Boeing's Starliner Makes 'Picture Perfect' Landing - Without Its Crew (npr.org) 103
Boeing's "beleaguered" Starliner spacecraft "successfully landed in New Mexico just after midnight Eastern time," reports NPR:
After Starliner made a picture-perfect landing, Stich told reporters that the spacecraft did well during its return flight. "It was a bullseye landing," he said. "It's really great to get the spacecraft back...." He said while he and others on the team felt happy about the successful landing, "there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would've been the way we had planned it" with astronauts on board when it landed...
Now that Starliner is back on the ground, Boeing and NASA will further analyze the thrusters to see if modifying the spacecraft or how it's flown could keep the thrusters from overheating in the future.
Futurism explains why NASA wanted an uncrewed Starliner flight: While attempting to duplicate the issue at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, engineers eventually found what appeared to be the smoking gun, as SpaceNews' Jeff Foust details in a detailed new breakdown of the timeline. A Teflon seal in a valve known as a "poppet" expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer — a disturbing finding, because it greatly degraded the thrusters' performance.
Worse, without being able to perfectly replicate and analyze the issue in the near vacuum of space, engineers weren't entirely sure how the issue was actually playing out in orbit... While engineers found that the thrusters had returned to a more regular shape after being fired in space, they were worried that similar deformations might take place during prolonged de-orbit firings.
A lot was on the line. Without perfect control over the thrusters, NASA became worried that the spacecraft could careen out of control. "For me, one of the really important factors is that we just don't know how much we can use the thrusters on the way back home before we encounter a problem," NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox said, as quoted by SpaceNews.
Now CBS News reports that "the road ahead is far from clear" for Starliner: The service module was jettisoned as planned before re-entry, burning up in the atmosphere, and engineers will not be able to examine the hardware to pin down exactly what caused the helium leaks and degraded thruster performance during the ship's rendezvous with the station. Instead, they will face more data analysis, tests and potential redesigns expected to delay the next flight, with or without astronauts aboard, to late next year at the earliest.
"Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," Ken Bowersox, space operations director at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. "NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station," Bowersox added. In any case, the successful landing was a shot in the arm for Boeing engineers and managers, who insisted the Starliner could have safely brought Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.
Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, agreed that if the crew had been on board "it would have been a safe, successful landing."
Two details about the astronauts now waiting for their February return flight from the International Space Station.
Now that Starliner is back on the ground, Boeing and NASA will further analyze the thrusters to see if modifying the spacecraft or how it's flown could keep the thrusters from overheating in the future.
Futurism explains why NASA wanted an uncrewed Starliner flight: While attempting to duplicate the issue at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, engineers eventually found what appeared to be the smoking gun, as SpaceNews' Jeff Foust details in a detailed new breakdown of the timeline. A Teflon seal in a valve known as a "poppet" expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer — a disturbing finding, because it greatly degraded the thrusters' performance.
Worse, without being able to perfectly replicate and analyze the issue in the near vacuum of space, engineers weren't entirely sure how the issue was actually playing out in orbit... While engineers found that the thrusters had returned to a more regular shape after being fired in space, they were worried that similar deformations might take place during prolonged de-orbit firings.
A lot was on the line. Without perfect control over the thrusters, NASA became worried that the spacecraft could careen out of control. "For me, one of the really important factors is that we just don't know how much we can use the thrusters on the way back home before we encounter a problem," NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox said, as quoted by SpaceNews.
Now CBS News reports that "the road ahead is far from clear" for Starliner: The service module was jettisoned as planned before re-entry, burning up in the atmosphere, and engineers will not be able to examine the hardware to pin down exactly what caused the helium leaks and degraded thruster performance during the ship's rendezvous with the station. Instead, they will face more data analysis, tests and potential redesigns expected to delay the next flight, with or without astronauts aboard, to late next year at the earliest.
"Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," Ken Bowersox, space operations director at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. "NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station," Bowersox added. In any case, the successful landing was a shot in the arm for Boeing engineers and managers, who insisted the Starliner could have safely brought Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.
Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, agreed that if the crew had been on board "it would have been a safe, successful landing."
Two details about the astronauts now waiting for their February return flight from the International Space Station.
- NPR reports that "in case the space station suffers an emergency that forces an evacuation before that capsule arrives, the station's crew had to jerry-rig two extra seats in a different SpaceX spacecraft that's currently docked there."
- Space.com reports that when the uncrewed Starliner returned, "Among the gear that it carried home were the 'Boeing Blue' spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts have no need for them now. "The suits are not compatible," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in Dragon, and vice versa."
oh good.... (Score:5, Funny)
It only failed the important part of its mission, then.
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It only failed the important part of its mission, then.
It's interesting how people perceive these space companies differently. If Boeing has trouble with their 'Starliner' everybody ridicules and trash talks them even though they played it safe didn't risk any lives and yet still managed to retrieved the craft in a perfect landing. SpaceX blows up their 'Starship' on the launch pad, Elon then promptly declares it a shining success and if you lift a finger to ask a critical question two dozen Elon cultists appear in a puff of smoke and yell at you about how Spac
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So you might say... spin makes the world go 'round.
Re: oh good.... (Score:2, Insightful)
There's time to take significant risks, and theres time to have crossed all the Ts and dot all the i; and Boeing seems to skip those steps and put people's lives at risk due to their shoddy QA.
SpaceX has been performing quite well in comparison; their recent satellite launch failure is very much the exception.
If it were baseball you'd be bitching about them winning with their competitors getting zero runs because they weren't no hitters.
Re: oh good.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's time to take significant risks, and theres time to have crossed all the Ts and dot all the i; and Boeing seems to skip those steps and put people's lives at risk due to their shoddy QA.
I think that's difficult to tell. There certainly have been some problems but it's difficult to tell what the expected level is. It's very clear that SpaceX sends up multiple trial system and then measures what happens and fixes not just things that failed but *also* things that came close to failure.
The mega concerning thing here, at least for Boeing shareholders, was that Boeing has a model that they made which said that the system was safe to use. That model turned out in the end to have given the right answer. Even so, NASA engineers didn't trust it enough to rely on it and pointed out limitations in the model that Boeing hadn't pointed out. Those worries were enough to block the return of the astronauts. That means that Boeing Space division has seriously lost the trust of their main customer. More worryingly, it probably means that Boeing management still hasn't learned from recent problems and wasn't pushing the engineers to be as conservative as they possibly could be.
Re: oh good.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The mega concerning thing here, at least for Boeing shareholders, was that Boeing has a model that they made which said that the system was safe to use. That model turned out in the end to have given the right answer. Even so, NASA engineers didn't trust it enough to rely on it and pointed out limitations in the model that Boeing hadn't pointed out. Those worries were enough to block the return of the astronauts. That means that Boeing Space division has seriously lost the trust of their main customer. More worryingly, it probably means that Boeing management still hasn't learned from recent problems and wasn't pushing the engineers to be as conservative as they possibly could be.
I agree totally with your assessment but will put forward the observation that it is a bit worse than what you are stating. NASA and the Boeing Space Division management are not communicating well. This was obvious from the fact that in the meeting to decide whether or not to send the spacecraft home without astronauts Boeing was very very upset with NASA's decision. WAY before that meeting Boeing management should have informally gotten the message of what NASA wanted to do, why they wanted to do it and should have prepared themselves accordingly. The fact that they didn't shows that the Boeing Space Division management is either clueless or arrogant that they think their desired course of action will be followed without question by NASA. They found out otherwise.
The other thing that will happen now is that since NASA does not trust the Boeing Space Division anymore (which you very correctly pointed out), everything associated with that program from now on, no matter how minor, will be scrutinized massively.
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I don't know if this is what you were thinking of, but my immediate thought is worse than that. If what you say is true and they were completely surprised, it suggests that they tried to do a run around the engineers, likely got a manager to trust them and say "if that's true we'll make sure it's all accepted" and then when the NASA people talked together, the lessons of the space shuttle meant the engineers did speak up and didn't allow this through.
If this guess is correct. That sounds even worse for Boei
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If it were baseball, you'd be complaining that Boeing didn't allow any earned runs, even though they still lost the game. And if you know baseball, you know what I mean...
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When it blew up on the launchpad were there people in it? No? Then it was an acceptable, if annoying, failure state.
Re:oh good.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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2 of 3 flight computers weren't working correctly and one of the thrusters was still fubar. If that's confidence in their engineering I'd hate to see the alternative.
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The Starship that launches with people inside will likely be far more thoroughly tested than Boeing's next manned launch.
Likely? ... just, 'likely'? ... well that's (not) confidence inspiring.
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Starship blew up on the launchpad. Fancy a trip to Mars in that thing?
That's not what happened. See for yourself:
https://youtu.be/_krgcofiM6M&t... [youtu.be]
The concrete portion of the pad blew up basically because nobody had ever put that much heat and pressure against such a structure. Sure, there were static fire tests, but as in all static fire tests, they aren't at full force. It was already known that the pad would suffer some damage, hence the design and construction of a water-cooled pad was already underway before that launch happened, it just wasn't ready in time for the f
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Starship blew up on the launchpad.
When?
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When Elon fails, he admits it's part of the process. When Boeing fails, they have live crew on board. See the difference?
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When Elon fails, he admits it's part of the process. When Boeing fails, they have live crew on board. See the difference?
The hell he does. The launch list on Wikipedia kinda says it all: Launch outcome: Failure (SpaceX declared success) ... LOL!!"
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As if NASA never declared that they learned something important from a failure...
Boeing has also, but the question is, always, should they have learned that before launch?
Accounts seem to claim Boeing figured out the Teflon seal problem on the ground, in tests apparently not done before launch. Error.
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As if NASA never declared that they learned something important from a failure...
Boeing has also, but the question is, always, should they have learned that before launch?
Accounts seem to claim Boeing figured out the Teflon seal problem on the ground, in tests apparently not done before launch. Error.
Learning something from failure is one thing. Redefining the abject failure as a raging success is something only Elon could pull off.
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When Elon fails, he admits it's part of the process.
What stage is the process is he at with Twitter -- I mean "X" -- denial? :-)
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He's past the rotisserie stage, it's been stripped and prepped. Now to restore.
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https://www.space.com/boeing-s... [space.com]
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When it blew up on the launchpad were there people in it? No? Then it was an acceptable, if annoying, failure state.
That's true only if there was some explicit greater risk they were taking that they wouldn't normally take on a mission with Astronauts, for example flying with new untested components not yet certified for flights with people. Something that's quite likely of course. Otherwise explosions shouldn't be happening.
Re: oh good.... (Score:2)
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Vastly different to the modern aerospace industry perhaps. He would be perfectly at home among the guys from the 50's to 70's in testing methodology.
Re: oh good.... (Score:4, Informative)
Remember the race to the Moon? NASA's plan was to fail fast, iterate, win. Only the Saturn project would make 32 (?) launches.
SA-502, unmanned Apollo 6, suffered oscillations in boost phase, then the S-II suffered 2 out of five engine failures, requiring a longer burn, and fortuitously the failed engines were spaced so that the remaining three could control ascent, and the S-IVB burned longer also for orbital insertion, but failed to restart. If this were a manned flight, it would abort and the command module would have been separated by the escape tower.
Apollo 12 SA-507 was struck by lightning twice during ascent, the Service Module suffered a power interruption, but the mau7nch vehicle had no problems. But
Apollo 13, SA-508, suffered an engine out due to oscillations in the S-II stage, shut the engine down, burned longer, and was successfully placed into orbit. And this mission ultimately showed NASA's remarkable capabilities, back then, to solve problems and, despite not landing on the Moon, returning the crew to Earth. A successful failure, truly perhaps NASA's finest moment.
The planned Apollo 20 but repurposed as Skylab 1, SA-513, suffered damage to the S-II interstage adapter from a failed shield on the Skylab module, causing the planned separation of Skylab 1 to fail. but the S-II did place the entire assembly into orbit.
All in all, Saturn was a crowning achievement for NASA. Only now is anything like that being attempted, and Boeing is not meeting that level of success. SpaceX is making good progress. The difference in the approaches to the problem of large payload launches is, IMHO, showing the wisdom and miscalculations clearly.
NASA cannot claim that STS was such a success either, given the unfortunate failures and loss of life, and the root causes.
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Re: oh good.... (Score:2)
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For some reason with space stuff a single success is usually enough to get something rated for humans.
With aircraft they have to do much more extensive, repeated testing. It's not an American thing either, the Chinese and Russians are the same.
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For some reason with space stuff a single success is usually enough to get something rated for humans.
I'd say this is a gross oversimplification that only a simpleton would make and proceed explain why, but I've got a better idea: If it's so usual, can you give us a few examples?
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Re: oh good.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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They put a live crew on this mission, when anything other than a pad explosion would be success?
No, they failed to adequately test, hoped they would get away with it, and can take no credit for a successful return other than one out of one recoveries successful. Do you think they can launch again in a year, given the serious issues uncovered?
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Starship is supposed to land astronauts on the moon next year, and then return them to the Lunar Gateway.
The fact that it is delayed and the commercial passenger they had for a round the moon test flight has pulled out, seems to be largely ignored by SpaceX fans.
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Starship is supposed to land astronauts on the moon next year, and then return them to the Lunar Gateway.
The fact that it is delayed and the commercial passenger they had for a round the moon test flight has pulled out, seems to be largely ignored by SpaceX fans.
Officially the blocker is the Orion crew capsule. [smithsonianmag.com] However, I doubt Starship will be ready for the scheduled September 2026 moon landing.
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It is impossible to get all bugs resolved. All high priority bugs do need to be resolved.
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It's interesting how people perceive these space companies differently.
It's interesting how people perceive how the media covers these space companies differently.
Yes, there are a lot of Musk cultists out there. Yet I have never once since Musk first appeared on behalf of Tesla observed any shortage whatsoever of sneering naysayers who will pounce on the slightest bit of negative news attached to Musk. And if there is none handy they tend to make it up. They will eagerly seek out "experts" who will opine on record about how wrong he is on something or other.
Personally I'
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Declarations of when things will be done with him are a joke. It's at the point where one wonders why the fuck he keeps doing it.
Of course that aside, his successes also speak for themselves.
In fact, if Elon kept his mouth shut and didn't spew bullshit and laughable timelines, the guy would be lot more impressive.
It's definitely true the guy's got haters who hate him just because, and a cult of
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There's a method behind the madness. This isn't just an Elon thing, it's common throughout SpaceX, and I imagine probably Tesla as well: Set aggressive deadlines, try hard to hit them. If you miss, reassess and make another tight deadline to hit. The idea is this: If you set a more reasonably long deadline, you'll probably take up all of that time anyways, and still not finish. Nobody likes missing their own deadlines, especially when they tell somebody else about it, which helps you motivate yourself to keep moving.
Sorry, don't buy it.
Overpromising and under-delivering, and flat out lying is a well documented habit of his. He has a fragile ego, and he puffs it up how he can, is my opinion on the matter.
If you think it's sloppy, consider: SpaceX is breaking records and accomplishing world firsts.
Every corporation that has ever set a record or accomplished a world first before them has as well ;)
SpaceX is already by-definition an outlier, which doesn't lend *even a bit* of credibility there.
SpaceX didn't invent the rocket.
There was a first rocket, a first manned rocket, etc, etc, etc all before them.
Things happen a bit later than we say, but we're still first. We individually criticize ourselves more than you criticize us.
I think
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But Boeing wanted to take the risk of putting people in Starliner on the way down. NASA overrode their strong objections. SpaceX hasn't proposed risking people that way.
The fact that Starliner got down successfully (this time) doesn't change the the fact that Boeing wanted to take a risk that neither NASA nor SpaceX found acceptable.
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To be fair, The SpaceX explosions were of unmanned test flights, not flights where they swore blind everything was perfect and ready for manned flight.
That said, Musk's claims that the Starship tests were smashing successes is laughable.
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To be fair, The SpaceX explosions were of unmanned test flights, not flights where they swore blind everything was perfect and ready for manned flight.
That said, Musk's claims that the Starship tests were smashing successes is laughable.
I'm not really trying to make a case for Boeing having been faultless in the Starliner affari as I am having fun poking holes in Elon Musk's messianic reality distortion field so I have no trouble agreeing with that assessment.
Re: oh good.... (Score:2)
Re:oh good.... (Score:5, Insightful)
While this is to some extent true, standards for what is acceptable are very, very different for manned missions. It's perfectly reasonable to take more risks with *hardware* that you wouldn't with *people* if those risks speed up the program.
Reportedly Boeing wanted to return Starliner manned, and NASA overruled them. The fact that Starliner arrived safety does *not* vindicate Boeing's position here. NASA never said it was impossible for Starliner to land successfully; it never even said it was *improbable*. NASA's position was that the risks exceeded its standard for a manned flight. Boeing's position was that things would probably be OK.
You can reasonably argue that NASA's standards for risk were too stringent. That's a matter of opinion, and perhaps the standards should be revised. But if you discard your standard when it comes time to use it, then in fact you're operating without any standards at all. It's like the strike zone in baseball. There are arguments for making it larger and arguments for making it smaller, but the time to change it is not in the middle of a game.
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SpaceX blows up their 'Starship' on the launch pad, Elon then promptly declares it a shining success and if you lift a finger to ask a critical question
Preamble: Not an Elon cultist, I just work here. With that:
- This is SpaceX style iteration. Always was. And it works. NASA's been wanting to do this even.
- No one ever launched a rocket this size or this powerful. Ever. What criticism can you offer that's even remotely constructive? Answer: None. No other success to measure against. You can be an armchair rocket scientist at most. You have no idea what it would even take do this. Nobody has ever done it before.
- If you must ask a non-constructive critical
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It only failed the important part of its mission, then.
It's interesting how people perceive these space companies differently. If Boeing has trouble with their 'Starliner' everybody ridicules and trash talks them even though they played it safe didn't risk any lives and yet still managed to retrieved the craft in a perfect landing.
They "played it safe" not cos they wanted to. It's cos NASA forced them to. If Boeing had it's way, the 2 astronauts would still be in the Starliner, regardless how many issues it had.
https://nypost.com/2024/08/30/... [nypost.com]
Many other sources available.
Expectations are higher for Boeing. (Score:2)
Boeing is not some startup learning how to build systems. Failure on Boeing's part is almost a choice.
The use of the phrase "perfect" is soothing to the ignorant but without knowing non-catastrophic "imperfect" functions which did not happen this time the word has little meaning.
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Well... (Score:1)
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Mistatement (Score:1)
No, no no.
The correct phrase is "jury rig". There is no phrase "jerry-rig".
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Interestingly, Merriam-Webster has the adjective jerry-rigged [merriam-webster.com] but not the verb jerry-rig.
It does however have jerry-build [merriam-webster.com] .
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Interestingly, Merriam-Webster has the adjective jerry-rigged [merriam-webster.com] but not the verb jerry-rig.
It does however have jerry-build [merriam-webster.com] .
Actually, they also have 'jerry-rigged': https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com] -> : organized or constructed in a crude or improvised manner
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So it becomes clear that "jerry-rigged" is a confusion between "jerry-built" and "jury rigged" (which is a much older maritime phrase).
And Merriam-Webster swallowed it whole without checking properly.
Re: Mistatement (Score:5, Funny)
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Kind of a joke, but yes. The show had enough of a cultural impact (at least for old people like me) for the term to spread through the general consciousness and overtake its predecessor in common usage.
Though whatever you do, if you watch MacGuyver don't try anything he did. The majority of it wasn't actually possible.
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It's pronounced "MacGuyver."
...but it's written "Throatwarbler Mangrove" - or, alternatively, "McGyver"...
The correct term is "improvise" (Score:2)
Slang is of zero benefit in this discussion.
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2. If it's in Merriam-Webster, it is no longer slang.
A cunning plan (Score:5, Funny)
CAPCOM: What happens now?
Butch Wilmore: Well, now, Sunita and I wait until the capsule has landed, and then leap out of the capsule, taking the New Mexicans by surprise. Not only by surprise, but totally unarmed!
CAPCOM: Who leaps out?
Butch Wilmore: Erm, Sunita and ... I ... leap out of the capsule, and uh...
CAPCOM: <facepalms>
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Butch Wilmore: ...look, if we built a large wooden Dragon...
(Reference [youtube.com])
For variable values of "picture perfect"... (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, it not blowing up already qualifies. Expectations are really low on this thing.
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The good thing about pictures is they can't hear the buzzing noises the capsule is making.
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Heheheh, true.
Lowered Expectations (Score:2)
Anyone remember "Lowered Expectations" dating ads on Mad TV?
Also coming to mind is, "Aside from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"
Or "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."
Suit incompatibility (Score:5, Informative)
"Among the gear that it carried home were the 'Boeing Blue' spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts have no need for them now. "The suits are not compatible," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in Dragon, and vice versa."
This sounds like an area to be worked on; although it's probably not an easy fix. I'm not surprised tehy aren't, but it seems NASA should have made that a requirement at the start of the competition.
Re:Suit incompatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA is known for making double-extras-sure mistakes don't happen again, so after Apollo 13's "the oxygen scrubbers in the command module are square but the scrubbers in the LEM are round" fiasco, I'm amazed they let this slide.
There really ought to be a standard for space suit connections that insures they're interoperable. Funny we can push for compatible EV car chargers but not space suits???
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The trouble is that all the space stuff is bespoke prototypes. So demanding that it be done like the first one locks development into something that is almost guaranteed inferior. Though for something like spacesuits interoperability should have been a design parameter.
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You'd have figured that they'd have gotten a hint from Marooned [wikipedia.org]. Where a Soviet capsule pulls up alongside a crippled Apollo (Yeah I know. What are the odds?) and hooks up an oxygen supply. Having minimal basic systems be compatible opens up so many possibilities for unanticipated operations that it's probably worthwhile.
Or just send along a supply of USB-C adapters.
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but it seems NASA should have made that a requirement at the start of the competition.
What would be the point of designing something "new" only to be completely hamstrung by forcing compatibility with the "old". That's a great way to stifle development. If anything what NASA should do is chose a new standard suit and adapt all existing systems to them, not the other way around.
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but it seems NASA should have made that a requirement at the start of the competition.
What would be the point of designing something "new" only to be completely hamstrung by forcing compatibility with the "old". That's a great way to stifle development. If anything what NASA should do is chose a new standard suit and adapt all existing systems to them, not the other way around.
I agre, and that was my point. Have a standard new suit design so systems can adapt to tehm, ratehr than each craft have bespoke suits.
Not perfect (Score:5, Informative)
They landed in the place they were supposed to land and the capsule was intact.
But: they had issues with the flight computers. One of the three computers failed, and a second had intermittent issues.
And of course one of the thrusters still wasn't working.
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Well, marketing and PR is not about telling the truth. It is about telling the biggest lie they think they can get away with. Hence a somewhat crappy but successful landing becomes "picture perfect", because the lander did not blow up and the average person cannot tell the difference anyways.
Re:Not perfect (Score:5, Informative)
> And of course one of the thrusters still wasn't working.
No, not "still" it was a completely new failure, of a different engine. (the expected failures were on the service module, this one was on the capsule itself)
"A couple of fresh technical problems cropped up as Starliner cruised back to Earth. One of 12 control jets on the crew module failed to ignite at any time during Starliner's flight home. These are separate thrusters from the small engines that caused trouble earlier in the Starliner mission. There was also a brief glitch in Starliner's navigation system during reentry."
source: https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]
None of what you said is in the article you cited. (Score:1)
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The smoking gun? (Score:2)
An opportunity for Boeing (Score:3)
Re: An opportunity for Boeing (Score:2)
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how did it un-dock (Score:2)
I understood from early reports that one of the problems was that undocking could only be triggered from insisted inside the spacecraft, not ISS.
success (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this should be celebrated as a success it was a fine landing, there were some technical lessons to learn but the redundancy worked and the results speak for themselves.
What concerns me more is that I imagine Boeing will now threaten to take their bat and ball and go home unless NASA send them more cash
I hope the Astronauts all return home safely soon
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What concerns me more is that I imagine Boeing will now threaten to take their bat and ball and go home unless NASA send them more cash
And NASA will tell them to go pound sand. This was under a fixed-cost contract, Boeing is responsible for any cost overruns. And if anything, by not delivering a vehicle that can safely take astronauts into space and back, means they're in violation of it.
What is more likely is Boeing will pay the contract termination fees rather than throwing more hundreds of millions at Starliner.
learned (Score:2)
""Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," "
Translation: we learned nothing because we don't have the thrusters in hand, but we were under a lot of pressure.
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The abillity to examine the problem is important (Score:2)
Alternative explanation (Score:1)
If no crew, no problem, then the problem was the crew ðY£
The "successful" landing does not actually matter (Score:2)
There is a much bigger problem with Starliner and it was fully-exposed by this flight... the actual problem is that Boeing is no longer trustworthy in the eyes of NASA.
1. The helium leaks were known ahead of the launch, but Boeing assured NASA the mission could go ahead anyway. NASA trusted that Boeing had done all the engineering work and fully-understood the problem. Once the mission was underway, it became clear that Boeing did not understand the problem and had not even done some rather basic analysis b