After Mishap with Boeing Spacecraft, NASA Faces a Dilemma (houstonchronicle.com) 132
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
As it probes why Boeing's Starliner spacecraft suffered a serious setback during a flight test last month that forced the cancellation of its planned docking with the International Space Station, NASA faces a high-stakes dilemma: Should the space agency require the company to repeat the uncrewed test flight, or allow the next flight to proceed, as originally planned, with astronauts on board?
The answer could have significant ramifications for the agency, and put astronauts' lives on the line, at a time when NASA is struggling to restore human spaceflight from the United States since the Space Shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.
Forcing Boeing to redo the test flight without anyone on board would be costly, possibly requiring the embattled company, already struggling from the consequences of two deadly crashes of its 737 Max airplane, to spend tens of millions of dollars to demonstrate that its new spacecraft is capable of meeting the space station in orbit. But if NASA moves ahead with the crewed flight, and something goes wrong that puts the astronauts in danger, the agency would come under withering criticism that could plague it for years to come...
For now, NASA is moving cautiously. It has formed an independent team with Boeing to examine what went wrong with the Starliner during last month's test flight. NASA also is reviewing data to help it determine if the capsule achieved enough objectives during its truncated flight to assure NASA that its astronauts will be safe....
If NASA does force Boeing to perform another test flight, it's not clear who would have to pay the tens of millions of dollars such a mission would cost.
The answer could have significant ramifications for the agency, and put astronauts' lives on the line, at a time when NASA is struggling to restore human spaceflight from the United States since the Space Shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.
Forcing Boeing to redo the test flight without anyone on board would be costly, possibly requiring the embattled company, already struggling from the consequences of two deadly crashes of its 737 Max airplane, to spend tens of millions of dollars to demonstrate that its new spacecraft is capable of meeting the space station in orbit. But if NASA moves ahead with the crewed flight, and something goes wrong that puts the astronauts in danger, the agency would come under withering criticism that could plague it for years to come...
For now, NASA is moving cautiously. It has formed an independent team with Boeing to examine what went wrong with the Starliner during last month's test flight. NASA also is reviewing data to help it determine if the capsule achieved enough objectives during its truncated flight to assure NASA that its astronauts will be safe....
If NASA does force Boeing to perform another test flight, it's not clear who would have to pay the tens of millions of dollars such a mission would cost.
Crewed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crewed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, dogfooding is the only reasonable way to proceed. Specifically, turn the Boeing executives into dog food and let Elon handle the space vehicles. Boeing has proven that they are insufficiently competent and responsible.
Re:Crewed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crewed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think they're considering it because Boeing has captured NASA in the same way it has captured the FAA that allowed the 737 Max to fly without a new type certification. NASA doesn't realize it's fighting for it's life. If they don't put the screws to Boeing, they're definitely going to have a significant accident and they'll lose the faith of the government and the people.
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When did the USA finally go it alone?
1950 to 1980 seemed to work well with all that direct expert German guidance... the decades that the tech worked and got great results...
1990 to 2000? The US had to keep on trying to stay with its advanced German methods but using its own people under US gov employment laws..
Reading about German methods with US experts was not the same as been under direct German leadershi
Re:Crewed (Score:5, Insightful)
When they merged with McDonnell Douglas, afaik.
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This "the USA's space program was built by Germans" is simplistic and historically inaccurate. The German team under von Braun did have a major, fundamental role in the direct lineage of rockets from the German V2 to the American Redstone and Jupiter IRBMs to the Juno and Saturn series of space boosters which were the most publicly visible of the American rockets. But other parallel lines of rocket development did not have much direct German input, notably the Atlas and the Titan ICBMs, both of which NASA
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Re: Crewed (Score:2)
I think there's a street corner somewhere in need of your presence.
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Re:Crewed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crewed (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry about them. They've got golden parachutes.
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What does it matter (Score:2)
It's a stupid Capsule.
Long Live 1960's technology!
Pathetic
Re: What does it matter (Score:3)
It's a stupid Capsule.
Long Live 1960's technology!
You whine about the simplicity of capsules. That's their strength... speaking of simple.
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A Horse and buggy are pretty simple too.
Better technologies are out there
Dream Chaser
X-37
Both abandoned in favor of Big Aerospace ans their stupid simple capsules that can't even make it to the space station.
Seriously, why is there even a question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Screw whatever NASA thinks. Boeing should insist on repeating - and paying for - the unmanned test. After the 737 debacle, public perception regarding how Boeing approaches passenger safety is in the toilet.
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Boeing may be too big to care *that* much about public perception. They're not only too big to fail, they're too big to annoy. That's why they get performance bonuses on programs where they miss *all* the milestones.
This is the result of the wave of consolidations in the defense industry back in the 90s. Prior to the 90s there were many big firms that bid against each other on megaprojects. Now there are just a handful of gigantic firms that bid on bet-the-country's-future gigaprojects that end up tied
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Screw whatever NASA thinks. Boeing should insist on repeating - and paying for - the unmanned test. After the 737 debacle, public perception regarding how Boeing approaches passenger safety is in the toilet.
If Boeing is let of the hook they never the lesson of doing it right the first time. From recent history it seems like they have forgotten that.
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If Boeing is let of the hook they never the lesson of doing it right the first time.
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
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and paying for
But wouldn't that hurt their executive bonuses? Why (from their perspective) would they want to do that?
Contractual Obligations require an unmanned flight (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really simple- Boeing has a contract to demonstrate that they can provide a vehicle that can autonomously dock with ISS, under ISS rules of approach. They've never built a vehicle that could do this, so the requirement is about Boeing successfully demonstrating that they can do docking without human assistance.
Everything else reported about no need for a reflight is simply to obscure that requirement. There's little if any need to hurry here, as NASA is already spending $2B a year on SLS+Orion, which was supposed to be the backup/alternate path to get US crew to ISS, so we're already working on the redundant US crew options.
There's a commercial crew competition between Boeing and SpaceX under contract with NASA now; to enforce the contract for one provider, and not the other smacks of favoritism at best and collusion at worst.
Re:Contractual Obligations require an unmanned fli (Score:5, Insightful)
If an issue like this had happened with a SpaceX certification flight you can bet NASA, Boeing, and politicians would all be saying "there's no question about SpaceX being required to repeat the test."
Re:Contractual Obligations require an unmanned fli (Score:5, Insightful)
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SpaceX seems to be close enough to its own youthful failures that it knows the importance of not killing astronauts. Boeing is a little more... experienced.
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Re: Contractual Obligations require an unmanned fl (Score:2)
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Boomshakalaka!
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After the failed test, this was apparently NASA's position [slashdot.org]:
Although Space News also notes that after the landing, "NASA leadership stated that the problem, once understood and corrected, would not necessarily prevent Boeing from proceeding with a crewed test flight."
The issue was that the clock was off by 11 hours - if there were astronauts on-board, they likely could have reset the clock, and the test would have been considered a conditional success, once they identified the reason the clock was off by 11 hours and corrected it. The only failure of the last mission was that the clock was off - does that really require another multi-million dollar test, or can we all agree, once they find the cause and correct
Re:Contractual Obligations require an unmanned fli (Score:4, Insightful)
The only failure of the last mission was that the clock was off - does that really require another multi-million dollar test
That's not the problem. The problem is that the spacecraft hasn't demonstrated that it's capable of safely approaching the station, docking, and all the other stuff it needs to do. Would you fly on a plane that hasn't actually ever flown, but only rolled to the end of the runway and back? No - you'd rightfully say "demonstrate that it can fly before I risk my life in it."
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>demonstrated that it's capable of safely approaching the station, docking, and all the other stuff it needs to do.
Boeing has done this before routinely. That's not what the flight was about. It was a lower inclination so that if something does go wrong, like what happened, astronauts will safely come back to earth in the abort system like what happened. You can't have a manned vehicle abort on high inclination trajectory which are favored by unmanned launches. If you tried it doesn't matter what abort s
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Boeing has done this before routinely
No they haven't, not with this spaceship. This is like arguing that the 737 MAX is safe because they had flown planes before routinely.
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Not sure why that would matter. The thing that is different was tested and successful. Different ship doesn't change docking procedures and orbital mechanics.
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If you're referring to docking to IS as "done this before routinely" I'm confused. Boeing's Starliner had never been on orbit before. This was its first mission to ISS and it failed.
Other commercial providers like Orbital and SpaceX have successfully sent cargo to ISS, but not Boeing, unless I'm missing something.
But, even if they had a successful cargo capsule going to ISS that's not the same thing as their crewed one. SpaceX isn't getting a pass for Dragon2 just beca
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>If you're referring to docking to IS as "done this before routinely" I'm confused.
Docking requires a proper launch into the correct orbit and inclination. Once that is done everything becomes standard practice.
>that's not the same thing as their crewed one.
The flight path used would be used for a crewed launch. That's why it's seen as a success because even if it was crewed, they would be alive and well because it was a successful abort that would keep humans alive. Which is one of the main p
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Re:Contractual Obligations require an unmanned fli (Score:5, Interesting)
Boeing _CLAIMS_ that the clock issue is the only one that stopped them from having a successful automated flight. Boeing has not _DEMONSTRATED_ that this is the case, thus they have not achieved this milestone - which is a prerequisite for manned flight. Boeing has yet to demonstrate that astronauts have the means to reset the flight clock to the precise value needed to save the mission - oh, they once again claim that they could have but after the “forgotten” pin in the chute test no one not on Boeing payroll (present and future) trusts their unsubstantiated claims anymore.
Re:Contractual Obligations require an unmanned fli (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Contractual Obligations require an unmanned fl (Score:2)
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The issue was that the clock was off by 11 hours - if there were astronauts on-board, they likely could have reset the clock, and the test would have been considered a conditional success...
...by which time, the automated systems would have already burned excessive amounts of maneuvering fuel, and docking with the space station would be unsafe... just as happened in the test flight. The docking part of the mission (which was actually a secondary objective to testing the orbit & reentry capabilities) would still have been a failure, but instead there would have been humans in the capsule getting tumbled around.
The only failure of the last mission was that the clock was off
The only failure of Apollo 13 was that a bit of wiring got damaged in a test. The
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Boeing should absolutely refly the mission. They aren't 'losing' or 'wasting' money doing so either - they were contracted to produce a product that they screwed up so bad that it 1) doesn't work 2) is tens of millions over budget 3) is years beyond contract completion time.
They are grade A screwups that NEED to produce SOMETHING correct. Complain all you want about SLS being late and over budget and from the same company, but at least the blame is shared with NASA on that one. Failure to refly I think w
Go Fever (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup, you beat me to it, my thoughts exactly. Who knows what else could go wrong, what other bugs may be waiting their turn. No way do I trust Boeing. That said, NASA have proven they're willing to take risks with human lives, and fail, so I think both Boeing and NASA need independent oversight with absolute veto power.
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cost savings isn't valued over perfection when lives are at risk
That is the key.
So what if it costs a few hundred million dollars? That's not the issue.
They can be known for risking people's lives to save a few bucks, or they can work toward the long road of becoming a company that does things correctly even if it costs extra, takes extra time, or isn't immediately profitable.
Only one of those is viable in the long run. This shouldn't even be a question for them, which in part, shows why the current leadership is not qualified for the job.
Who will pay? (Score:1)
Re:Who will pay? (Score:4, Funny)
That's a rhetorical question, right?
It's Mexico - right?
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Most likely the Boeing shareholders. Why would NASA pay for a failed or any test flights? Off course, it all depends on what the contract says and how well/bad both sides can negotiate.
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Boeing *should* pay. However, it's likely that if a reflight occurs, NASA/US Govt will shoulder much if not all of the cost.
Corruption and political entanglements.
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Boeing fucked up, failed to demonstrate what they were supposed to. They should pay. Pretty straightforward.
That said, there's probably some cost-plus bullshit that pins it on NASA. Maybe Boeing even profits from the failure. (Not that the loss of confidence would be worth it)
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there's only 1 customer. only 1 service provider.
of course the customer pays. the customer itself is pondering if they should skip safety checks ffs...
Boeing and NASA? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is like watching a bum fight. Both of these outfits are dysfunctional and no one is going to win regardless of what happens.
Why would NASA contemplate risking what little credibility it has left by enabling further Boeing incompetence when it has a viable competitor for this same task in SpaceX? The only reason I can imagine is pressure from Congress, instigated by Boeing lobbyists. The same old story.
No, Boeing screwed the pooch. Make them do it over successfully or fuck off and resume their core competence; getting misdesigned aircraft pencil-whipped by captured FAA lawyers.
Re:Boeing and NASA? (Score:5, Insightful)
And Boeing should pay as well. The price of failure is the cost of a new mission. Why should we even have to say this?
Cheaper than a Golden Parachute (Score:5, Insightful)
If it can afford to fire someone and give them $80 million, it can spend "tens of millions" to prove that it's doing its job.
https://qz.com/1783658/boeings... [qz.com]
Are you kidding me (Score:2)
This was a dress rehearsal and the product failed. That means the products has to change between now and the next launch. If NASA is even entertaining the idea of launching astronauts on a configuration that's never been fully testing in practice they should stop deep-throating Boeing's cock and get some oxygen because clearly their brains aren't working right. We all know both they and SpaceX could launch right now if there was a "skip the red tape - we need to win the Moon race" urgency but there's not. N
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I don't think there's a risk to crew here. As with MCAS, a well-trained crew able to override the autonomous systems would've been able to continue the flight with only minor disruption (the problems with MCAS were that a) the crew weren't well-trained in anomalous situations and b) MCAS insisted on retaining/retaking control even after having been overridden).
Despite that, one of the requirements was that the vehicle be able to operate autonomously. Crew risk or lack thereof nonwithstanding, the tests to d
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I don't think there's a risk to crew here.
Yours is probably the first sane post on here. Everyone is all "I hate Boeing" or "I hate NASA" and then whatever they say after that is meaningless.
There could have been a crew on the first flight and there would never have been any danger to their lives. Running the same test again would be pointless.
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It matters not that there would not have been loss of crew. “The test” included automated docking/undocking to ISS and not just launching to any random LEO. There is no point to commercial crew unless it can dock to ISS, and commercial crew contract terms preclude Boeing from hand waving this required demonstration milestone away. Space-X needed to _DEMONSTRATE_ automated and unmanned docking/undocking with ISS before any manned flights, so does Boeing.
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Re:Are you kidding me (Score:4, Informative)
The odds of dying in air and space transport incidents, which include private flights and air taxis, are 1 in 9,821.
How non-sensical - the odds are much, much higher for astronauts - you need simply take the number of people that got into a rocket planning to go into space, and then divide it by the number of space travelers that died after the countdown ended.
If we focus on US astronauts, we've lost what - two space shuttle crews in the last 60 years? That's what, 10-12 astronauts lost, compared to the 324 Americans that have been in space [answers.com].
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> You have to count the number of deaths/number of unique flights
Everyday Astronaut just did an entire video on crew escape systems and went over all the numbers thoroughly - it's a long video that needed to be, and is worth watching.
The Shuttle, for instance, had about 300 flights with 7 people on each and lost two crews. So roughly the fatality rate was 14 / 300*7.
That's about a 97% chance of survival for a given flight. Any astronaut who went up 150 times - more than likely would have died (Jerry Ro
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300? Is that including simulators?
Re: Are you kidding me (Score:2)
I don't think there's a risk to crew here...
Sure, it's not as if they're the same upper management responsible for other gratuitously over-the-top fuck-ups...
One more test without crew - but perhaps cargo. (Score:3)
Fault analysis (Score:3)
As it probes why Boeing's Starliner spacecraft suffered a serious setback during a flight test last month ...
Turns out that the "Hello Kitty" watch Boeing uses in the capsule isn't a good choice for space travel, but the Buzz Lightyear model is an extra-cost option that NASA hasn't gotten funding approval for.
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Mod parent up - apparently this is exactly what happened. Pathetically.
Boeing Must Pay for a New Test (Score:5, Insightful)
None of the data gathered can say anything about how the craft performs when manoeuvring near the space station or about whether the docking hardware works. Testing those things just didn’t happen this time and they must be tested.
it's not clear who would have to pay the tens of millions of dollars such a mission would cost.
It’s extremely clear that Boeing should pay. How could the contract be at all unclear on something this fundamental? Did they seriously not consider the possibility that Boeing could fail?
"For now, NASA is moving cautiously." (Score:2)
For now?
Some people might say that's been NASAs problem with manned flight since the Apollo program.
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For now?
Some people might say that's been NASAs problem with manned flight since the Apollo program.
Yeah, they've been cautiously building the SLS for years, and it won't even fly a test flight for 2 more years (at least). And to think, that's with mostly flight proven hardware.
Maybe stop using Boeing? (Score:2)
Seriously, when a contractor screws up this bad, you look for a new one...
Re: Maybe stop using Boeing? (Score:2)
Poor astronautes (Score:2)
As if going to space isn't already risky enough,
I can't imagine being an astronaute being put in this Boeing spacecraft that only had a failed test (and has produced planes that have serious design flaws in them).
uhh... (Score:2)
Steve Buschemi nailed it in Armageddon (Score:2)
Make Them Retry the Test (Score:2)
Unless we're going back to the 60s "cock and balls" NASA where safety is optional to meet a deadline.
Cry me a fucking river. (Score:2)
Boeing is "embattled" and can't afford a new test?
Just stop. Boeing is one of the largest military industrial complex members sucking at the government teat.
Their management is morally bankrupt (MCAS) and they've already taken a shitton of money to build this launch system.
They can afford to retest. If they can't, run away in terror because that means they can't afford to build a quality product either so astronauts will die.
The US needs multiple launch options, so if Boeing can't do it, Blue Origin or Ro
Take it back (Score:2)
NASA should accept that privatization on the whole program was a failure and take back control of building its own space vehicles.
Having sub-contractors is fine but by giving the whole thing away all they have done is allow Elon to remain competitive in the building the biggest yacht competition and created space programs in Russian, India and Israel.
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Cost to get a kilogram to Low Earth Orbit during the Shuttle program was $25,000. With SpaceX running their Falcon 9 that's dropped to around $2300 per kilogram.
While it's possible NASA could have done that on their own I find it unlikely, and a 90% reduction in costs to LEO isn't anything to sneeze at.
Opinion and question (Score:2)
I'm in the "retest" camp, but I don't have an opinion on who pays for it. Lets be clear with what is at stake. If Starliner (or Crew Dragon!) crunches through the ISS and kills the people aboard and the 6 already on station it will stop manned space exploration for at least a decade. That's not an impossible outcome from this. There is too much riding on the commercial crew program to allow that. Take the time to test and get it right.
I understand that this was just a clock problem, and a parachute ri
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Did you forget how the Space-X capsule exploded? Definitely not cancelled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Yes, that was the capsule that successfully completed the very test that the Boeing spacecraft failed. And what did SpaceX do when they found a problem with the abort system during the extensive testing they do? Working closely with NASA they identified the source of the problem, implemented a solution and then tested the system again to make sure they solved the problem. They will test it again during the in-flight abort test they are doing at the end of this week (an extra test Boeing isn't even doing)
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Contrast this with Boeing which had failures in both their recent Starliner tests who just brush them off claiming that astronauts could have survived.
That sentence struck me as comical and ironic. On the one hand, Boeing will claim that the "astronauts could have survived". That is the antithesis of their response to the 737 MAX crashes when they blamed them on the inexperienced third world pilots. Morals and ethics, reason and responsibility - whichever way the wind is blowing.
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You are missing the point. The claim was ". If Space-X had flubbed a test, you can bet the entire program would be stopped and put under painstaking slow review by multiple committees."
After a catastrophic test, this surely did not happen.
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False. The issue could never have occurred in-flight. Space-X found the problem, tested to NASA’s satisfaction that they had indeed found the problem (that would never have occurred in flight being an artifact of the multiple tests being performed unmanned), then implemented a fix AND RETESTED IT.
If Space-X can/must do it, so can/must Boeing.
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The failure here was a clock that needed to be adjusted, that's it - everything, and I mean everything on this test worked, except for the clock - and the error in the clock was caught by the software and the system acted logically and the ship was brought back safely, all without human intervention.
There is no additional risk to the astronauts based on this otherwise successful test. Besides, if there were astronauts on the ship, theoretically they cod have reset the clock and saved the mission.
Re:What would EM do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Automated approach and docking to ISS is a required milestone that needs to be demonstrated before any manned mission. No demonstration = no milestone = no manned mission, unless you rewrite the commercial crew contract to give Boeing a special pass now that Space-X has already demonstrated that they don’t need one.
Re:What would EM do? (Score:5, Insightful)
The test was to successfully dock and it never got close let alone docked; claiming that everything else on the test worked when the mission was cut short isn't a compelling way to change people's opinions. If the vehicle didn't leave the ground because of bad weather it would be equally true to say everything worked but the weather...
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From what I understand most of what you said is incorrect. First off the clock(s) were fine, there appear to be at least two clocks running in the rockets computer(s) one that is the time the computer has been on and one that is the traditional "T Minus" clock. Starliner pulled its mission time from the wrong clock, it pulled from the "system time" clock when it should have been pulling from the "T Minus" clock. Secondly the software doesn't appear to have stopped the errant behavior, commands from missi
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and the system acted logically
I saw the video of the telemetry image where those thrusters were doing the bugaloo. I wouldn't call that "logical". There were actually two problems, one was the wrong clock was used, the other was that the wrong clock was used with an algorithm that determined the vehicle state solely from the mission elapsed time.
It decided that because the clock was greater than a certain amount, and with no other input, it should set the attitude control to fine-control mode, which used up too much fuel. That right th
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Astronauts, unlike the idiot in Thailand, are smart enough to not to start insulting others that are trying to help. Notice how the idiot is now known worldwide as the pedo guy who failed to get a dime out of Musk? There’s a lesson there that you might learn.
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This test showed everything (except the clock) worked correctly - the shuttle explosions were the result of a series of systemic failures. The probe that slammed into the planet because the programmer of one module used imperial, not metric measurements in their calculations. I'm not sure what lessons from those failures apply here.
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Really? “everything (except the clock) worked”?!?
Boeing has yet to demonstrate that they can successfully and safely dock and undock from ISS and unlike their abort test, this is not something that Boeing gets to say “yeah we simulated it”. When Boring has successfully _DEMONSTRATED_ automated docking/undocking you can say “everything worked”, not before.
Re: No. Period. Duh. Hello, space shuttle explosio (Score:2)