Boeing Spacecraft Carrying Two Astronauts Lifts Off On Historic Maiden Voyage (cnn.com) 68
Slashdot readers destinyland and LazarusQLong share a report from CNN: The third attempt was the charm for Boeing's Starliner mission after launching its first crewed flight test Wednesday in a milestone that has been a decade in the making. The new spacecraft's maiden voyage with humans on board lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are riding aboard the Starliner capsule on a journey that takes them to the International Space Station. The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing's efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States' options for ferrying astronauts to the space station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The federal agency's initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners.
The flight marks only the sixth inaugural journey of a crewed spacecraft in US history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted in a May news conference. "It started with Mercury, then with Gemini, then with Apollo, the space shuttle, then (SpaceX's) Dragon -- and now Starliner," Nelson said. Williams also made history as the first woman to fly aboard such a mission. NASA has a live recording of the launch on YouTube.
Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are riding aboard the Starliner capsule on a journey that takes them to the International Space Station. The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing's efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States' options for ferrying astronauts to the space station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The federal agency's initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners.
The flight marks only the sixth inaugural journey of a crewed spacecraft in US history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted in a May news conference. "It started with Mercury, then with Gemini, then with Apollo, the space shuttle, then (SpaceX's) Dragon -- and now Starliner," Nelson said. Williams also made history as the first woman to fly aboard such a mission. NASA has a live recording of the launch on YouTube.
Historic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Historic? (Score:5, Funny)
Historic? No. It was historic 55 years ago. This is just a late, really late, also-ran spacecraft.
It's Boeing, they're celebrating that the door stayed on -- so far anyway.
A bunch of stuff did fall off the vehicle on the way up, like boosters, first stage, etc... but they say that was all planned.
Re:Historic? (Score:4, Informative)
It's Boeing, they're celebrating that the door stayed on -- so far anyway.
I hear they packed an Inanimate Carbon Rod just in-case the door has any issues.
Re:Historic? (Score:5, Funny)
"In Rod We Trust"
Re:Historic? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: I can't wait (Score:2)
for the Starliner Max-8!
but why? (Score:2)
but why, can anyone tell me, do they all sound like Mickey Mouse when the radio back down? :)
Re:Historic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Historic? No. It was historic 55 years ago. This is just a late, really late, also-ran spacecraft.
It makes the first time that the U.S. has two different vehicles operational at the same time that are capable of launching humans into space.
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Historic? No. It was historic 55 years ago. This is just a late, really late, also-ran spacecraft.
It makes the first time that the U.S. has two different vehicles operational at the same time that are capable of launching humans into space.
It marks the first time in 50+ years of space travel that the U.S. happened to schedule two at the same time.
For what taxpayers have paid so far, big fat fucking hairy deal.
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Historic? No. It was historic 55 years ago. This is just a late, really late, also-ran spacecraft.
It makes the first time that the U.S. has two different vehicles operational at the same time that are capable of launching humans into space.
It marks the first time in 50+ years of space travel that the U.S. happened to schedule two at the same time.
For what taxpayers have paid so far, big fat fucking hairy deal.
The truly bizarre moment will be in 2025, when the U.S. will simultaneously have *three* different vehicles capable of ferrying humans to space (Artemis).
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You're assuming this craft stays intact over the next year. For the sake of every astronaut that is assigned to ride in this craft, I really hope that you're right.
Pedantically, as long as it stays intact for the next 15 hours (long enough to dock with ISS), it will still qualify as a vehicle capable of ferrying humans *to* space. It will, of course, have to stay intact for at least the next ten or eleven days to qualify as a vehicle capable of ferrying humans *from* space. :-D
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For what taxpayers have paid so far, big fat fucking hairy deal
Hey! In fairness, some of that money actually went into worker's pockets. I mean, that $5M or $6M used to pay salaries makes a big difference to those rubes, er, I mean voters.
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Also rather exciting that the US will soon have at least three and possibly up to five different manned vehicles at once in the near future:
* Dragon
* Starliner
* Orion
* Starship
* Dream Chaser
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As for Starship... we'll see more tomorrow!
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Sierra Nevada did receive $1.4B in private investments to develop crew Dream Chaser a few years ago. That is significantly less than NASA awarded SpaceX ($2.6B) and Boeing ($4.2B) however those Commercial Crew contracts include 6 operational flights each, not just development. But I do consider Dream Chaser the least likely of the five to succeed.
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what you don't think that [*snort*] amazon, I mean Bezos, err, whatsisname and [*giggle*] Branson's toy are going to get there?
[wanders off laughing hysterically]
Re:Historic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Starliner is only the tenth vehicle design ever to bring a human to orbit: Vostok , Mercury, Voskhod, Gemini, Soyuz, Apollo, Space Shuttle, Shenzhou, Crew Dragon, then Starliner. The list is still so small that we can regard the first flight of any new Earth to orbit vehicle as historic, and the success or failure of this program will be closely studied by future system designers.
The relative conservatism of Starliner's approach doesn't negate the technical achievement, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. Not everything you try has to start with a clean sheet.
Re: Historic? (Score:3)
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I would say that these are a very brave crew.
Braver than say, Dragon capsuled crews?
There is a weird sort of thing where any issues that Spacex has are ignored (well, they really cheer when a Starship rapidly disassembles), but other manufacturers products are met with handwringing and assumed failures.
Spacex Fans might want to stop reading here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] A crew Dragon capsule exploded during a test.
The Starship shares one thing with its inspiration - the Soviet N1 Rocket, neither ever made it to orbit - yet anyhow.
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>but other manufacturers products are met with handwringing and assumed failures.
not that odd at all.
Everyone else is launching things that have supposedly reached the engineering stage where they're not *supposed* to break--so it *is* a significant failure.
Has SpaceX lost anything past that point, rather than the "let's see if and how this breaks?" stage?
I'm so glad... (Score:2)
I was watching an human interest segment on this batch of astronauts on the news and I thought, you know, I don't think I would sign up for this.
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Space travel isn't perfected. NASA likes to call them heroes, and in a way they are. A century from now, there'll still be a vacuum, and the bottom will retain its rocky reputation.
I hope commercialization makes it both safer, and makes it cheaper. The rewards that NASA touts are interesting, but the real reason for the money burned is that military attack from space could easily be a reality, and it would seem that world nuclear powers are no more peaceful now than when nukes became prevalent.
Hence my sig
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Honestly, there are so many safety measures in place that it would be extremely unlikely that there would be a failure resulting in fatalities. A whole lot of things would have to go wrong before that would happen. And they've done uncrewed flights, so most of the systems have been tested before.
It does feel like a near miracle that it actually took off, though. In general, there so many things that can fail, but most of them are detected before launch, so getting off the ground feels like the biggest hu
Re:I'm so glad... (Score:5, Insightful)
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A whole lot of things don't need to go wrong for something catastrophic to happen. A piece of foam took down the shuttle.
To be fair, a whole lot of things had to go wrong for that to happen, too. It's just that most of them happened in the design stage. This is why most new ships designed post-Challenger, much less post-Columbia, have gone back to the tried-and-true ablative heat shield approach, with a capsule on the top of the stack.
Re: I'm so glad... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the ablative heat shield on the single orbital Starliner capsule test to date showed ablation in excess of the planned amount.
At least there's nobody in SpaceX rockets when they disintegrate during development.
ULA are really tickling the dragon's tail here.
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I could be wrong, but I think you're confusing Starliner (Boeing) with Orion [reddit.com] (Lockheed Martin). That's the difference between the door falling off [wikipedia.org] and the engine falling off [wikipedia.org].
Re: I'm so glad... (Score:2)
You're right, I did exactly that. PEBKAC error code ID 10-T. Sorry for muddying the water.
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There seems to be less risk here though. They have a launch abort system so problems on the way up can be survived. The Shuttle was going to have ejector seats or an ejector cabin at one point, but it was dropped.
As they are headed for the ISS, if the craft is damaged and can't make a safe return they can instead use a Soyuz or even send another Starliner up. The Shuttle didn't have that option when it wasn't visiting the ISS, it just couldn't adjust its orbit enough.
The heatshield on Starliner is much simp
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Well, on the first test flight they set the clock wrong which caused the capsule to burn too much of its orbital maneuvering fuel so it couldn't reach ISS. They also caught a software bug that would have caused it not to be able to jettison the service module on reentry. NASA said either of those bugs, if they handn't been caught in time, could have caused the destruction of the capsule.
On the second test flight a couple of orbital maneuvering thrusters failed, then a couple of RCS thrusters failed while do
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Well, on the first test flight they set the clock wrong which caused the capsule to burn too much of its orbital maneuvering fuel so it couldn't reach ISS. They also caught a software bug that would have caused it not to be able to jettison the service module on reentry. NASA said either of those bugs, if they handn't been caught in time, could have caused the destruction of the capsule.
To be fair, this is what test flights are for. Fail early, fail often, fail spectacularly, and learn things from it so that you don't fail spectacularly later, when people are onboard. :-)
On the second test flight a couple of orbital maneuvering thrusters failed, then a couple of RCS thrusters failed while docking.
Before this third crewed test flight Boeing noticed some helium leaking from the maneuvering thrusters. While troubleshooting that someone noticed that if particular thrusters failed (and parts of the RCS system that backs it up) then the capsule might not be able to deorbit. Sound familiar?
During the previous scrubbed launch of this capsule, the manager of NASA's commercial spaceflight program said "Should we be wrong about something, we could handle up to four more leaks." [spaceflightnow.com] Well, we're halfway to four already, and they haven't reached ISS yet. Eep.
I wouldn't worry that much about it being able to deorbit.
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I think they've got that one covered. IIRC the rules for approaching the ISS is that you have to do it slowly enough that there's no braking after you start heading towards the station. That's also because you don't want to be spraying exhaust at the station.
Watch the door (Score:1)
Re:nerves of steel (Score:4, Insightful)
One must have nerves of steel to go on the first ride of a Boeing craft.
The ride up is easy. Atlas rockets have a long history of successful launches, and other than firing rockets to maneuver the craft into a higher orbit at the very end, all the capsule really has to do is sit there and not physically fall apart during the first 45 seconds after launch before the aerodynamic stress starts to drop off again (max q [wikipedia.org]).
It's the ride back down where I'd be nervous, because the capsule has to not melt or catch fire for a large chunk of the 16-minute reentry period, then successfully deploy a parachute that also must not have not melted or caught fire. :-D
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all the capsule really has to do is sit there and not physically fall apart during the first 45 seconds after launch
This is a Boeing product we're talking about here, so that's a taller request than one would think.
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That's not entirely true. It also has to not burn all its maneuvering fuel making its insertion burn at the wrong time. Or lose too many thrusters and not be able to make it's insertion burn. Or break too many thrusters making it's insertion burn so it can't make it's deorbit burn.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not entirely true. It also has to not burn all its maneuvering fuel making its insertion burn at the wrong time. Or lose too many thrusters and not be able to make it's insertion burn. Or break too many thrusters making it's insertion burn so it can't make it's deorbit burn.
I was intending to include all of the orbital maneuvering, velocity matching, docking, etc. under "other than firing rockets to maneuver the craft into a higher orbit at the very end", though I suppose it's more correct to say "firing rockets to go from an elliptical transfer orbit into a stable orbit at the right altitude." Or at least I think that's what's happening. I haven't actually looked at the flight path for Starliner. I'm just assuming.
Except for the last part of the docking, during which thing
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Technically the insertion burn, which the spacecraft has to do, is changing orbits, but it is required to get into a non-suborbital orbit. So if that fails, which it very nearly did on the first test, the best case is that the astronauts land in some unpredictable location.
So you're right, except for that one thing. Starliner rides up pretty passively, but it does have to do the last bit itself to get into orbit. After that most of the maneuvers are optional and the ones that aren't allow some troubleshooti
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One must have nerves of steel to go on the first ride of a Boeing craft.
The ride up is easy. Atlas rockets have a long history of successful launches, and other than firing rockets to maneuver the craft into a higher orbit at the very end, all the capsule really has to do is sit there and not physically fall apart during the first 45 seconds after launch before the aerodynamic stress starts to drop off again (max q [wikipedia.org]).
It's the ride back down where I'd be nervous, because the capsule has to not melt or catch fire for a large chunk of the 16-minute reentry period, then successfully deploy a parachute that also must not have not melted or caught fire. :-D
You are discussing all this with a Spacex fan. They have no problems. At least they don't admit to any.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, no. Questioning the quality of Boeing does not make one a SpaceX fan. This is not politics, there are no teams. No one here is claiming alliance with any faction. Stop trying to make everything an us vs. them team sport, its not. Turns out we are all on the same progress team, progress is never linear. But we don't need to risk lives.
The fucking valves in that Boeing craft are junk. I can't tell you how I know. You cannot wish space hardware into working they way it needs to work.
No need to risk lives? Get back to your safe room, because space is not safe. And it is interesting that you know the real truth, apparently NASA has no issues with them. Why is NASA putting thes astronauts in dealy peril, with your assurances of Boeing Junk, they must be doing it quite purposely. If you aren't a spacex fan - a true agnostic then my apologies - perhaps you just write like one. Anyhow, a pleasure triggering ya. Stay safe!
I wonder (Score:2)
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If any of those astronauts were deep inside thinking do I really want to do this?
That's exceedingly unlikely. You don't get through that program if you're unsure of yourself.
Being sure of themselves is not necessarily the same thing as being sure of the beancounters at Boeing. Just saying. :-)
heatshield whistleblowers... (Score:2)
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The type of person that completes the astronaut training program is the kind that would go to space on one of Wile E. Coyote's ACME rockets if necessary.
People laughed at the antics of Wile E. Coyote, but much of the science from that show has now been vindicated [nymag.com].
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Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
No I don't think they did think that. They've been involved in the development and testing of the capsule for years. They know the systems very well, and also the engineers working on it. They have confidence in their colleagues and in the hardware that they have been helping to develop. This despite the setbacks and the problems with the first launch. True it's been over budget and delayed, but it's still a good step forward.
I'm very glad the US will have two operational, man-rated launch vehicles and capsules. Now that we can no longer rely on Russia as a ally in this endeavor, it's important to have some redundancy. Should something bad happen to a SpaceX launch that puts a halt to launches for a year or two, there's another vehicle. Should something bad happen to starliner and halt it for a couple of years, SpaceX crew dragon will still be functioning. And when the third vehicle gets flying that will be even better.
They better hope not. (Score:1)
Boeing should be hoping that they are never associated with this day in history, and that anything it did today is soon forgotten and never remarked upon again. History remembers tragedies far better than expected, overdue successes of one company on the 300th+ time humans have done something over 60 years after it was first done.
I can see the discussion now... (Score:2)
This is an obvious tragedy. What happened during the attempted landing?
The front fell off.
The front fell off context. (Score:2)
Brilliant satire from John Clarke, much missed show
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
By "historic" you mean "historic disaster," right? (Score:2)
It has helium leaks now while on orbit.
Good luck with that.
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It has helium leaks now while on orbit.
Good luck with that.
On the plus side, when they meet the ISS astronauts, they'll all sound like Mickey Mouse, and hilarity will ensue.
Re: By "historic" you mean "historic disaster," ri (Score:1)
They know about the helium leaks. That was the cause of the previous mission abort. But they've concluded that the leak is inconsequential. A fix would have meant months of delay.
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I want to know why helium, rather than, say, argon, or some other gas that's not as hard to handle.
historic? (Score:2)
It's going to be both funny and historic when SpaceX has to send up a capsule to save them.