NASA and Boeing plan to spend the next few weeks conducting tests on the ground in order to better understand issues with the Starliner spacecraft’s thrusters before giving its crew the go-ahead to fly back to Earth, officials said in a press conference Friday.
Except the “emergency capsule” is all of them, including Starliner. Because Starliner is perfectly capable of returning to earth safely.
Because every thruster that has shut down has hot fired okay, and the known helium leaks still leave enough margin to cover several multiples of the 5 hours or so of RCS operation that you need to get to landing.