Boeing Starliner Launch Delayed Again (theverge.com) 38
Boeing's Starliner astronaut capsule won't be launching to the International Space Station until it's gone through "deeper-level troubleshooting" to fix an issue with stuck propulsion system valves, according to a press release from the company. That troubleshooting means removing the capsule from the Atlas V rocket it's been coupled to and bringing it back to Boeing's facility. The Verge reports: The spacecraft's initial launch attempt late last month was scrubbed hours before liftoff after engineers noticed a group of fuel valves in the Starliner's propulsion section weren't positioned as programmed. That valve issue, whose cause remains a mystery, is the latest engineering predicament to curse Starliner nearly two years after the capsule failed its first attempt to reach the space station in 2019. With a clear fix to the valve issue still elusive, having to take Starliner back to the hangar will push Boeing's plans to launch this month off the table, and a logjam of other scheduled flights could extend the delay by several months.
According to Boeing VP John Vollmer, the company will "continue to work the issue from the Starliner factory and have decided to stand down for this launch window to make way for other national priority missions." The new launch date will have to be jointly decided by NASA, Boeing, and the United Launch Alliance after the issue with the valves has been found and fixed. Boeing has said software isn't to blame for Starliner's new valve problem, and indicated in past statements that it's a more complex hardware issue.
According to Boeing VP John Vollmer, the company will "continue to work the issue from the Starliner factory and have decided to stand down for this launch window to make way for other national priority missions." The new launch date will have to be jointly decided by NASA, Boeing, and the United Launch Alliance after the issue with the valves has been found and fixed. Boeing has said software isn't to blame for Starliner's new valve problem, and indicated in past statements that it's a more complex hardware issue.
"Space-Is-Hard" media event discussion (Score:2)
Quality (Score:1)
Hardware "issues" complex or otherwise should've been resolved before it makes it to the pad. Somebodies are not doing their job.
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Have they tried that pill that used to be advertised on TV?
Re:Quality (Score:5, Informative)
Hardware "issues" complex or otherwise should've been resolved before it makes it to the pad. Somebodies are not doing their job.
The valves were apparently working fine on July 30. From Boeing's Starliner launch, a critical test flight for NASA, delayed indefinitely as capsule heads back to factory [space.com]: [emphasis mine]
Each Starliner spacecraft is outfitted with numerous valves controlling a different aspect of the craft's propulsion system. Vollmer says the ones affected were in the vehicle's oxidation system, which controls the flow of oxidizer in the vehicle’s propulsion system. (Oxidizer is a crucial component of the spacecraft’s fuel system.)
Vollmer explained that the valves were used in the pad abort test and OFT, and there weren't any issues on either of those missions. He also said that the valves were working as expected during the prelaunch checks for the first attempt on July 30.
It wasn't until the next attempt on Aug. 3 that the issue cropped up.
Analysis shows that the spacecraft's oxidizer — a type of hypergolic fuel known as dinitrogen tetroxide, or NTO — permeated through some of the valves.
As a result, it mixed with traces of moisture trapped in the valve and formed nitric acid. That acid buildup caused corrosion which in turn made the valves stick closed, Vollmer said.
Re:Quality (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is the excuse they're using for the problem....
Personally, I am inclined to think that Cost-Plus contract runs out as soon as they produce working hardware, but continues to rain money on Boeing until the Sun goes cold otherwise....
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Then you better damned well have designed your spacecraft to sit outdoors for significant periods of time under those exact conditions. And add whatever corrosion you get from the launchpad being a few hundred metres from the saltwater ocean too.
That's not really the problem here, though. The corrosion was internal, caused by the internal compounds of the fuel system mixing. Which means that Boeing never did any real wet dress rehearsals with the vehicle before attempting to launch it. If that sort of signi
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SpaceX made their first crewed flight to the ISS on May 30 last year. Crew-2 launched April 23 this year and although the Crew-3 launch date is yet to be announced, it is
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So they never tested the system under environmental conditions commonly found at Cape Canaveral?
Not sure what you're talking about. This is literally in TFA I referenced *and* my post, so they were obviously tested there:
Vollmer explained that the valves were used in the pad abort test and OFT, and there weren't any issues on either of those missions.
He also said that the valves were working as expected during the prelaunch checks for the first attempt on July 30.
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So they never tested the system under environmental conditions commonly found at Cape Canaveral? After all Cape Canaveral is the ONLY launch facility for manned spaceflight in the USA, so why test it under Cape Canaveral environmental conditions, right?
Maybe they forgot how nitrogen tetroxide works. They have only been using it for decades.
you will not go to space today (Score:2)
Corruption (Score:5, Interesting)
linky [youtube.com]
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The incentive not to fuck up this time is that it's costing Boeing money. NASA isn't paying for these fuckups, commercial crew is a fixed-cost contract program, and Boeing has to eat all the costs for whatever goes wrong. This entire flight, in fact, is an extra flight that wasn't part of the original plan, required only because their previous flight was so bad, and all the costs for this flight is coming out of Boeing's pocket.
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That's not even the best part.
The best part is if they don't launch in the next few weeks, there literally won't be an available docking port on ISS for months. This was already going to be a problem for the next demo flight, with actual crew on board, but it's about to become a problem for the unmanned demo flight.
And to think NASA insisted on having Boeing because they had "heritage", and that scrappy upstart SpaceX wasn't expected to be ready on schedule. (Okay, so they weren't on schedule, thanks to a
Boeing Starliner Launch Delayed Again (Score:2)
Boeing Starliner Launch Delayed Again
... and that demonstrates why private industry always does things better than NASA.
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Boeing IS private industry.
The problem is the way the contracts are written are stupid.
They are paid a guaranteed profit margin on whatever your cost is, and as a publicly listed company it is their responsibility to maximise shareholder value, then who can blame them for dragging out a contract as much as possible?
I don't know what the profit margin is in their cost plus contract is, but typically it's 10%. ie.
If their costs are 1B, they get 10M profit. If their costs increase to 2B they get 20M profit.
We
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Unfortunately, no - the expensive network infrastructure is still getting paid for by the customers, and the cost plus wasn't just for physical structure, it was for operating costs, so there's a lot more employees for things like marketing, account management, etc that don't actually add a lot of direct value - and electricity costs doubled over the same period that everything else went up by 25%
Anyway the main point of the story is that cost plus contracts suck in terms of value to the customer, and altho
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Yeah my bad on the maths. I'll own that. That's even worse though...
I'm not saying government entities are always bad - or good. The problem is when you have contracts that actually incentivise you to be inefficient. Some things you actually do want publicly owned - like roads, any kind of physical network where it doesn't make sense to have competing networks for the same area, etc - but even with these, they need to be managed more sensibly than just throwing promises of truckloads of cash at it with wi
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SpaceX and other new upcomers like Relativity Space will destroy them, which will actually be a loss for the industry - it would be much better to have Boeing and the other legacy space companies working effectively
There is no fixing Boeing at this point, not their aeronautics and not their space division. The bean counters have destroyed the company from within.
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When Boeing had engineers running it it was one of the greatest companies ever.
Now it's becoming another HP.
Sad
Re:Boeing Starliner Launch Delayed Again (Score:4, Insightful)
Boeing IS private industry. The problem is the way the contracts are written are stupid. They are paid a guaranteed profit margin on whatever your cost is, and as a publicly listed company it is their responsibility to maximise shareholder value, then who can blame them for dragging out a contract as much as possible?
And of course, the outfits that built the Apollo Hardware were private industry, with MIT's computer work sort of a hybrid. The problem of course, is that if a company were to put itself onto a path to bankruptcy, with building equipment that hasn't been built before it sure as hell wouldn't bid on these high risk builds.
Boeing is placing itself outside of the Space Hardware business now. That's what happens if you screw up this big. For as much as many worship at the altar of publicly traded private industry as the only way to do things, let''s face it. We'd be busy sitting in a closet, selling our hats to each other and making a profit, while other nations would be exploring space.
Now all that being said, while I've stood up for Boeing in the past - there is something seriously wrong with that company, and the company that designed and built many of the most iconic airplanes ever, has managed to turn itself into the big company that can't.
And it shows. The 737 Max, which took one of those iconic airplanes and turned it into the almost perfect example of how planes shouldn't be built, looks like it has applied similar ideology to Starliner.
As basic conjecture, it looks like engineering design by the accounting department.
And it looks like that culture has seeped over to the more finance friendly Starliner project.
Boeing needs to replace it's management and accounting top to bottom. You don'r institute a culture of failure without those two groups being the cause.
And an investigation into exactly how they managed to design a system that allowed the valve problem to happen is needed. This is rocket science, but we've used hypergolic fuels for along time, and the engineering is prior art. Shouldn't have been an issue, and to me, this is pretty chilling - they worked okay until they didn't. Imagine that happening in orbit. What other failures awat. Will this be another Apollo 1 machine?
The big problem is Starliner is needed as part of the big picture. And Boeing is showing that they aren't up to the task.
Boeing can't. Boeing can't even.
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The big problem is Starliner is needed as part of the big picture.
Why? Just to keep Tesla cost-competitive?
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Er, heh heh, not Tesla. SpaceX. Obviously.
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Actually, Tesla has sent as many cars into space as Boeing has sent Starliner capsules.
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The big problem is Starliner is needed as part of the big picture.
Why? Just to keep Tesla cost-competitive?
Because if after some wish, there were nothing other than Spacex, it would be a monopoly, and notprivate industry.
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Because for anything ongoing, NASA MUST have more than one source. Crew capsules to the space station - there must be two suppliers, to have some kind of redundancy. So, SpaceX AND Boeing.
For a one-off, sure compete it and give it to one supplier. But not for crew access to the space station.
NASA's fault (Score:5, Funny)
Delayed Again (Score:2)
And again. Every time I open Slashdot. This has to stop. What are you doing NASA.
Do one thing right Boeing (Score:2)
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or don't do any of them. It's a shame what this once powerhouse has become. Either planes or rockets, not both.
I believe the evidence shows they cant do either now. They've instituted a toxic culture of failure.
Really should have been the plan all along (Score:2)
This is probably the scariest quote I've seen (from a NYT article):
In the days of troubleshooting that followed, engineers were able to get nine of the 13 valves working but four remained stuck.
“If we were able to free them all, we would have been in a good operational condition,” said John Vollmer, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for Starliner. “That’s what we were shooting for, but obviously, with not getting all the valves, we made the decision that we were just
An aging company (Score:2)
Where's Scotty when you need him? (Score:2)
Boeing has not been Boeing for a long time (Score:2)
That's how Apollo happened. That was more than 50 years ago.
Not one single engineer who worked Apollo is still at any of those companie
Boeing Starliner... (Score:2)