problem-plagued Boeing Starliner spaceship, who have had their return to Earth from a one-week voyage delayed three times because of mechanical problems aboard the ship designed for commercial space travel. They are not scheduled to come home now until at least July 20, 45 days after they lifted off, but chronic problems in the ship's helium system and a faulty thruster may delay their return even longer. This is about how the NASA's head-in-the-sand mindset got the agency in trouble with the space shuttle program. We watched in horror as the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift-off in January, 1986. We gasped again in February, 2003, when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Then we learned that the probable causes of both disasters -- the cracked O-rings on Challenger and the faulty heat-reflecting tiles on Columbia -- were known problems. The question now is this: What was NASA thinking when it green-lit Starliner?