Boeing Delays Starliner Launch Again After Discovering Two Serious Problems (arstechnica.com) 66
"A Boeing official said Thursday that the company was 'standing down' from an attempt to launch the Starliner spacecraft on July 21," reports Ars Technica, "to focus on recently discovered issues with the vehicle."
Starliner's program manager said they'd spent last weekend investigating the problems, and "after internal discussions that included Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun, the company decided to delay the test flight" carrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
The issues seem rather serious to have been discovered weeks before Starliner was due to launch on an Atlas V rocket. The first involves "soft links" in the lines that run from Starliner to its parachutes. Boeing discovered that these were not as strong as previously believed. During a normal flight, these substandard links would not be an issue. But Starliner's parachute system is designed to land a crew safely in case one of the three parachutes fails. However, due to the lower failure load limit with these soft links, if one parachute fails, it's possible the lines between the spacecraft and its remaining two parachutes would snap due to the extra strain.
The second issue involves P-213 glass cloth tape that is wrapped around wiring harnesses throughout the vehicle. These cables run everywhere, and Nappi said there are hundreds of feet of these wiring harnesses. The tape is intended to protect the wiring from nicks. However, during recent tests, it was discovered that under certain circumstances possible in flight, this tape is flammable.
Thanks to xanthos (Slashdot reader #73,578) for sharing the article.
The second issue involves P-213 glass cloth tape that is wrapped around wiring harnesses throughout the vehicle. These cables run everywhere, and Nappi said there are hundreds of feet of these wiring harnesses. The tape is intended to protect the wiring from nicks. However, during recent tests, it was discovered that under certain circumstances possible in flight, this tape is flammable.
Thanks to xanthos (Slashdot reader #73,578) for sharing the article.
Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not just launch anyway and when it blows up, declare the mission a success?
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Why not just launch anyway and when it blows up, declare the mission a success?
We considered it but it would violate a competitor's business method patent.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
I am optimistically surprised that the CEO is directly involved in the development of this craft. I honestly thought it was just Elon in the space industry being a CEO and also intimately familiar with the design and development of their companys crafts. Good on Dave Calhoun.
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
The ironic thing about this comment is, if they had done that earlier, those problems would likely have been discovered and resolved. Turns out, the iterative business process of the competitor is far superior an R&D regimen than what Boeing are doing.
You are claiming that just launching the damn thing would have uncovered the unfortunately flammable cable, or the inadequate safety line? Nonsense. Only unexpected events that nonflammable cables and strong enough safety lines are intended to protect against would have revealed these inadequacies. In a very complex system it is impossible to find all the problems by just "trying it and see" - there is no alternative to a well managed engineering program that pays attention to detail.
This should be easily understood by software devs here that assuring the reliability of software by just putting it into production and bug fixing it does not work. Only good coding practices and testing core functionality to prove that it works provides reliability.
The failure of Boeing and Starliner here is that despite huge budgets for development and years and years of work, they still did not get the basic management of the project right. This is simply management incompetence at multiple levels.
Re: Hmm (Score:2)
what exactly means "if they had done that" (Score:2)
guys,
this discussion boils down to what "that" in the phrase "if they had done that" means.
If it's a launch - as the grand-parent post suggests (Why not just launch anyway...) - then careysub is 100% correct.
If it's "some test", then saloomy is referring to a strategy that - obviously - might have prevented this.
Just my five cents...
Re: Hmm (Score:2)
Actually SpaceX did discover flaws in their parachutes during their experimental fairing recovery efforts.
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Turns out, the iterative business process of the competitor is far superior an R&D regimen than what Boeing are doing.
SpaceX used a more traditional development approach with crew dragon. Similar to Boeing's method for Starliner. Just more successful. The Starship lunar lander will also be more traditional, with probably a single unmanned test flight.
The "just launch it" approach being used now for Starship is indeed a whole other beast. Appropriate for launch vehicles, not so much for the human stuff.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Although your comment is an implied attack on SpaceX, they have the Dragon craft going regularly to the ISS. In fact, Starliner and Dragon were both started at the same time, with everyone thinking. Of Boeing as the safe option.
Also worth considering when examining SpaceX's process is the Falcon 9. It is has proven to be one of the safest and most reliable orbital rockets humans have produced. By most measures it is the most reliable. Is that a fluke? Not likely. Consider that SpaceX has a better record of landing its rockets than most other organizations have of launching. SpaceX has boosters that have flown 15 times. In an industry where you're doing well to get an engine to re-light a couple of times and to survive more than a few minutes of use, Falcon 9 boosters are approaching 50 ignitions and multiple hours of operation.
Anyone arguing that SpaceX doesn't know how to engineer for reliability and safety needs to show some strong evidence to overcome the massive evidence to the contrary.
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Although your comment is an implied attack on SpaceX, they have the Dragon craft going regularly to the ISS. In fact, Starliner and Dragon were both started at the same time, with everyone thinking. Of Boeing as the safe option.
More specifically the Starship. Falcon is fine but here they're exploring a whole new frontier of going ahead with a known insufficient launch pad and failed engines.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Orbital_Flight_Test_2
um...Boeing DID and it failed (Score:4, Informative)
Boeing and SpaceX competed with others and were the two winners for contracts to haul NASA astronauts to the ISS. NASA presumed Boeing was the "sure thing" with all the aerospace experience and therefore payed them more than twice as much money [arstechnica.com] for the service. Both SpaceX and Boeing were required to perform some tests, and they opted to perform others as confidence boosters, for SpaceX for example not only did a pad abort test, but they also did an in-flight abort test [successful] at Max-Q. One of the REQUIRED tests was an unmanned flight to the ISS before putting humans aboard - this was labeled the "orbital flight test", or OFT.
SpaceX flew a nearly perfect OFT with Dragon atop Falcon but Boeing, with apparently a great deal of overconfidence which led to insufficient testing and oversight, did not fare nearly as well. The Boeing OFT launched on 20 Dec 2019 with Starliner riding atop a ULA Atlas V. Having failed to synchronize the spacecraft's clock with the booster's clock, Boeing's Starliner went into an orbit from which it could not reach the ISS with the remaining fuel. Then it was discovered that a software error might cause the service module and capsule to run into eachother after separation - which could have lead to a fatal incident if crew were aboard. The mission was chopped short, and in the after-mission investigation, over 60 problems were found with the flight. Boeing tried to call this a 60% success, and wanted to go on to a crewed flight, but this was politically untenable and they had to re-fly the mission as OFT-2 which launched on 19 May 2022 and, while successful in reaching the ISS, nevertheless had more failures.
You made what you THOUGHT was a clever dig at SpaceX for the Starship and SuperHeavy test flight, but your comparison fails on multiple levels.
1. Crew launch to ISS is hardly a new thing, nor does it involve any unknowns. America has been sending astronauts to space and bringing them home for many decades and Boeing claims to be the heir to all that experience.
2. Starship+SuperHeavy is the largest and most-powerful rocket ever built by mankind - with PLENTY of unknowns and firsts. It's the first FULLY REUSABLE rocket, first man-rated orbital rocket burning methane, First orbital class rocket launched from a private facility in Texas, first rocket to use 33 first stage engines, etc.
3. Boeing and SpaceX both applied for, competed for, won, and signed, CONTRACTS with NASA to haul crew to and from the ISS. SpaceX has been doing this as promised for years now, and Boeing (who were scheduled and expected to do this first) has not yet done it even ONCE. At the pace Boeing is going, the ISS will be de-comissioned and de-orbited before Boeing can perform the number of flights they are contracted to - which makes this a rip-off of the taxpayers.
4. Boeing's Starliner is (like the SpaceX manned Dragon flights that regularly happen) taxpayer funded. While SpaceX has received a contract for a lunar lander (which they will provide as a Starship variant) the recent test flight you clearly alluded to was NOT on the tax payer's cash - it was a privately funded test of the Mars stack (and thus a private matter). If SpaceX want to light a pile of its own money on fire and can convince government regulators no innocent bystanders will be harmed, then they're perfectly free to do it (and of course, WE are perfectly free to fire-up the popcorn and watch it all on the big screen)
Soft links? (Score:3)
The parachutes are only connected via software?
Re: Soft links? (Score:2)
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Boeing processes are broken (Score:4, Insightful)
The parachute thing should have been caught early in the design stages. An FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) should have been done to identify the system behavior after one chute failure. The wire bundle wrapping should have been disqualified for being non-compliant with flammability specifications. Or did someone lose them after Apollo 1?
Re:Boeing processes are broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Boeing is a prime example of what happens when engineers stop running the company and the MBA suits come in. Intel is a close second.
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Re: Boeing processes are broken (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand having both issues late in the process.
Parachutes are still very poorly understood things. They behave chaotically and new failure modes keep being discovered. SpaceX had a very similar issue with parachutes where they discovered very late that 3 was insufficient for a safe landing in the case where one broke. It turned out that the case that their test had discovered affected all previous NASA capsules too. Apollo could quite easily it appears have had a failure where a parachute failed, and then the rest gave up in turn.
The tape wrapping issue I have far less sympathy for. How on earth did they not test the flammability of the stuff at all corners of their envelope yet?
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Apollo actually DID have a parachute failure on Apollo 15. But, fortunately, there was no failure cascade.
I hope it's not what it sounds like (Score:3)
Knowing the strength and flammability level of your parts and materials would normally be scheduled before putting hardware together.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: Technically, already built and launched. (Score:3)
Voyager 1 and 2 are almost certainly not the first interplanetary space craft, for multiple reasons.
1. Theyâ(TM)ll certainly be long out of juice by the time they reach another star system.
2. Later vehicles will travel faster than them, and overtake them on the way. Voyager 2 is moving at the best part of 16km/s. Even if it were aimed at Proxima Centauri (itâ(TM)s not) it would take 18,800 years to get there. Weâ(TM)d only need to launch a vehicle travelling 1% faster in the next 160 years
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Panel 13, aliens digging in ship's antique junk room, eventually to find strange alien device (that turns out to be something rather like a laptop computer).
Panel 14, alien plugs USB thumb drive into computer.
*ahem*
Panel 14a. Alien attempts to plug USB thumb drive into computer, fails.
Panel 14b. Alien flips USB thumb drive over, attempts to plug USB thumb drive into computer, fails.
Panel 14c. Alien flips USB thumb drive over, then plugs USB thumb drive into computer.
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It's interesting to speculate on whether we could build a multi-generational spaceship. The larger the craft, the more superstructure you need, which means the more massive it is (and the less usable space you have), which means the more fuel you need to achieve any given velocity. It also means you need larger, heavier engines if you're going to perform any sort of manoevering, which also pushes the mass up.
The faster you travel, the greater the problem from micrometeorites and other solar system debris, w
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if they use it long enough, though, eventually they'll have a "record liner' . . . :)
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you're not going to space today (Score:2)
If your GLASS tape has caught fire, you probably have other more serious matters to be dealing with
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If your GLASS tape has caught fire, you probably have other more serious matters to be dealing with
I would consider the adhesive, which is a thermosetting acrylic [hansford.hk].
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If this was spacex, they would just installl a few more cameras and sensors, launch, take useful engineering data, and use it to iterate on the next design. That’s what you do when you have an agile team and the system only costs a hundred million. When your team is built around 1970s technology and business processes, and your rocket costs 100 TRILLION DOLLARS (pinky lod
Re:you're not going to space today (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if SpaceX somehow manages to blow it completely, (which at this point is increasingly unlikely) at least their predecessor will benefit from a massive amount of R&D they leave behind.
They're not the least bit shy about flying with *numerous* untested designs at the same time in their test flights, with full expectations that SOMETHING will terminate the mission, while having tons of cameras, sensors, and telemetry to shovel in that tasty, tasty data. That's how you move ahead by leaps and bounds.
In rocket science, progress is not measured in your successes, it is measured in how quickly and how many sacrifices you make to the gods of the atmosphere, for the purpose of collecting data and expanding your knowledge.
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Some things you can't test on the ground, but it's way cheaper and safer when you can.
Running a strength test on a parachute assembly part is, forgive the phrase, not rocket science.
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from an earlier post by beelsebob: "Parachutes are still very poorly understood things." ( https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org] )
Seems it IS rocket science
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The fluid dynamics involved in parachute deployment are somewhere between frighteningly complex and absolutely chaotic. Three chutes at the same time instead of one just makes things all that much more insane. I think all they can do at this point is start with a good design and tweak it around until it starts to stabilize and behavie consistently, even if they don't understand WHY it works.
And of course this has the unfortunate side-effect that you can't change ANYTHING on it without extensive testing si
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If spacex doesnt pan out, we’ll be glad we paid for this extremely expensive insurance policy. Damn, it’s painful to watch, though.
SpaceX Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 has already panned out. Starliner (aka Boeing Deathtrap) is the one not panning out and quite late.
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Remember Apollo 1 [wikipedia.org]. All sorts of things that aren't flammable under conditions usually found on Earth become flammable in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, even at low pressure. It says "under certain circumstances possible in flight" which could involve exposure to a different gas composition to normal Earth atmosphere.
Re: you're not going to space today (Score:2)
To be fair, since Apollo 1 they stopped using pure oxygen atmospheres; and maybe Boeing should have tested their cabling in the environment it would eventually fly in.
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For sure, working out whether the materials are safe in flight conditions is something you're supposed to do before building the spacecraft, not after.
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Apollo 1 was a high pressure Pure O2 atmosphere at the time. On the pad it was pressurized to 16.7 psi pure O2. At that pressure pretty much everything becomes flammable.
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Was the high pressure (2psi above atmospheric pressure IIRC) just because the capsule was only designed to operate with higher internal pressure than external pressure (it's always going to be the case in space, so may as well make it operate that way in the atmosphere as well), or was there some other reason for it?
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Not sure. Probably. Post-fire, they switched to a 60/40 nitrox mix and vented the nitrogen during ascent.
flammable tape (Score:3)
Most likely the tape is rated non-flammable by ratings organizations. The problem is that is in a normal atmosphere. In a pure oxygen or oxygen-rich atmosphere that can be different. For all we know, SpaceX uses the same tape.
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The Starliner does not use a pure (or even rich) oxygen atmosphere. It uses "cabin pressure of 96.5 kPa (14.0 psia) to 102.7 kPa (14.9 psia), ppO2 of 19.4 kPa (2.82 psia) to 22.7 kPa (3.30 psia), ppCO2 not to exceed 4 mmHg" in accordance with "ISS Crew Transportation and Services Requirements Document The ISS Crew Transportation and Services Requirements Document (CCT-REQ-1130)". CTS craft have fo conform to the ISS atmosphere composition, which is earth-normal (sea level) pressure and oxygen/nitrogen mix.
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Thanks for that info.
Flaw discovered (Score:2)
Now pay us more money for disposable rockets you stupid taxpayers.
Pork Barrel Spending (Score:4, Informative)
If SpaceX hadn't come along, we'd be stuck trying to buy Soyuz seats from Russia during a proxy war.
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testing failures all the time (Score:5, Informative)
I work at a place that does third-party testing. We test all kinds of things that go to space. We do a lot of testing of cable harnesses. I can't tell you how many times parts that are 'already on a vehicle with a scheduled launch date' fail in testing. We do not usually test parts to failure, usually the goal is to match some real-world profile. The solution is always the same in these cases, the customer changes the test parameters to where their part will pass.
I know we test a certain kind of valve in our facility, that failed during an at-temperature test in our lab. The customer blamed our facility and our process and took that work somewhere else, we did have some data logging issues separately due to a failed laptop hard disk. That part later failed in the real world in the same way it failed in our facility. We missed some data but the issue was real.
Based on my experience, they'll run with that tape anyway, someone will come up with stats showing a low likelihood compared to the cost and schedule slip. But safety dictates that the parachute issue will be addressed.
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But safety dictates that the parachute issue will be addressed.
How many people have we lost to parachute failures on re-entry? Zero, IIRC. How many have we lost to flammable spacecraft contents?
Now, if you are an aircraft manufacturer and you add in electrical faults and resulting fires that have resulted in hull/crew/passenger losses, the track record is abysmal.
yes a very serious problem (Score:2)
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Starliner is a fixed price contract, so they're not getting it. The delays have been costing Boeing a fortune.
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space qualified
Not just space qualified, but human rated [wikipedia.org]. I could care less if Musk blows up a cargo of Starlink satellites.
At this point ... (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be easier (and cheaper) for Boeing to simply by Dragon capsules from SpaceX, a stencil kit and some spray paint?
Boeing management are termites. (Score:2)
correction (Score:2)
McDonnell Douglas management are termites.
The Boeing we all knew and loved was an engineer-centric company when founded by William E. Boeing [wikipedia.org] in 1916. This was the Boeing that built the famous and reliable planes ranging from the B-17 to the 747.
As often happens after a founder of a publicly-traded company departs [for ANY reason], the board of directors (representing the investors who often know and care very little about the business the company is in) play stupid games and win stupid prizes. This usually