[HN Gopher] NASA says Boeing Starliner astronauts may fly home o...
___________________________________________________________________
NASA says Boeing Starliner astronauts may fly home on SpaceX in
2025
Author : lode
Score : 368 points
Date : 2024-08-07 19:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Responsive FOIA emails and related artifacts are going to be a
| treat when this is wrapped up.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Who is the alternative vendor for travel to low earth orbit after
| SpaceX? It is not going to be Boeing from the look of things.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| At this rate SpaceX will have two certified manned launch
| vehicles (Crew Dragon, Starship) by the time any other
| providers have a functioning platform.
|
| (yes it will be years before Starship is human-certified... but
| Starliner has already had MORE years)
| wongarsu wrote:
| And Starship is already putting in some work for the lunar
| lander variant of the Starship. Sure, launching humans from
| the moon has different requirements and contingency plans
| than launching them from earth, but having a lunar lander
| ready in ~2027 is going to make it a lot easier to then
| human-rate it for earth-based launches.
| verzali wrote:
| Starship won't work for the ISS, it is just too big and will
| create all sorts of control issues if it does dock.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Sierra Nevada?
| bell-cot wrote:
| [Assuming that you're referring to Sierra Space and their
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Chaser#Crewed_version]
|
| Note that the Crew version still seems to be aspirational.
| And the base-model Cargo version isn't exactly flying in the
| fast lane, either - "[first] demonstration mission is planned
| for launch no earlier than 2025."
|
| And note that it took SpaceX almost 10 years to go from
| Demo-1 of their Cargo Dragon to Demo-1 of their Crew Dragon.
| FrameworkFred wrote:
| Stuck Rocket IPA w/ mostly Apollo and Atlas hops, but a bit
| of a Cluster addition at flame out...and, this time, no
| Challenger or Columbia
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Well played . . .
| __d wrote:
| Sierra's Dream Chaser Cargo System variant was due to launch
| on the second Vulcan test flight this year, but it was
| recently announced that it wouldn't be ready for that. It's
| now vaguely scheduled for 2025.
|
| The crew version of Dream Chaser is kinda on hold as they try
| to get the cargo version flying (they say they're still
| working on it, but I guess the cargo version is first
| priority): it'll take a bunch of work to get it completed and
| certified, but it _should_ be less than starting from
| scratch.
|
| Once flying, they've got a NASA contract to run 6 resupply
| missions to the ISS (assuming they can get it flying in time
| before ISS is deorbited), plus a single flight contract with
| the UN (!)
|
| Both Dream Chaser and Starliner are proposed as crew
| transports for Blue Origin's Orbital Reef station.
| mrpippy wrote:
| If Boeing wants out after this debacle, maybe Blue Origin would
| be interested in buying the program/IP?
|
| Starliner is launching on ULA rockets (Atlas today, Vulcan
| likely in the future) anyway, and BE is rumored to be
| purchasing them too.
| thedman9052 wrote:
| ULA is one thing, they are highly successful and established.
| Starliner is a lemon. I think it would be better for them to
| develop a capsule based on their own New Shepard vehicle.
| __d wrote:
| I think it's mostly a question of how NASA assesses the
| vehicle: is it going to be an endless series of patches on
| a fundamentally flawed base? Or is it somewhere over 50%
| done, with some software cleanup, thruster fixes, and some
| decent QA and then good to go?
|
| Rejigging New Shepard with appropriate docking, heat
| shielding, maneuvering thrusters, life support, power,
| cooling, etc, etc, etc, is a huge project. Certainly it's a
| head start, but I think it'd be a ground-up redesign with
| that as experience and maybe a starting point for beefed-up
| parts.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 2010 article, "6 Private Companies That Could Launch Humans
| Into Space":
|
| <https://www.space.com/8541-6-private-companies-launch-
| humans...>
|
| That lists SpaceX, Orbital Sciences (since merged into Northrup
| Grumman), Blue Origin (which remains suborbital, though the
| orbital New Glenn is due for launch this year and Blue Moon is
| in development), Bigelow Aerospace (defunct), SpaceDev/Sierra
| Nevada Corporation (active, but struggling?), and Virgin
| Galactic (suborbital space tourism).
|
| Wikipedia has a maintained list of current private spaceflight
| ventures, principally SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab*, Virgin
| Galactic, Axiom Space*, and Sierra Space. (Starred are
| additions to the space.com article's list).
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight>
| thedman9052 wrote:
| Lockheed has Orion, they could modify it for Vulcan or Falcon.
| Overkill for LEO but at least it's functional. Realistically
| NASA will have to go through another round of requests for
| proposal, though I don't know how much interest there will be
| after Boeing's troubles and with ISS disposal looming.
| verzali wrote:
| I've seen papers outlining an Orion docking to the ISS. It
| was considered as part of the conops back when Orion was part
| of Constellation rather than Artemis.
|
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070025134/downloads/20.
| ..
| cryptonector wrote:
| Right now, without further development _time_? Russia.
| __d wrote:
| Boeing has a decision to make: keep investing in Starliner, or
| cut the program now, and avoid having to do a bunch of rework
| to fix it plus at least one more test flight (and possibly
| two?) on their own dime.
|
| It's not really clear (to me) how likely either of those
| outcomes is right now.
|
| IF they drop it, then I would expect NASA to run a new
| commercial crew program. They need redundancy, and they don't
| want to be running the development process themselves.
|
| Dream Chaser Space System (their crewed variant) is almost
| certainly the best-placed candidate to win an award from that
| program: they have an almost-flying cargo variant that was
| originally designed to be human rated, and existing plans to
| complete the crewed variant.
|
| SpaceX _might_ get some money for Starship, although I would
| expect NASA to try to write the rules such that they 're not
| eligible. While having two options from a single company is
| better than just one, a fully-independent option would be
| better.
|
| Blue Origin has some experience with the New Shepard capsule,
| and is working on their Blue Moon lander: I expect that they
| would cobble together a proposal, and perhaps between their
| previous experience in losing bids due to over-pricing, and
| NASA's experience with Starliner's fixed-price failure, the
| price might end up somewhere in the middle?
|
| Maybe Northrop-Grumman would propose a Cygnus-derived vehicle?
| It'd need a human-rated launcher -- Dream Chaser would likely
| be using Vulcan, and Falcon9 is a dependency on SpaceX. NG
| would probably like to use its own Antares 330 booster, but
| then they'd be running both a crew vehicle and a booster
| program which is a lot of money and risk.
|
| It's not entirely implausible that someone buys Starliner from
| Boeing, and attempts to complete the development (if Boeing
| gives up). Blue Origin is possibly the most likely candidate?
| They have Jeff's cash mountain, and a kinda compatible "old
| space" culture -- if Boeing is willing to sell it at a
| reasonable price, it's possibly a cheap way to get 80% of the
| way there?
|
| Given the results from this commercial crew round (a likely 50%
| success), funding two programs with the expectation of one
| success seems reasonable. Whether they are able to get
| commercial interest in a fixed-price award like last time is an
| open question, as is who might apply.
|
| Interesting times.
| skissane wrote:
| > Boeing has a decision to make: keep investing in Starliner,
| or cut the program now
|
| They can't cut the program. They are contracted to NASA. If
| they try to bail out, they'll be breaching a major federal
| government contract, which could have serious negative
| consequences for their ability to win future federal
| contracts - not just NASA, but more importantly the Pentagon
| too.
|
| If Boeing really wants out, the only plausible way is they
| convince NASA management to cancel the contract. That way
| Boeing can officially claim that they performed adequately,
| and the cancellation was due to NASA's own decision, not
| their own failures.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > If Boeing really wants out, the only plausible way is
| they convince NASA management to cancel the contract. That
| way Boeing can officially claim that they performed
| adequately, and the cancellation was due to NASA's own
| decision, not their own failures.
|
| Alternatively they could convince a judge that NASA was
| being unreasonable by not certifying and completing this
| flight, if this goes to court, which many federal
| contracting squabbles do.
| skissane wrote:
| That would be a very high risk move - significant chance
| a federal judge says "I refuse to second guess NASA's own
| engineers on astronaut safety". In the unlikely event
| they prevail at the District Court level, I doubt it
| would be held up on appeal. And if they lose, their
| reputation will be even more in tatters than it already
| is.
| notfried wrote:
| I know it is a privilege and a rare opportunity to go into space,
| but it strikes me as something that should be compensated for at
| higher than the going rate of astronaut salaries of
| $100-$150K/year. They overpay for every bolt but count the
| pennies when it comes to the salaries.
| addaon wrote:
| The compensation they offer doesn't seem to interfere with
| their ability to get the candidates they want. Why spend more?
| walrus01 wrote:
| Your average astronaut can easily walk into a $300k/year
| management job in some aerospace or technology related industry
| a short time after "retiring", on the other hand. Higher
| profile ones even more so.
| renewiltord wrote:
| We spoke to a former cosmonaut in HFT. He was doing well. Moved
| here to the US, though.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| We? HFT?
| 100721 wrote:
| HFT is usually high frequency trading in tech and business
| communities.
|
| Not sure if that's what the above poster means.
| Max-q wrote:
| The opportunity to go to space is worth so much that I think
| they would get qualified people to do it for free, maybe even
| pay to have the job. So I don't think there is a need to pay
| more than a regular "good salary".
|
| I would gladly have done it for $100k.
| layer8 wrote:
| That's not how salaries work though. Supply and demand.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Government salaries are more about politics and bureaucracy.
| And they often intentionally ignore supply and demand, paying
| the same amount for similar jobs, regardless of the field.
| beAbU wrote:
| I will be an astronaut for $0 a year. Please pick me. If NASA
| is looking save more money they will save a ton with me.
| Zealotux wrote:
| Is this possibly the end for the Starliner project? I can't
| imagine Boeing saving face after that.
| Max-q wrote:
| I would be willing to bet quite much on cancellation.
| mrpippy wrote:
| After all this, even in the best case (Starliner returns
| successfully with Butch and Suni), it's hard to see that NASA
| would consider it vetted and ready for an operational (non-
| test) flight.
|
| They still haven't figured out a root cause for the thruster
| failures, and they won't be getting the faulty flight hardware
| back to examine it. Is Boeing willing to put substantial
| engineering time into fixing/re-designing the thrusters, and
| then flying another 2-person test flight? I guess we'll find
| out soon...
| o23jro2j3 wrote:
| I think you're grossly underestimating how many bribes, er,
| excuse me, campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, and wine
| and dines Boeing has done. They could kill everyone on board
| ISS and crash six more planes and the US government would
| continue to bank roll them for years to come.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _underestimating how many bribes, er, excuse me, campaign
| contributions, lobbying efforts, and wine and dines Boeing
| has done_
|
| You're spitballing. Starliner was pushed by NASA, not
| electeds. Boeing is currently in the shitter with the public
| and thus the Congress.
|
| Even if you're cynical beyond evidence, the hypothesis
| doesn't hold: Boeing's competitors are deep pocketed and
| connected too.
| lostemptations5 wrote:
| "competitor" (-s) no?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is this possibly the end for the Starliner project?_
|
| No. Remember, these are fixed-price contracts. NASA will force
| Boeing to fix the problem on its own dime.
|
| Which is fitting, as Starliner is the stupidest space programme
| in present existence.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Starliner is stupider than Artemis and SLS?
| beAbU wrote:
| More stupid than SLS?
| zarzavat wrote:
| I suspect that NASA may want to keep Starliner around, given
| that SpaceX is owned by a man who seems to be getting ever more
| unhinged by the day and has a history of making highly
| questionable business decisions.
| big-green-man wrote:
| Hopefully that doesn't factor into their calculus at all. I'd
| like space programs to be run by practical people who value
| merit over noise, and I personally don't care if a space
| transport system is owned by Ronald McDonald as long as it
| works right. Boeing is a very respectable company or so I've
| heard. I'm sure their executives watch what they say in
| public and wear the proper in fashion business suits as
| expected. I would still rather hop on a spacex vehicle right
| about now. If you're right and they care about Musk owning
| Twitter and saying inappropriate shit out loud, I'd say that
| would reduce my trust in NASA.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > practical people who value merit over noise,
|
| How wouldn't that be a part of a perfectly rational risk
| analysis though?
|
| It's like saying (of course on a very different scale) that
| NASA should be buying rockets from Russian/Chinese/etc.
| companies/government as long as they offer a good
| price/quality ratio etc. Which would be an immensely stupid
| thing to do regardless of how good the actual rockets were.
|
| > Twitter and saying inappropriate shit out loud
|
| Or possibly more importantly doing inappropriate shit both
| publicly and not.
|
| In general companies that are purely driven by their
| management's desire to maximize profits/shareholder
| value/their bonuses are fairly predictable and can be
| expected to behave rationally under most circumstances.
| However you might not want to rely too much on company
| owned by someone (hard to tell which ones are correct so
| pick any):
|
| - willing to burn billions to either to prove some bizarre
| point - makes impulsive decisions worth billions under the
| influence of drugs - is willing to spend large amounts of
| money to manipulate public opinion (and/or undermine
| democracy and the rule of law)
|
| (at least long-term anyway...)
| mopenstein wrote:
| If you disagree with someone's political opinion, obviously
| they aren't fit to do anything of constructive value.
| wwtrv wrote:
| Why? It would just seem silly not to take include the
| fact the CEO of the company you are relying on
| continuously behaves in an erratic and unpredictable
| manner (and is also trying to undermine democratic
| institutions but that's besides the point...) into your
| risk estimates.
| naasking wrote:
| > SpaceX is owned by a man who seems to be getting ever more
| unhinged by the day
|
| How so? Surely you're not claiming that shitposting on
| Twitter/X is some kind of objective assessment of a person's
| mentality?
| kube-system wrote:
| I agree in that his shitposting isn't indicative of any
| change. Musk has _always_ been a wildcard. That 's part of
| the reason how he's made it to the position he's in now to
| begin with.
| michaelt wrote:
| Even if the tweets are just locker room talk
|
| if the CEO of a business whose primary revenue source is
| money from advertisers
|
| tells advertisers to fuck off
|
| and when they do instead of apologising or rolling anything
| back, sues them over it
|
| and if this is part of a pattern of unpredictable behaviour
|
| covering everything from calling a cave rescue diver a
| paedophile
|
| to accidentally buying a $44 billion company while trying
| to prank the SEC to make a point
|
| some would say that is not the level of boring, levelheaded
| rationality you want
|
| from the man who can decide whether your astronauts get
| home or not
| naasking wrote:
| > and if this is part of a pattern of unpredictable
| behaviour
|
| This is just re-asserting the opinion that he's unhinged
| rather than shitposting for entertainment. Nothing you've
| presented suggests anything "unhinged", and investors can
| decide for themselves if his "risky behaviour" warrants
| their money.
|
| > from the man who can decide whether your astronauts get
| home or not
|
| If you seriously think Musk would decide to not assist,
| you're deluded. Not only would he not do this for
| personal ethical reasons and his interest in space
| exploration, he knows most of his staff would resign in
| protest, and that would also be the end of SpaceX's
| government contracts, and thus basically the end of
| SpaceX.
|
| If he's truly unhinged as you claim, then you can expect
| that this will happen sometime soon. I won't hold my
| breath.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> he knows most of his staff would resign in protest,
| and that would also be the end of SpaceX 's government
| contracts, and thus basically the end of SpaceX._
|
| I agree - it would be completely irrational.
|
| I just think Musk does irrational things from time to
| time.
|
| There's nothing wrong with that, it's his right as a
| private individual. I do irrational things myself
| sometimes.
|
| But if I was at NASA in charge of manned space flight
|
| and you gave me a choice of staking my crew's safety on
| Musk alone, or Musk but with Starliner as a backup option
|
| I would keep the backup option around
| rangestransform wrote:
| I hope the astronauts are completely intolerant of their
| lives being risked for political points
| hersko wrote:
| > has a history of making highly questionable business
| decisions.
|
| I get people don't like Musk, fine. But pretending that he
| has a history of making bad business decisions is ludicrous.
| He is by far the most successful business man alive (and
| maybe in history). This is just a fact. You can point out
| plenty of his faults, but his business acumen is clearly not
| one of them.
|
| Just as an example: I'm old enough to remember when everyone
| said Twitter was going to completely break in a week after he
| fired >50% of the engineers to cut costs. How long ago was
| that? Also, whether you like the changes or not, there seems
| to be far more productivity and new features since Musk
| bought Twitter than the previous years with the old
| management and far larger headcount.
| zarzavat wrote:
| He's currently suing his own customers for alleged
| antitrust violations after they stopped doing business with
| him because they judged that being associated with his
| platform was bad PR.
|
| Twitter also triggered race riots in the UK and instead of
| being halfway apologetic about this, he has been spreading
| conspiracy theories on his personal account. This is likely
| to lead to a significantly more hostile legal environment
| in the future.
|
| He is also being sued by the EU for changing blue
| checkmarks from a badge of verification to a paid feature,
| confusing users.
|
| and that's just this week!
| hersko wrote:
| That's not why he is suing them. It is an anti trust suit
| where he is alleging illegal conspiracy.
|
| The man runs 3 multibillion dollar businesses that are
| being sued all the time. I don't think any of these will
| have large or even noticeable impacts on the companies.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| He's suing an NGO-like agency (Global Alliance for
| Responsible Media) that includes a lot of advertisers who
| coordinated to prevent the purchasing of buying ad space
| on the platform. So not exactly his customers but someone
| that should have been representing the interests of
| potential customers.
|
| People are getting thrown in prison for years for things
| like throwing a trash can at a police officer. Like
| thrown directly in prison:
| arrest->trial->sentencing->appeal->incarceration is all
| happening in the span of a few days and the UK is
| actually attempting to make it illegal to talk about on
| social media! This is in addition to giving actual rape
| and murder perpetrators slow-walked trials, house arrest
| or just non-investigations.
|
| The EU lawsuit just seems weird. I'm not sure why they
| would care so much about that one. The checkmark change
| was highly publicized and I don't think it mattered to
| anyone but celebrities and attention-seeking figures
| anyways. Government officials and other critically
| important people/organizations still get a verification.
| groby_b wrote:
| Boeing's basically a defunct company at this point, no?
|
| (Yes, there are still outstanding contracts, carriers don't like
| mixed fleets, etc, but... in terms of quality I can't see anybody
| saying "Yeah, Boeing, we're going there, that's the best you can
| buy")
| wongarsu wrote:
| Boing won't be allowed to fail until there's another American
| company building large passenger aircraft at scale.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Airbus Alabama laughs off in the distance.
| kube-system wrote:
| For defense purposes, it's desirable to have both the
| facilities and the full organizational hierarchy under
| direct legal jurisdiction.
| thedman9052 wrote:
| On the defense side, Boeing may be "too big to fail". After the
| the post Cold War consolidation, losing any of the big 5 USG
| contractors (Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, Raytheon, General
| Dynamics) would blow a huge hole in the industry. It's likely
| they'll be kept afloat with token contracts until they can get
| it back together. On the commercial side, Airbus is the only
| real alternative. I'm sure this is great for them but
| realistically how much of Boeing's market share could they
| scale up to fill? Embraer doesn't do large jets and the other
| manufacturers are Russian and Chinese.
| tim333 wrote:
| They have a new CEO who's going to try to fix things. I wish
| him luck.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Imagine going to space for what you think is 8 days and Boeing
| messes up so bad you get stuck there for like 8 months instead.
| Maybe really cool, but maybe a nightmare?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Reminds me if Gilligan's Island
|
| ...a three hour tour...
| m463 wrote:
| I remember the episode where a space capsule flew over the
| island. They wrote SOS in big letters, but somehow Gilligan
| managed to mess things up and it became SOL. Of course one of
| the astronauts was named Sol and saw his name on the island
| as a tribute...
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Going out on a limb here but astronaut training involves being
| prepared (physically, mentally and otherwise) for all
| eventualities, including delays like this probably.
|
| Sucks for their families though.
| kotaKat wrote:
| And not to forget, they traveled up without their personal
| clothing or handpicked hygiene items. They had to give those up
| for parts to repair the toilet on the ISS and are using the
| station's stocked contingency supplies.
|
| https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2024/0...
| lysace wrote:
| There's no unmanned supply mission planned before they get to
| go home?
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| There's one just went up a day or two ago. According to
| Google they go every couple of months.
| tagami wrote:
| NG-21 just arrived with extra supplies for the extended
| crew stay. There is a domino effect though. Other payload
| must be removed to add additional mass. My company has two
| missions scheduled for SpX-31 - currently on the calendar
| for 24 SEP - but NYT is reporting crew dragon is moving
| from 18 AUG to this date.
|
| The schedule is always fluid with rocket launches. Awaiting
| confirmation.
| thedman9052 wrote:
| Astronauts historically work closely with the people that build
| their spacecraft. I wonder how much they knew going in and how
| confident they really were. They decided to go through with the
| mission, but there was surely an immense amount of pressure on
| them to do so. Can you imagine the political firestorm if one
| of them refused? It would ground them for sure.
| TheCondor wrote:
| They are astronauts... There is some amount of expectation that
| the rocket will blow up before they get in to space. Nobody
| wants it, but they are the best of us and they are courageous
| as heck.
|
| To be completely honest, the news cycle this summer has been so
| wild; I kind of forgot they were up there until today. _That_
| is something that it seems like they might not have trained the
| astronauts for, and that 's really scary. That and there might
| be some sort of business politics involved in the plan to get
| home.
|
| We're all sort of engineers here, given the choice, suppose
| Boeing thought they could land you next week or you would wait
| until 2025 and ride a Dragon down. Which would you pick?
| htrp wrote:
| I think most astronauts and wannabe astronauts would prefer
| as much time in space as they could get.
| nullfield wrote:
| I admit I didn't think of this, but... without another
| science mission or something, what do they _do_ up there?
|
| This said, yeah, I wouldn't want to come back on Boeing
| hardware with Dragon available.
| TheCondor wrote:
| According to the audio:
| https://www.youtube.com/live/DYPL6bx87yM they are helping
| with standard ISS tasks, like operational maintenance and
| it is greatly appreciated.
| bityard wrote:
| I don't follow Space Stuff as much as I'd like to, but
| one impression that I have always had is that there is
| _never_ a lack of stuff for astronauts to do up there. An
| astronaut's time and resources are just too damn
| expensive to have them up there just hanging out. Outside
| of their fairly limited personal leisure time, they have
| a strict down-to-the-minute schedule handed down to them
| by mission planners that they must follow if they want to
| keep their jobs past the next landing. Including when to
| sleep and when to eat.
|
| (Of course, I assume the astronauts are allowed to
| request a change to their schedule if it's for a good
| reason.)
|
| Common tasks include running tests and maintenance on the
| station itself and monitoring/performing various science
| experiments. Perhaps doing a few NASA PR bits, media
| interviews and short chats with school children over the
| radio.
|
| I once read an article that said the vast majority of the
| actual work NASA does is "contingency" work that is never
| actually ends up being used. The problem is that while a
| mission is under development (or even well underway), you
| don't always know how things are going to shake out. So
| you hedge your bets by doing as much preparation and
| exploration of alternatives as you can, and try to pick
| the right one at the right time, or as the situation
| evolves.
|
| I guarantee there are entire teams on the ground working
| _right this second_ on a draft schedule for keeping the
| two "extra" astronauts gainfully contributing to ISS
| activities, even though it's not certain that they will
| be there.
| privatebecause wrote:
| > they are the best of us
|
| This gets said a lot, so I'll bite. Are they really? Many are
| just people able to go through the years of soul crushing
| things like being in the military. There are some straight up
| scientists on board, sure, I'll give that to them. But a lot
| are science people that are also fine doing things like
| flying bombing missions over the middle east. Killing tons of
| people isn't really a thing I respect.
| rurp wrote:
| It's awfully uncharitable to assume that someone is a bad
| person just from serving in the military. The military has
| done some reprehensible things at times, but it has also
| done a lot of good and the unfortunate reality is that in
| the world as it currently exists a strong military is a
| requirement for a free society.
|
| I don't agree with the fetishizing of the service that goes
| on in some circles, but taking the opposite extreme is not
| any better. People should be judged on their individual
| actions.
| dTal wrote:
| I don't think they said they were "bad people". But it's
| a fair objection that anyone who is content to sign away
| their personal autonomy to a violent organization may not
| represent "the best" of us, in some philosophically
| meaningful sense. Insofar that it's true that "a strong
| military is a requirement for a free society", it's
| because people like that exist.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Insofar that it's true that "a strong military is a
| requirement for a free society", it's because people like
| that exist.
|
| Yes, but there's no way to change that; it's human
| nature. Without a military, other countries with strong
| militaries will happily impose themselves on you: Nazi
| Germany, Russia/SU, etc. History is full of accounts of
| what happens when people don't have enough military power
| to resist invasion by a country of evildoers with their
| own powerful military.
|
| Similarly, police frequently suck, but the alternative is
| even worse. There's no shortage of people who would be
| happy to ignore laws and prey on others if they didn't
| have to worry about police enforcement.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| > Yes, but there's no way to change that; it's human
| nature.
|
| I think this is a dangerous idea, that humans are just
| violent and abusive by nature and it's impossible to
| change. It's something that is learned and taught and
| passed down, like anything else, which means it can be
| changed. I'll just quote Thay because he does it so well:
|
| "We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if
| powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we
| could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons,
| we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and
| ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the
| moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still
| there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we
| will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war
| from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To
| prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the
| opportunity to practice killing day and night in their
| hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger,
| frustration, and fear that will be passed on for
| generations to come." Thich Nhat Hanh from Living Buddha,
| Living Christ
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >History is full of accounts of what happens
|
| We don't even need to look back, Ukraine can tell us all
| about that _today_.
| Iulioh wrote:
| >anyone who is content to sign away their personal
| autonomy to a violent organization
|
| Honestly non-physical violence is sometimes overlooked.
|
| Economic decisions cause way more violence is mpre subtle
| ways.
|
| A new policy in banking or from insurance companies can
| lead to more deaths than a what an entire branch of the
| military.
|
| Hell, i think high decisions from Google can cause deaths
| in prioritizing certain arguments over others.
|
| So i don't think that just begin a part of the system
| makes you bad, making the decisions does.
| dTal wrote:
| Right, we all have a responsibility to act ethically in
| all parts of our lives. Refuse to work for organizations
| that do unethical things; if you are in an organization,
| refuse to do unethical things even if it gets you fired.
| Do not facilitate the doing of unethical things in any
| way.
|
| The difference with the military is you can be put in
| prison for behaving this way.
| Iulioh wrote:
| From the other side of the argument
|
| >>Refuse to work for organizations that do unethical
| things
|
| Is a easy way to ensure that said organizzation won't
| ever change.
| dTal wrote:
| Not at all. If enough people refuse to compromise their
| principles, the labor supply will shrink for that org,
| and therefore their hiring costs will increase, leaving
| them fewer resources to achieve their unethical deeds.
| "I'll change it from the inside" is a lie people tell
| themselves, but in reality they get steamrollered by the
| internal processes. If you don't have a backbone at
| hiring time, why would you grow one down the line when
| you're already dependent on them for your livelihood? No
| - do your part and refuse to play.
| tomcam wrote:
| Just to ensure both of us get severely downvoted and not
| just you, I have a parallel way of looking at it. Most
| people appear to be more... let's say, optimistic than I
| am. I tend to take a very conservative engineer or
| economist way of assessing the risks.
|
| About 3% of American astronauts have died in space, and
| about 4.5% have died during missions (which includes
| takeoffs).
|
| "Only" 15% of smokers get lung cancer.
|
| These numbers don't work for me. Yet plenty of smart people
| are willing to take those odds. I can only conclude that if
| people smarter than I am are good to go with those stats,
| then it means they have some kind of built-in optimism that
| I lack.
|
| Your notion of the military being "soul crushing" is not
| shared by all people in the military. Starting around the
| sergeant level there are tons of very interesting problems
| to solve. Some find it super fulfilling, and certainly many
| dudes who have been in combat felt it was the only time in
| their experience to feel really alive.
|
| So for different reasons I come to the same conclusion as
| you. They aren't really heroes, just people doing something
| they find compelling. And they measure risk and reward very
| differently from me.
|
| > Killing tons of people isn't really a thing I respect.
|
| Well, context matters, doesn't it? Sometimes violence is
| required to solve problems. The US had to kill 700,000 of
| its own to eliminate slavery. And while Europe lost tens of
| millions, the US sacrificed over 400,000 helping them out
| in WWII. Once the Germans attacked Poland and the Japanese
| attacked us, how would you have solve these problems
| without violence? Ask Neville Chamberlain how that worked
| out.
| dTal wrote:
| Thing is, once you're in the military, you don't get to
| choose who to kill. You are not permitted to say "I do
| not think violence is required to solve this particular
| problem". You are not afforded the privilege of
| conscience. You are required to switch that part of your
| brain off.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Yes, because a military would not be effective at all if
| every soldier got to question every tactical or strategic
| decision. That's why it's your job as a citizen to pick
| better leaders, because those leaders are in charge of
| the military.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Once the Germans attacked Poland and the Japanese
| attacked us, how would you have solve these problems
| without violence? Ask Neville Chamberlain how that worked
| out.
|
| To be fair to Neville, there's an argument that he did
| the best he could, and was really just buying time
| because the UK was in no position to go to war with
| Germany at that point in time.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _was really just buying time because the UK was in no
| position to go to war with Germany at that point in time_
|
| In part because it didn't bother arming. A decision
| Berlin likely took note of.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| Well, maybe not the one who drove across the country in a
| diaper to assault her ex-boyfriend's lover.
| exe34 wrote:
| if you hate the military that much, why do you make use of
| the benefits? why not move to the other side and enjoy real
| freedom?
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Would that put them in a better or worse position to
| improve what they see as shortcomings of the military?
| Where does the instinct to suggest the cowardly approach
| of running away from a problem come from?
| exe34 wrote:
| it's coming from the hypocrisy of saying they want the
| scientists working on something else, and expect to
| magically keep the same freedoms.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The most effective way to avoid fighting is to have
| military superiority. Bullies pick on the weak, not the
| powerful.
| davedx wrote:
| It really depends on who is in charge. I'm reading
| Kissinger's "On China" at the moment, and Mao, who led
| the most populous country on Earth for a significant
| time, was way more motivated by ideology and the notion
| that "struggle" was the highest priority, than he was by
| the comparative military strength of who China engaged in
| wars with.
|
| That being said, he wasn't single minded either (e.g. he
| also mostly followed Chinese principles of not being
| overly interventionist, unlike the US), and his views did
| seem to gradually change over time.
|
| But he also said things like: "We have a very large
| territory and a big population. Atomic bombs could not
| kill all of us."
|
| Repeatedly.
|
| ===
|
| Nazi Germany and Japan weren't deterred at all by
| military strength either, I don't think? Again ideology
| overrode every other consideration with WW2? So I'm not
| sure if "deterrence" really helps prevent major conflicts
| at all...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Nazi Germany and Japan weren't deterred at all by
| military strength either
|
| Oh, yes they were! Hitler thought the Soviet Army was
| rotten from top to bottom, thought the British were weak
| and could be defeated by the Luftwaffe, and thought the
| US would never fight.
|
| He was right on all three counts, but the Soviets,
| British, and the US turned themselves into powerhouses.
|
| The Japanese were afraid of the US, and thought they
| could get the US to stay on the sidelines by knockout out
| the carriers in Pearl. How wrong they were.
| specialist wrote:
| "If you desire peace, prepare for war."
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I'm not sure, aren't the most powerful typically bullies?
| The UK had probably the strongest Navy in the world for a
| long while and used it to colonize and extract wealth
| from a large part of the world. There's a controversial
| calculation that they took about $45 trillion from south
| asian alone, but even if it was only a fraction of that
| it's certainly an example of the powerful bullying the
| "weak".
|
| History is littered with these examples. We're seeing it
| happen in Israel/Palestine as we speak. It's not like the
| US spent all our money on the military and became a
| chill, benevolent international partner.
| WalterBright wrote:
| US power has (so far) prevented WW3. Biden's weakness in
| Afghanistan emboldened Putin to attack the Ukraine.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Those two things don't seem connected at all. Blame
| Germany for emboldening Putin. Russia accumulated a huge
| war chest due to energy exports, mostly to the rest of
| Europe. A large part of that was gas for Germany. That
| could have been avoided with some timely nuclear power.
| It also made Germany (and other parts of Europe) quite
| vulnerable because gas pipelines are hard to replace (and
| LNG is expensive).
|
| Remember that the war started in 2014, not 2022.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I don't think it was a coincidence that the massive
| invasion of Ukraine was just a few months from the
| feckless abandonment of Afghanistan.
|
| I know that there were relatively minor attacks on
| Ukraine before.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Putin's justification essay[0] was before the Afghanistan
| withdrawal.
|
| "It was published on Kremlin.ru shortly after the end of
| the first of two buildups of Russian forces preceding the
| full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022."
|
| If you think Biden's behavior encourages Putin's
| aggression, then surely you think Trump's is worse?
|
| "You didn't pay? You're delinquent?" Trump recounted
| saying. "No I would not protect you. In fact, I would
| encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they
| want."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity
| _of_Rus...
| WalterBright wrote:
| Putin's essay was a test for Biden. Biden failed it.
|
| We had no wars under Trump. Plenty of wars under Biden.
|
| As for Trump's quote, expecting allies to pay the share
| they agreed to is not weakness, it's strength. And they
| paid.
|
| If you and I were buddies in combat, that doesn't mean I
| carry you on my back. It means we watch each other's
| back. And if either of us didn't, we wouldn't be buddies
| anymore.
|
| Remember Gaddafi and Reagan? Gadaffi FAFO. Reagan fixed
| his wagon and there was lasting peace with Gaddafi after
| that.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > There is some amount of expectation that the rocket will
| blow up before they get in to space. Nobody wants it, but
| they are the best of us and they are courageous as heck.
|
| The B-17 aircrews in WW2 knew they had only a 20% chance of
| surviving their mission count intact. (not killed, crippled,
| or POW'd)
|
| Neil Armstrong figured he only had a 50% chance of surviving
| Apollo 11. Personally, I think he was optimistic.
| trte9343r4 wrote:
| Like B-17 crew could refuse orders. That is not how draft
| works! It was slavery!
| WalterBright wrote:
| B-17 crews were all volunteers.
| trte9343r4 wrote:
| None of them were drafted? In general army only 29%
| soldiers were volunteers. I find it hard to believe they
| all volunteered.
|
| And I found a few cases where instructors were assigned
| to B-17 as a punishment.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They all joined the Army Air Corps as volunteers.
| yakz wrote:
| Not only that, but _thousands_ ( >10k) of WW2 aviators died
| in training before deployment.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Those airplanes were not safe. They were designed for
| maximum performance, not safety.
| pie420 wrote:
| not performance, performance to cost ratio
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The Dragon, obvs! Then, I get more time in space, and I get
| to try both capsules -- Boeing on the way up, and SpaceX on
| the way down.
| e_y_ wrote:
| But also that willingness to face the risks goes with the
| expectation that the people on the ground did everything they
| could to minimize the risks. If that trust is broken, because
| someone cut corners to save on costs and schedule, it's less
| likely that astronauts would want to sign up for such a job
| in the future.
| gojomo wrote:
| Even if up for 8 months - and returning to a US with a
| different President, perhaps even a different party-of-the-
| President, they'll not match the experience of Sergei Krikalev
| - who traveled to the space station Mir for the USSR, & was for
| a while stuck there when the USSR dissolved, only returning 311
| days later:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Krikalev
|
| He later became the 1st cosmonaut to fly on the US Space
| Shuttle:
|
| https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/p...
| spoonfeeder006 wrote:
| That would be an absolute dream for me
| quakeguy wrote:
| May i ask why?
| justinclift wrote:
| > they'll not match the experience of Sergei Krikalev
|
| Bear in mind that your statement is very "Hold my beer..."
| and we're talking about Boeing here. ;)
|
| So it's _possible_ , though unlikely, some chain of events
| could occur so the Starliner astronauts beat Sergei
| Krikalev's record.
| simiones wrote:
| Still very unlikely that they'd come back to a, say,
| Independent Republic of Florida instead of the USA they
| left from, but hey, it's been a crazy couple of years.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If they wait for a few more years it's going to be the
| Floridian Archipelago.
| moomin wrote:
| Given Boeing's track record, it's possible they'll return
| to be greeted by apes wearing suits.
| schneehertz wrote:
| What a terrible comparison; I believe that the current state
| of America has not yet fallen to the level it was at before
| the collapse of the Soviet Union.
| apexalpha wrote:
| I think he was comparing the experience by the
| astronauts,not the state of the countries.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > He later became the 1st cosmonaut to fly on the US Space
| Shuttle:
|
| Part of the reason NASA selected him is because he worked on
| the Soviet Buran project for a while.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)
| tamimio wrote:
| The same thing can happen to any traveler. Sometimes you plan
| to stay for a few months and end up staying for 30 years. So,
| as cliche as it sounds, enjoy the journey, not the destination!
| sschueller wrote:
| I would be mostly concerned about the bone loss and health
| implications some of which can't be reversed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _would be mostly concerned about the bone loss and health
| implications some of which can 't be reversed_
|
| Eight months is well within studied ranges for astronauts.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Studied and found to be non-damaging, or just studied and
| sucks to be them?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Studied and found to be non-damaging, or just studied
| and sucks to be them?_
|
| Nothing permanent or serious [1][2]. (On the other hand,
| astronauts' telomeres lengthen during spaceflight [3]. We
| have no idea why.)
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-021-
| 01496-9
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49211-2
|
| [3] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau8650
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > On the other hand, astronauts' telomeres lengthen
| during spaceflight
|
| I wonder if this is partially the reason (along with
| great healthcare benefits) why so many Apollo astronauts
| have live passed the average life expectancy in the US.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why so many Apollo astronauts have live passed the
| average life expectancy in the US_
|
| The effect reverses within days of return to Earth. The
| reason astronauts live longer is their physical training
| more than compensates for the damage done to their bodies
| in space.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Astronauts should not be compared with normal people.
| They should be compared with other exceptional people.
| The Apollo astronauts were quite intelligent (which
| correlates nicely with lifespan and health) and
| accomplished... and selected to be healthier than most.
|
| Their physical training as astronauts was likely
| irrelevant to their lifespan.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Besides muscle atrophy, doesn't spaceflight reduce damage
| done to bodies?
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| The article is paywalled ... Does it say why such a long delay?
| lode wrote:
| Here is the full article - sorry about that, should have used
| this link.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/science/boeing-starliner-...
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| The reason sounds like a combination of cost cutting and
| perhaps face saving - combining the "rescue" return with a
| half-crew next scheduled Dragon trip.
|
| I've got to assume there's a faster contingency plan for a
| real emergency - that SpaceX could scramble a Dragon launch
| almost immediately if they had to?
| jeffwask wrote:
| I wonder if the astronauts are upset at being stuck or excited by
| the extra time in space they otherwise may have never got.
| urda wrote:
| I imagine it could be exciting, extra time in orbit a place so
| few humans have been.
|
| But it's likely overshadowed by the concerns and fears building
| from the possible return trip.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I imagine they vastly prefer returning on a flight-proven
| Crew Dragon over being the first crew ever to return on
| Starliner. Especially with all the Starliner issues so far.
| _joel wrote:
| I'd imagine they'd revel at the opportunity for more time,
| generally.
| jeffwask wrote:
| That's how I'd feel. Kinda like startup life it's a chance to
| maybe do something you otherwise wouldn't
| BatFastard wrote:
| Do they have any assignments or tasks? Boredom is my version of
| hell.
| jeffwask wrote:
| I'd bet there's always some set of experiments queued up,
| maintenance, etc.
| bell-cot wrote:
| By every account I've heard, keeping the ISS going is
| _seriously_ laborious for its crew. And both astronauts have
| previously done regular ISS missions, to quickly get back up
| to speed.
| kotaKat wrote:
| If anything, the extra couple people on board is a great
| help for stationkeeping and workload division to help give
| everyone a break.
| xeromal wrote:
| I believe there's always a backlog of science experiments to
| perform.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Their bodies will wither. They will be bathed in radiation. You
| can only watch Earth go by so many times before it gets
| mundane.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| People have stayed longer, and apparently managed to enjoy
| it.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Enjoy it, or endure it?!
|
| It must get old after a month or so (or less), and long
| term effects beat your body up pretty badly.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Enjoy it, or endure it?!
|
| If you're genuinely interested, PBS and Apple+ have the
| documentary series "A Year In Space", which details Scott
| Kelly's experiences.
|
| As with most other things in life, it seems to be a mix
| of excitement, fun, awe, tedium, homesickness, etc.
| Missed some stuff from Earth; misses being in space for
| some reasons now.
|
| We continue to study the impact versus his identical
| twin. Some impacts, but the man isn't exactly "withered".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Kononenko apparently
| liked it enough to go back five times, for almost _three
| years_ in space so far.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Yes, I've seen it - good documentary!
|
| He certainly seems ok now, but wasn't in great shape when
| he first returned. Had quite a lot of pain from what I
| remember.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I wonder if any astronaut is ever going to say "no" if
| offered/asked to go back to space, regardless of past
| experiences? It's a massive privilege, and they are all
| highly disciplined pros.
| ars wrote:
| Someone answered your question here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41186990
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Yes, I suppose - if you don't want to go then quit.
|
| In the case of Oleg Kononenko (5 trips to space) that the
| parent mentioned, while one assumes he could quit if he
| wanted to, I doubt he keeps getting sent because he's the
| one begging hardest to go back ... more likely the
| Russians want to be able to claim space achievements, and
| "most time in space" is one they can at least achieve, as
| long as they have a place to send him.
| cryptonector wrote:
| How would you feel if you were one of them?
|
| I'd feel pretty upset. A few days in space is no big deal.
| Months in space is hard on the body, plus you're missing out on
| months of life on Earth -- maybe you're going to miss the birth
| of a child or grandchild, or a loved one's death and funeral,
| or some other big event. And are you getting paid while up
| there? Are there enough supplies? What if NASA and Boeing
| finally decide it's OK to return on Starliner, and as you know
| you basically must then, so now you're risking your life on a
| vehicle that you have much reason to think is not safe.
|
| It'd be hard not to be hopping mad in private. I'd make the
| best of it, since there's no other choice, but I would not be
| happy about it.
| layer8 wrote:
| Presumably, equanimity is a selection criterion for
| astronauts.
| cryptonector wrote:
| There's always a limit to equanimity.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| The counterpoint to this is these are people who have
| dedicated their lives to becoming astronauts. They want to go
| to space and they want to do things in space, and they have
| sacrificed a lot of the comforts of a normal life to reach
| that goal. I suspect most astronauts feel like they don't
| spend enough time in space.
|
| These are people who are driven by a passion to do the thing
| that they're (involuntarily) having to do more of than
| originally planned. I don't know if "how would you feel" is a
| good yardstick here; I would probably get sick of it pretty
| quick, but I'm not the kind of person who would make a good
| astronaut.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Also they get to be all heroic if the equipment doesn't
| work properly. It makes an (already interesting) trip more
| interesting and memorable.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >How would you feel if you were one of them?
|
| >I'd feel pretty upset.
|
| Agreed.
|
| Yes, flying in space is cool. No, most people don't want to
| do this indefinitely. Astronauts retire all the time even
| when they are 100% guaranteed more flight time if they didn't
| retire; a whole bunch did that in the 1960s and 1970s (some,
| like Frank Borman, 100% guaranteed to walk on the moon), and
| more during the shuttle era.
|
| It's one thing to have a mission extended by a day, as
| happened to the shuttle routinely because of bad weather at
| the landing site. Skylab 4's mission I believe got extended
| by 28 days, but that was a known possibility before launch.
| To have an eight-day mission be possibly extended to _eight
| months_ is in no way shape or form OK.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Would _you_ prefer 8 months and a safe ride down on a
| Dragon, or 8 days and taking your chances on the Starliner?
|
| Not a rhetorical question, since you can argue both sides
| of the case. Even floating around in space for 8 months is
| not risk free.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Even floating around in space for 8 months is not risk
| free.
|
| Correct. That said, ISS's quarter century of operations
| is a pretty good track record. Starliner's so far is
| dismal.
|
| The best solution is to bring Wilmore and Williams back
| sooner than February. If that means Boeing paying for a
| rescue Crew Dragon launch, so be it.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Of course you're getting paid?
| gus_massa wrote:
| Do they get a different salary when they are up?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| That would be interesting. Thankfully I don't know about
| federal employee compensation yet to be sure of the
| answer, but I'm on my way.
| beAbU wrote:
| Humans have a truly amazing ability to grow bored of any "new
| normal", no matter how exciting it may seem to outsiders.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Defensive mechanism. You cannot be stressed all the time and
| remain sane.
| grendelt wrote:
| But they're totally not "stuck" right, Boeing PR?
| TMWNN wrote:
| NASA is in on the denial, too. As late as July 28, flight
| director Ed Van Cise explicitly denied that the Starliner crew
| was stuck or stranded.
| <https://x.com/Carbon_Flight/status/1817754775196201035>. Even
| if one quibbles about whether "stranded" applies in this
| situation (I believe that it does <https://www.reddit.com/r/spa
| ce/comments/1ekicol/not_stranded...>), "stuck" definitely does.
| fabian2k wrote:
| I still find it hard to believe that the current Starliner
| doesn't have the ability to undock automatically without humans
| on board. The first test flight was able to do that.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Supposedly that's a "it's currently running which version of
| the software?" issue:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-confirms-slip-of-...
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Surely you've taken out a feature in software and then later
| regretted it
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| Sure, but I've also never worked on any software directly
| responsible for the lives of human beings (as far as I know,
| anyway). I would like to think I'd operate a little
| differently if I were.
| rvnx wrote:
| It depends I think ?
|
| See for example how Boeing works with the airplanes (
| https://theprint.in/world/boeing-engineers-blame-cheap-
| india... )
|
| At the end, I wouldn't be surprised if ChatGPT writes parts
| of critical code in some companies.
|
| Just it would be very problematic to say it and nobody has
| interest into revealing that.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I wonder if NASA were aware, or is it possible that they just
| assumed the demonstrated capability was there, and Boeing never
| told them _this_ Starliner didn 't have it ?!
|
| I'd like to think NASA would consider all contingencies, but
| the Challenger O-ring disaster showed they can be as
| incompetent as Boeing themselves.
| verzali wrote:
| NASA would be fully aware of the capabilities and would not
| have made assumptions, especially for flight to the ISS. They
| are very strict about approaches to the ISS, and would have
| gone through it with a fine comb before the flight.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| They said on the call that the software though but it's a
| 'flight data' load which is all setup for normal crew use; who
| knows where the line is between data/code.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Is it a hardware feature that's missing, or software? If the
| latter, can't it be restored? If the former, or if the latter
| but it can't be restored, is the docking station where
| Starliner is berthed going to remain unavailable forever? There
| are only TWO NASA docking stations. There are a bunch of
| Russian docking stations.
|
| There's a hard rule for ISS that no astronaut may be on board
| the ISS without a corresponding return vehicle being docked at
| all times. This rule is effectively being violated for the two
| Starliner astronauts because they can't return on Starliner.
| And now no new Crew Dragons may berth without the current crew
| returning on the currently berthed Crew Dragon.
|
| What a mess.
| wongarsu wrote:
| According to the arstechnica article linked by bell-cot it's
| a software issue:
|
| "Well-placed sources said the current flight software on
| board Starliner, as configured, cannot perform an automated
| undocking from the space station and entry into Earth's
| atmosphere. It will take about four weeks to update and
| validate the software for an autonomous return, should NASA
| decide it would be safer to bring Wilmore and Williams back
| to Earth inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-confirms-slip-
| of-...
| cryptonector wrote:
| Thanks! That's comforting.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Is that comforting? That the capsule made it this far
| through "rigorous tests" overseen by a buddy system,
| without being able to perform a core function in the
| mission? I know that undocking is not easy, but it's also
| the most steady-state part of the whole mission?
|
| It seems to me like one more blatant shortcut9 that
| regulators permitted, and Boeing leadership check the box
| on a form saying "capability complete"
| verzali wrote:
| It's a software configuration as I understand it. The
| software itself is capable of the automated undocking, but it
| will need to be reconfigured to allow it.
|
| ISS operations have very strict requirements about safety and
| especially about avoiding collisions with the station under
| any circumstance. There are also differences in requirements
| for crewed and uncrewed flights. For these reasons it makes
| sense that the configurations are different and would need to
| be updated if they switch to fully automated.
|
| NASA has been pretty clear that Starliner could be used as an
| emergency escape if necessary. That leads me to think the
| concern is more about collision with the ISS that with the
| ability to re-enter safely.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Not an expert on this, but I would suspect a collision with
| the ISS might also have an effect on Starliner's ability to
| re-enter safely.
|
| Maybe Boeing should send up the CEO with his golden
| parachute.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| The Boeing ceo did resign yesterday fwiw.
| eric-hu wrote:
| I'm not seeing news about that when I search for it. Got
| a source?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > That leads me to think the concern is more about
| collision with the ISS that with the ability to re-enter
| safely.
|
| I don't end up thinking that. To completely make up a
| number, if there was a capsule with a 5% chance of failure
| to reenter it would still be a valid emergency escape.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I can't help but feel this is part of a game being played.
|
| "The capsule needs the crew!"
|
| Some pressure to nasa to fly the crew back on this and also
| some ass covering if the really embarrassing occurs: the
| unmanned capsule does fail - "hey everyone it just failed
| because it had no crew! Nothing to worry about!"
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Archive / paywall: <https://archive.is/4lmfu>
| temp_account_32 wrote:
| https://archive.is/4lmfu
| zeristor wrote:
| Binliner
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Listen to the actual conference:
| https://www.youtube.com/live/DYPL6bx87yM?si=W5UzfyiYzPX3KgGr
|
| IMHO summarising it like the title is a little unfair; yes
| they're making provision for use of Dragon; but they haven't made
| any decision yet. The thing that seems to have confused them is
| that all the Starliner thrusters are working in their tests -
| given their idea of some teflon deformation somewhere, I think
| they thought they'd still be problematic, which is making them
| wonder if the teflon thing is the full story?
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| It seems it'd be a massive reputational risk to NASA to bring
| them back on Starliner, just in case anything does go wrong.
| Given all the deliberations, NASA is going to be seen as at
| least 50% to blame if they make the wrong decision.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Everyone closely involved with making the decision will be
| well aware that the subsequent inquiry, and quite a bit of
| the public's reaction, will be personally brutal if they opt
| for Starliner and it fails catastrophically, no matter how
| small the odds seemed at the time.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Being unable to deal with risk means the end of the space
| program.
| colordrops wrote:
| There's risk and then there's unnecessary risk.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The difference between the two is always a matter of
| someone's opinion.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| You could argue that landing on the Moon and even Mars is
| an unnecessary risk, or human spaceflight as a whole.
|
| The whole moon programme and the space shuttle were
| extremely high risk by today's standards, but the moon
| programme was to prove that the US could beat the USSR,
| and the space shuttle was to transport spy satellites and
| build the ISS.
|
| But Starliner should really be nearly zero risk with that
| small goal of docking and drop back home.
| oefrha wrote:
| Comparing brand new challenges to something that's been
| done routinely a hundred times already is rather
| pointless.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| Docking to the ISS and drop home was done ~hundred times
| already, we compare Starliner with Soyuz in that mission
| no?
| highwaylights wrote:
| Losing public support means the end of the space program
| too. Especially in an election year.
| Yeul wrote:
| How many astronauts died in the Apollo era? Nobody wants
| a Chinese moon base. That's worth a few lives.
| 93po wrote:
| I want a chinese moon base
| asmor wrote:
| Three. None in space.
| chasd00 wrote:
| The Apolla era was a completely different animal. I don't
| think cars at seat belts in those days, society was much
| more accepting of danger. Also, nuclear annihilation was
| very real and anything required to beat the Soviet Union
| was on the table. That level of existential crisis and
| acceptance of danger in the public mind doesn't exist
| today.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Huh?
|
| First off, the Apollo program was part of the space race
| - an actual race to show supremacy during the cold war,
| and even then safety was taken seriously enough that
| there was the Apollo 10 "dress rehearsal". Cool fact is
| that the Apollo 10 astronauts were so gung-ho to land
| that NASA made sure to only provide enough fuel for the
| lander for them to execute the mission - not enough for
| an unsanctioned landing!
|
| Second, there is no goal, nor way, to prevent China
| building a moon base, and given NASA's ridiculous Artemis
| program that's just as well, since American astronauts
| will probably be eating moon-cooked Chinese takeout by
| the time they get there.
| ta1243 wrote:
| You have two choices, one has a risk of 15 units, one has
| a risk of 3 units.
|
| The outcome is the same.
|
| You go for the risk of 3 units.
|
| As Kirk says, "risk is our business". Doesn't mean you
| don't need to minimise the risk to achieve the goal. The
| goal here is
|
| 1) Return the crew
|
| 2) Return the capsule and gather more data
|
| If those goals can be achieved with less by bringing the
| crew back on dragon, then that's a sensible move.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Choosing the Dragon capsule option in this case would be
| neither risk-free nor mean the end of _a_ space program,
| though it might lead to significant changes (quite
| possibly for the better) to NASA 's current version.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If the space program is not willing to kill some
| astronauts, there shouldn't be a space program.
|
| From a purely economic point of view, the cost of killing
| an astronaut is small compared to the cost of these
| missions. The statistical value of a human life is around
| $12 M. Astronauts may be a bit more expensive, due to
| cost of training, but not enormously so.
|
| Making space flight much cheaper will shift the
| economics, making safety relatively more important. It
| will also enable that safety by enabling many more
| launches to reduce risks.
|
| People anguish over the 14 astronauts killed in the
| Shuttle, but the economic value destroyed by that program
| was in the end a much greater loss.
| 93po wrote:
| this is a really sad and disappointing perspective for
| someone to have. if you are putting people's lives at
| risk for the sake of economic value when they have
| trusted you with their lives then you don't deserve that
| trust.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The money spent on making astronauts safer could save
| more lives if spent elsewhere. That's how the statistical
| value of a life is set: it's the marginal cost of saving
| a (age adjusted) life used to justify government actions,
| say in worker safety, pollution control, road
| improvements, medical spending, etc.
|
| Why do you think astronauts are so much more important
| than the common persons saved by these other efforts? Why
| do you advocate spending patterns that increase the body
| count for a given expenditure?
| michaelt wrote:
| We all know that society applies almost arbitrary values
| to all these things.
|
| 42,000 road deaths annually? Meh. 3,000 people die in the
| terror attacks of 9/11? Multi-trillion-dollar, 20 year
| war.
|
| Politicians only fund NASA manned launches because the
| average voter thinks it's kinda cool and maybe it
| inspires some kids to work hard at school. Too many high
| profile, fear-inducing deaths and politicians are liable
| to decide the money spent on NASA could be better spent
| elsewhere.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yes, the point I'm working toward is the manned space
| program is not worth the money spent on it. The
| willingness to suspend the thing for years when a few
| astronauts die is a tell. If what they were doing was
| actually important this would not be allowed to happen.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Just because something is important (although I'm not
| saying that manned space exploration is), doesn't mean it
| has to be done tomorrow.
|
| e.g. It's important you save for your kids college, but
| you don't need to have all the money saved up by time
| they are 10 years old.
|
| Rushing an important task can also cause it to fail.
| Being overly aggressive with college savings by putting
| it in high-risk investments would not be conducive to
| meeting goals, and NASA losing public support by getting
| crew killed unnecessarily would not be conducive to them
| getting funding for future manned missions.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > if you are putting people's lives at risk for the sake
| of economic value when they have trusted you with their
| lives then you don't deserve that trust.
|
| That happens all the time. If you drive your car to work,
| you are putting your lives and those of others at risk
| for economic value. There's no way around it.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Most of the science results from the space program are
| from proves. The experiments that the astronaut run in
| space are fully automated, because they are not experts
| in all topics, so they get a box that they have to plug,
| turn on and off later. The value of astronauts is to get
| some data about the human body in space and mostly to get
| support from the public. (It's almost like pilots in F1.
| Nobody would go to see a robot version of F1.)
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| I would very much pay to see F1 cars being controlled by
| computers beyond the limits of humans. Especially if they
| removed many of the limitations intended to keep the
| drivers safe.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Mee too! But I think we will be the only two spectators
| in the stands.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| You need to keep the audience safe as well! Most of the
| people who have died in motorsport are spectators.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'd like to see F1 revert to 1960s technology (with
| safety improvements) because those cars required a lot
| more driver skill.
| Firaxus wrote:
| Here (with parent sources mentioned at the link) it is
| claimed that training costs 15 million, a bit more than a
| bit eh?
|
| https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/35431/how-much-
| doe....
| pfdietz wrote:
| "Not enormously so". In particular, it doesn't counter
| the argument I was making. For the Shuttle, for example,
| the value of the astronaut lives, even including $15 M in
| training costs, was an order of magnitude less than the
| cost of the orbiter itself.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| There's a massive difference between astronauts dying in
| the process of testing something innovative and risky
| that pushes the envelope, and astronauts dying because a
| company has let its engineering deteriorate.
|
| In the latter case, we might as well just shoot those
| astronauts instead, it'd give about the same meaning to
| their deaths.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If what they are doing is not enough to give meaning to
| their deaths, then to a much greater extent it's not
| enough to give meaning to the very large amount of money
| being spent on the mission.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| That makes no sense. The meaning of the very large amount
| of money being spent on the mission is of accomplishing
| the mission.
|
| Starliner is doing nothing innovative, and dying with it
| would not be accomplishing the mission or adding anything
| new towards accomplishing it past this point (that is,
| all the testing past this point can be done without
| putting people onboard, with just the comparatively small
| cost of a software swap), there is no meaning to dying on
| it.
|
| You might as well be arguing that SpaceX should put crew
| on IFT-5.
| pfdietz wrote:
| So, the meaning of the deaths is the accomplishment of
| the mission. Why does the mission give meaning to money,
| but not to the deaths? Meaning is meaning.
|
| Starliner may indeed not be worth deaths involved in its
| testing, but that would be because Starliner would not be
| worthwhile as a program at all.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Starliner serves the purpose of NASA not being dependent
| on a single launch provider.
|
| If Starliner needs additional testing, as it appears to
| do, then it makes no sense, and serves no purpose, to
| test it in a way that endangers human lives when that is
| completely unnecessary.
|
| If NASA/Boeing need to test if Starliner can fly back
| home (whether this unit, or future ones, until they get
| it reliable) then have it fly back home autonomously.
|
| Your argument makes zero sense - it's exactly like saying
| that cars would only be worthwhile if we used humans for
| crash tests rather than crash test dummies. It's a bit
| like some ancient culture thinking that human sacrifice
| is needed to placate the gods.
| philwelch wrote:
| The value of an astronaut is at least 10x the value of
| the "statistical human life". Probably closer to 100x.
| Maybe even more.
|
| The statistical human life is meant to represent the
| average person. The average person is not qualified to
| become an astronaut. Selection alone, nevermind training,
| is stringent enough that maybe 1 in 100,000 people meets
| the bar. And the difference between a qualified astronaut
| and the average person here isn't small; it's a power law
| relationship.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Interesting! Since it doesn't cost that anywhere close to
| that much to create an astronaut, clearly we can make the
| nation incredibly wealthy by simply training more of
| them. By the magical transmutation of astronaut creation,
| this increases their value enormously. What a brilliant
| free wealth concept you have created! It's the greatest
| idea since Beanie Babies.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's a selection effect. If you trained all of the people
| qualified to become astronauts into becoming astronauts
| you would incur the opportunity costs of those people not
| applying their talents and ambitions elsewhere.
| pfdietz wrote:
| So, you're saying we're actually losing value by training
| an astronaut, since their talents are not available or
| elsewhere? Or that astronauts should be chosen from the
| otherwise useless? Trying to understand here.
|
| I'm sure we can find plenty of low value people to
| transmute into incredibly valuable secular saints of
| space. No need to waste the otherwise useful.
| philwelch wrote:
| > So, you're saying we're actually losing value by
| training an astronaut, since their talents are not
| available or elsewhere?
|
| This is called "opportunity cost" and it's a basic
| concept.
|
| > Or that astronauts should be chosen from the otherwise
| useless?
|
| That wouldn't work because those people couldn't become
| useful astronauts.
|
| > I'm sure we can find plenty of low value people to
| transmute into incredibly valuable secular saints of
| space. No need to waste the otherwise useful.
|
| The smug, superior attitude here doesn't really work when
| you're mocking basic concepts like opportunity cost or
| being qualified for a job. It just makes you come across
| as an anti-intellectual clown. If you tried engaging in
| good faith you might learn something.
| rozap wrote:
| This is a silly take. There are two options, Starliner
| with X units of risk, Dragon with Y units of risk. Given
| what we know, X is greater than Y. The only reason to
| choose Starliner at this point is because in the event of
| it _not_ killing them, some mid level managers at Boeing
| don 't look as bad.
|
| Is that a good enough reason to gamble with someones
| life? I don't think reasonable people can come to
| different conclusions here.
|
| If we're pushing the envelope of technology and
| humankind's ability to do cool shit and people die in the
| process, you can argue that it's worth it, and that's
| fine, reasonable people can disagree. But that's just not
| what is happening here.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Sure, it's inherently risky, so managing that risk
| becomes key to success.
|
| The thing here is that NASA has a choice.
|
| 1) Use Starliner with it's dodgy development history, no
| track record of reliability, and with the problems
| experienced with this specific unit.
|
| 2) Use Dragon, tried and tested, with an excellent
| history of reliability
|
| This should be a no-brainer.
|
| If Starliner can't safely autonomously undock at the
| moment (and anyways needs a month for software
| reload/verification apparently - not sure why
| verification takes so long), then leave it there until
| there's a solution to do it safely. In the meantime the
| ISS has 6 docking ports, currently all in use with 3
| supply vessels and 3 crew (Starliner+Dragon+Soyuz), so
| presumably there is some flexibility there.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Having competitors trying to out do each other is good
| for the space program. Having only one solution available
| leads to problems as well.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Sure, and NASA are also nurturing Blue Origin who may be
| a good option in the future.
|
| I don't think anyone looks bad here if NASA go with
| Dragon and Starliner flies home autonomously and without
| incident. It makes Boeing look good, and everyone in the
| room look like adults. OTOH given the poor Boeing
| performance to date, killing a crew would probably take
| them out of the NASA program for a very long time, if not
| forever, and even having a non-fatal failure on way back
| would make the judgement of both Boeing and NASA look
| very poor.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| But Boeing isn't trying to "out do" SpaceX -- except when
| it comes to political connections.
|
| Maybe Dream Chaser will be that competitor. We'll see.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| They have to undock either Dragon (Crew 8) or Starliner
| to dock the next Dragon (Crew 9).
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| What about the port currently used by the Northrup
| Grumman supply ship - is that not compatible with Dragon
| ? Is there no adaptor to make the Russian Soyuz/Progress
| ports usable by Dragon ?
| hinkley wrote:
| They have plenty of experience with how Congress treats
| them when they kill astronauts.
| mannykannot wrote:
| The title strikes me as an entirely fair characterization of
| _your own summary_ of the situation.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Yeah this announcement sounds like the type of thing bad bosses
| do to look like their decisions till now were sound (they were
| not). Accepting star liner as a mistake will ask the question
| what NASA did anyway.
| Laremere wrote:
| Interesting tidbit: Talking about the upcoming Crew Dragon
| flight being moved around: "We will let SpaceX use our first
| stage booster, they'll go fly a starlink flight, ahead of our
| flight to get a little shakedown of that booster. It had some
| moisture intrusion and we want to go ahead and get that booster
| flown. And so there's a win win there - flying our booster on a
| starlink flight before our crew flight."
|
| The complete 180 here is great to see. For the crewed demo
| flight of Crew Dragon, they used a brand new booster. It seems
| NASA didn't like the idea of flying on reused boosters,
| thinking they had an increased risk. Now they're liking the
| idea of a booster being flown an extra time.
| chinathrow wrote:
| > Now they're liking the idea of a booster being flown an
| extra time.
|
| "Flight proven"
| selimthegrim wrote:
| "Flight secured."
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I worked at SpaceX for almost 8 years, starting before we'd
| ever landed a Falcon, and I cannot tell you how good it
| feels, deeply in my soul, to have watched this turnaround.
| The culture we were fighting against early on was so
| entrenched. This is great.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Congrats to you guys. SpaceX has done incredible things.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| It's not unfair given the information provided in this
| conference that was new. The dialog on conferences has shifted
| such that the main piece of news is that they may fly home on
| the Dragon.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Glad that we finally got confirmation of the speculation that I
| saw on Ars last week that they are exploring using SpaceX.
|
| I honestly can't imagine the conversations happening privately
| with the Astronauts. You know the problems this thing is
| happening but apparently you may still fly on it.
|
| Like I get that space travel is still risky, even if SpaceX seems
| to make it look trivial at times, but it seems like an unecessary
| risk.
|
| Assuming the Starliner can be on autopilot and bring itself home,
| let it do that to confirm if things are indeed working. Worst
| case you loose a vehical, but 2 people were not killed in the
| process.
|
| The only thing that really surprised me is the 2025 timeline. I
| figured they would prefer to move some things around than wait
| that long?
| cryptonector wrote:
| > Assuming the Starliner can be on autopilot
|
| Apparently it can't. Idk if it's missing software, or missing
| hardware, though I'm gleaning from other comments here that
| it's software (thus presumably fixable).
| blankx32 wrote:
| NASA have since clarified its software-parameterization not
| software that would need to be changed for uncrewed undock
| and return
| cryptonector wrote:
| That seems like a simpler problem to solve.
| jmartin2683 wrote:
| If your company hires more scrum masters and project managers
| than engineers, this is where you're heading.
| htrp wrote:
| I never understood why companies adopted diamond shaped org
| charts where middle management out-numbered people doing the
| work
| grecy wrote:
| Because middle management convinced them it was a good idea
| to do so!
| notact wrote:
| After all of their technical failures, and known cultural
| problems leading to them, I am astonished Boeing has the nerve to
| insist it is safe. Seems like they are betting the whole space
| business farm on astronauts not dying on the way down.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Too bad they can't just parachute down...
| jakeinspace wrote:
| With a really big parachute, you could I suppose. Although it
| would need to survive getting peppered with high velocity
| debris, and have a way of opening up without sufficient air
| drag.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| But would there be risk of burning in the atmosphere?
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Yes, you would burn up because after the chute slows you
| down just a little bit, you'll quickly smash into the
| atmosphere at a fairly steep angle. One way you might be
| able to avoid burning up is by firing a rocket downwards to
| slow your fall while dragging the giant (like, tens of
| square km) parachute behind you to reduce velocity. Then,
| maybe, it would be possible to reenter at a gentle speed,
| eventually shutting off the rocket entirely. Of course,
| this would probably require something close to a weightless
| and infinitely strong chute.
| __d wrote:
| In the 1960's (I think?) NASA did studies on various emergency
| situations in preparation for the post-Apollo space stuff that
| never happened. I remember a zippered inflatable sphere that
| could be used to EVA a person between vehicles, and I _think_
| there was an inflatable cone-shaped reentry device that got out
| of orbit, and down to a reasonable altitude, before being
| discarded and the person used a parachute for landing.
|
| A quick search turns up:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracone
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Back in 2022, they tested an inflatable heat shield that's
| somewhat like what you described. IIRC, it performed great.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
| Earth_Orbit_Flight_Test_of...
| IAmNotACellist wrote:
| Remember this was called a conspiracy theory when people
| immediately said that, now it's just true. They tried to drip-
| feed this information to soften the blow I guess.
|
| In fact, the first people to say that the extension in space was
| indicative of a serious problem and that Boeing's PR was BS were
| right, yet they were attacked.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| After the 737MAX debacle, with Boeing blaming the pilots for
| the crashes, how could anyone possibly trust Boeing's PR?
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I listened to the whole conference and here's my impression:
|
| 1. NASA manager Steve Stich said there's a relatively wide "band
| of uncertainty" in how risky a Starliner return is. Some (many?)
| NASA engineers are at the high end of the band and are advocating
| a return on Dragon instead. Boeing is obviously at the low end of
| the band and thinks it is a low risk.
|
| The problem is, the data doesn't rule out either side of the
| band. So they are trying to get more data to narrow the
| uncertainty (in either or both directions). [Interestingly
| enough, the data from the White Sands testing made them _more_
| worried because it revealed the Teflon seal deformation.]
|
| But my sense is that if they don't narrow the uncertainty (i.e.,
| convince the NASA engineers) then they will very likely choose a
| Dragon return. That is, it sounds like if nothing changes, the
| astronauts are coming down on Dragon.
|
| 2. Stich said they need to decide by mid-August, in order to have
| time to prepare the Crew-9 launch for Sept 24th. So we'll know by
| then.
|
| 3. They emphasized that (a) the thruster problems are all fixable
| (given time), and (b) that even if Starliner returns without a
| crew, they will have learned enough from the test to potentially
| certify the capsule for regular service. This is probably the
| only way they'll be able to keep Boeing as a provider. A redo of
| this mission would cost Boeing half a billion dollars, easy. And
| since the contract is fixed-price, this would just add to
| Boeing's losses. So I expect they will certify Starliner even if
| it comes down without a crew.
|
| 4. In some ways, Starliner is being held to a higher standard
| than Dragon Crew-2. If Starliner were the only vehicle available,
| NASA and the astronauts would absolutely take the small risk and
| come down with a crew. But since Dragon is available, I think
| NASA is thinking, "why take the risk?"
|
| 5. There's a huge difference between how NASA engineers and lay
| people look at this issue. Many people (particularly on Twitter)
| have a binary safe/not-safe view of the situation. Either
| Starliner is safe or it is not. Either the astronauts are
| stranded or they are not. But the engineering perspective is all
| about dealing with uncertainty. What is the probability of a bad
| result? Is the risk worth the reward? Even worse, everything is a
| trade-off. Sometimes trying to mitigate a risk causes an
| unintended effect that increases risk (e.g., a bug fix that
| causes a bug).
|
| I don't envy the engineers, either at NASA or at Boeing.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I don't envy the engineers, either at NASA or at Boeing.
|
| When I worked at Boeing, I talked with my lead engineer about
| this. He said there were indeed some excellent engineers who
| could not live with the possiblity of making a mistake. Boeing
| would find jobs for them that were not safety critical, like
| design studies of new aircraft. There they could be productive
| without the stress.
|
| Personally, I found the stress to be motivating. It meant I was
| doing something that mattered.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Very interesting insight. Thank you!
|
| Right now, I'm sure Starliner engineers are under a lot of
| stress. But I really believe that the program will get
| through this and end up being successful.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's a bit like finals in college. I knew that without the
| stress from the threat of failing the finals, I wouldn't
| apply myself to learning the material. Stress brings out
| the best in people.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's like "angle of attack" in a wing (funnily enough,
| given the topic).
|
| Increasing it works up to a point (increasing lift) but
| at the cost of increased drag and, at a certain point, a
| stall. I've found myself, at different points, "coasting"
| (gliding) and "stalling" (pulling up too hard when I'm
| not in the right conditions). Long-term burnout is like
| being "behind the power curve" and gradually losing
| energy.
| stavros wrote:
| I find the solution of giving non-safety-critical posts to
| the engineers that care most about safety very indicative of
| the culture at Boeing.
| eqvinox wrote:
| "engineers who could not live with the possiblity of making
| a mistake" is not the same as "engineers that care most
| about safety"
| stavros wrote:
| You think they'll be sloppy about safety and then just
| kill themselves when someone dies?
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Back when I started engineering school, we tended to add
| more constraints to systems than what they actually need
| believing that we were making them more secure and
| "safer".
|
| "This will make sure we cover edge cases we're not aware
| of", we thought.
|
| Later we discovered such systems are called "hyperstatic"
| and that they are actually more fragile and more prone to
| malfunction. What we should've aimed for are isostatic
| systems, where less constraints meant more stable
| systems.
|
| I'm not saying Boeing engineering aren't aware of this.
| Of course they do. I just wanted to show an example of
| how trying to avoid mistakes *may* lead to less safe
| systems.
| stavros wrote:
| Sure, but this just assumes they don't know what they're
| doing (which, well, is probably true). It doesn't refute
| the point that you want to put people who are obsessive
| about safety in charge of safety.
|
| I work for a healthcare company, and we definitely put in
| charge of safety people who stress about a patient coming
| to harm, not people who are so-so about it.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I read GP as relocating people who were paralyzed by
| safety.
|
| E.g. the developers who never ship code because they
| always want to write the better version of the thing,
| that they thought up while building the current version
|
| At some point you have to look at a less than perfect
| design and answer the question of whether it's good
| enough for the requirements at hand.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's about engineers who are paralyzed by the thought
| that if they make a mistake, people will die.
|
| It's not about striving for perfection.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Are those things different? (honestly asking)
|
| It feels like the same coin to me: inability to accept
| calculated risk.
| Gracana wrote:
| It sounds like they'd burn out and quit, and management
| would rather find them a place where they can stay than
| lose them.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's not about burnout. It's about otherwise competent
| engineers who are paralyzed by fear of making a mistake.
|
| Finding a productive place for them, where their
| expertise counts, but peoples' lives don't hang on the
| results, is just good management.
| cptskippy wrote:
| You think the entire Starliner project is just engineers
| being sloppy?
| stavros wrote:
| Of course not, if there's one thing Boeing is famous for
| right now, that's their attention to safety.
|
| I believe their motto is "Safety to the Max".
| cptskippy wrote:
| So why do you assume that they'll be slopping and kill
| themselves? Why is that the only option? Couldn't someone
| make a mistake? Couldn't the person just be riddled with
| guilt and just abandon their career.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I'd prefer not to believe they tried to screw up on
| purpose.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Right. Some want to work on the hard safety issues
| because they do care about it.
| Yeul wrote:
| It's space. If you want safe you stay at home. There will
| always be a risk when you ride a rocket into orbit.
| stavros wrote:
| Yes, there are no degrees of safety, might as well strap
| yourself to a cannon bomb and ride it!
| generalizations wrote:
| > engineers who could not live with the possiblity of
| making a mistake
|
| The whole point, as I read it, is that those engineers
| could not handle "degrees of safety".
| 93po wrote:
| should we apply this to boeing's planes too?
| Loughla wrote:
| No because we're not talking about that.
| michaelt wrote:
| Yes, there will always be a risk when you ride a 737 into
| orbit too.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Should be applied to aircraft in general, yes.
|
| It is mind boggling just how many things need to work
| perfectly constantly consistently to maintain safe
| flight. This goes for both Boeing and Airbus (and
| Embraer, Cessna, et al.); all of General Electric, Pratt
| & Whitney, and Rolls Royce; etc.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Yes, just like you also do with Airbus too, and any other
| plane manufacturers. You already factor in risk every
| time you set foot in a car, too, and a car is a far more
| dangerous vehicle. Danger from crashing is an inherent
| danger in travelling faster than on foot, and when you're
| on foot you're also facing the risk of being hit by those
| moving in those fast vehicles.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That's not remotely what he said.
| prewett wrote:
| I think parent meant that some people did not want to be in
| a position where they could make a mistake that mattered
| (that is, they are uncomfortable being responsible for
| safety). Those people were put on projects where failure
| had few consequences. This is the kind of person unwilling
| to have a safety-critical position.
| tracker1 wrote:
| It's hard for me to imagine... I've been in a position to
| work on training software for some aerospace equipment and
| maintenance, but even that was well defined before I touched
| it. The closest I've come to that level of stress was working
| on security provisioning around financial systems. Hard to
| imagine being responsible directly for people's lives, not
| just livelihood.
| rob74 wrote:
| Even if Boeing thinks that the chance of a catastrophic failure
| is infinitesimally small, they probably still can't ignore what
| a failure would mean for their already bad reputation. So
| returning the capsule without a crew is probably the safer
| option overall: if it's ok, it can still be certified; in the
| unlikely chance of a failure, NASA and Boeing can at least say
| that they were cautious and didn't succumb to the same wishful
| thinking that led to the Columbia disaster - and the damage for
| Boeing in the public opinion would be far smaller than if human
| lives were lost.
| cubefox wrote:
| You are ignoring the probabilities though. Risk is
| probability*potential damage amount, so the lower the
| probability of damage, the lower the risk. This can result in
| a low risk even if the potential amount of potential damage
| is high (when the probability is sufficiently small).
| HPsquared wrote:
| All predictions have a margin of error. Both "known
| unknowns" and "unknown unknowns". Given they don't really
| understand the cause, we're nearer the "unknown unknowns"
| area.
| Symmetry wrote:
| It's better to analyze this in terms of the incentive of the
| particular project managers at Boeing making this decision,
| since Boeing itself isn't a person making decisions. They
| might rationally conclude that it might go well and get them
| promoted but if it goes badly the worst they're looking at is
| early retirement.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Certifying a vehicle based on a test/qualification flight that
| was such a failure that it was considered too risky to let the
| crew fly back on the vehicle sounds about as reasonable as
| letting Boeing self-certify their airplane safety (instead of
| FAA oversight), or adding an automated nosedive-the-plane
| system with a non-redundant sensor just to avoid some training.
|
| Sure, it is cheap, but when, not if, it results in deaths, it
| will be really hard to justify why someone thought it was a
| reasonable choice.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| An unmanned flight back still significantly narrows the ban
| of what the risks are and if the return is successful, the
| returned craft will certainly be inspected in extreme detail.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| The returned craft is going to be hard to reassemble from
| the pieces scattered across the surface of the planet,
| whether there were people in it or not.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's unlikely to actually fail, just not unlikely enough
| to send the astronauts in.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| The problem is in the service module which will be
| jettisoned and burn up in the atmosphere.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Ah, I see.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Clearly NASA should wait until Starship is available to
| return the entire thing to Earth in once piece (I'm
| assuming it will fit or could be made to fit.) :)
| jjk166 wrote:
| So long as the crew capsule makes it back properly, that
| means the service module was good enough to get the job
| done.
|
| They'd also have data collected during the return voyage.
| ragebol wrote:
| There is also a risk with Dragon, just estimated to be lower.
| But both are still space capsules, there is a risk involved
| with both.
| pfdietz wrote:
| They're safer than the Shuttle was, though. Capsules are
| designed (I believe) to survive total loss of control on
| entry, although a purely ballistic entry can have
| decelerations of up to 15 gees, IIRC.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The capsule will survive, the strawberry jelly on the
| inside, not so much.
| jjk166 wrote:
| This is a semantic failure. There's risk to everything. But
| there is a qualitative difference between the risk
| something might malfunction and that something which has
| already malfunctioned might be dangerous.
|
| A house full of fire hazards which is nevertheless not on
| fire can not be directly compared to a house that is
| currently on fire.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| You should read about Apollo 6:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_6
|
| Apollo 6 was an uncrewed test flight of the Saturn V. It was
| almost a disaster. Pogo oscillations almost tore the vehicle
| apart. And after staging, two engines shut down early and the
| rocket had to go into a lower orbit than planned.
|
| But that flight was enough to certify the Saturn V for human
| use and they launched 3 astronauts to the moon on the next
| Saturn V flight, Apollo 8.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| One of the interesting things about testing is how you
| interpret the results.
|
| e.g., you have to run three test cases with passing results
| to pass the overall test and certify the system.
|
| So, you run the test. All three test cases pass with flying
| colors, but during test #3, something that you hadn't
| thought of came up and it could be a problem.
|
| What do you do now? You've reached your stated
| qualification for passing the test but now there's this
| wrinkle. Which one should take precedence in certifying the
| system for use?
| peterfirefly wrote:
| And pogo oscillations continued to be a big problem for the
| Saturn V rockets...
| boxed wrote:
| > In some ways, Starliner is being held to a higher standard
| than Dragon Crew-2
|
| Maybe. I don't believe that's true, but let's assume it is.
|
| They SHOULD be held to a higher standard. Of the 16 US
| astronauts that have died in the space program, 14 died on the
| shuttle which was Boeing. That, coupled with Boeings recent
| deterioration and demonstrated disregard for human life, makes
| it clear that Boeing needs to be kept on a short leash.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Boeing didn't make the space shuttle.
| big-green-man wrote:
| Boeing did largely design build the orbiter, which is the
| reusable spacecraft that's commonly referred to as the
| space shuttle, although it was only a part of the entire
| space shuttle program. Both disasters though were not the
| fault of the orbiter but caused by failures of the boosters
| and tank, neither of which were built by Boeing, but these
| projects are supposed to be designed holistically and so
| I'd say all the companies involved in that project share
| responsibility for the shortcomings of the design.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Rockwell International made the orbiter. Unless they were
| later merged into Boeing and now perhaps involved in
| Starliner?
| big-green-man wrote:
| Yeah, Rockwell was broken up and that part of the company
| is now Boeing Defense, although i do think Boeing was
| directly involved in designing of the shuttle back then.
| Now you've got me wondering if I'm mistaken about that.
| skissane wrote:
| In the early 1970s, NASA had three contractors helping it
| to design the Space Shuttle: Rockwell, Lockheed, and a
| Boeing-Grumman joint venture. So Boeing definitely played
| a role in _designing_ it, although exactly how big its
| role was in the design, as opposed to the other
| contractors, I don't know.
|
| https://www.spaceline.org/united-states-manned-space-
| flight/...
|
| However, Boeing was not originally one of the main
| contractors for the actual
| construction/operation/maintenance of the Space Shuttle.
| It later became one by buying Rockwell's space division
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| They love to claim they did as part of their legacy.
| nobleach wrote:
| In the case of the Challenger accident, the actual orbiter
| wasn't the problem. The seals on the solid rocket boosters
| were. That said, I don't know who was responsible for their
| design/manufacture.
| vlachen wrote:
| The teams responsible for their design and manufacture
| were sounding the alarm about the o-rings being out of
| their operational envelope. It was management at the
| manufacturer and NASA that decided to proceed.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Thiokol[1], who were later bought out by ATK who in turn
| were bought out by Northrop Grumman.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiokol
| big-green-man wrote:
| While I don't disagree with you, I think it's important to
| point out that 3 american astronauts died during the Apollo 1
| ground test.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Apollo 1 was built by North American Aviation, which was
| acquired by Rockwell, which is now part of Boeing.
| itishappy wrote:
| As opposed to SpaceX with literally no history of human rated
| spaceflight? Neither of these companies have earned reduced
| standards...
|
| Edit: To clarify, this applies to the certification process,
| not current performance.
| cptskippy wrote:
| They've launched 12 crew missions in the last 44 months
| putting 46 people in orbit.
| itishappy wrote:
| Right, but first they certified it for human-rated
| spaceflight by scrutinizing it very closely and testing
| it very rigorously.
| cptskippy wrote:
| They certified a modification to an existing spacecraft
| that was already proven. Starliner is a bespoke from
| scratch vehicle.
| itishappy wrote:
| Are you suggesting they did or should have relaxed the
| human-rated spaceflight certification standards for Crew
| Dragon?
| cptskippy wrote:
| No, they actually have made them go through more rigor
| than Starliner has been subject to.
|
| What I'm saying is that Dragon was built upon an existing
| proven platform. The effort needed to convert the cargo
| module for human spaceflight is less than the effort
| Boeing needed to create a module from scratch. AND SpaceX
| still had to go through more rigor with Crew Dragon than
| what Boeing has had to do with Starliner.
|
| The certification standards for Starliner have been
| reduced compared to Dragon, and Boeing is asking for them
| to be reduced further still.
| cwillu wrote:
| You're aware that SpaceX routinely performs crewed
| missions, right? There's been at least a dozen now.
| itishappy wrote:
| How many of those happened before testing and
| certification was completed?
| cwillu wrote:
| If you count the ones from before certification was
| complete, then there was one more than I counted. A
| baker's dozen instead of an even dozen launches.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/nasa-and-spacex-
| complet...
|
| "The Crew Dragon, including the Falcon 9 rocket and
| associated ground systems, is the first new, crew
| spacecraft to be NASA-certified for regular flights with
| astronauts since the space shuttle nearly 40 years ago.
| Several critical events paved the way for this
| achievement, including grounds tests, simulations,
| uncrewed flight tests and NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 test
| flight with astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley
| earlier this year." [from 2020]
|
| Dragon did test flights demonstrating that the systems
| worked, Starliner has so far only done test flights
| demonstrating that the systems do not, plus a pinky
| promise that it'll work the next time. We do not know if,
| say, the abort system works, because the only time it was
| subjected to a full test, it failed. This is not a matter
| of SpaceX not having experience building human-rated
| craft and trying to get unearned credit for competence,
| this is a matter of Boeing trying to use their history to
| get unearned credit.
| itishappy wrote:
| In the context of standards used for certification, I
| would count _only_ flights from before certification was
| complete.
|
| There was one flight with two crew to the ISS: the same
| test Starliner is currently attempting.
|
| I agree with your analysis that Boeing does not deserve
| to have lowered standards. I'm suggesting that neither
| did Crew Dragon before certification. I'm not suggesting
| their systems or records are comparable, I'm simply
| arguing that unproven systems should be tested rigorously
| before being certified for human-rated spaceflight.
| mattashii wrote:
| > A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a billion
| dollars, easy.
|
| I imagine so indeed, not in the least because all Atlas V
| launch vehicles are already assigned to missions. The booster
| for another non-operational flight would thus have to come from
| either their operational missions, or they'd have to pay
| someone else to give up their scheduled Atlas V payload. If
| they fail to buy someone else's Atlas V, they'd have to
| integrate Starliner onto a new (i.e. non-Atlas V) human-rated
| launch vehicle, or they would fail to deliver the contracted 6
| operational missions.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| It's doubtful they actually get awarded 6 missions before the
| ISS is de-orbited at the present rate.
| adolph wrote:
| > all Atlas V launch vehicles are already assigned to . . .
|
| Amazon's Project Kuiper comsat constellation which is
|
| _targeting our first full-scale Kuiper mission for Q4 aboard
| an Atlas V rocket from ULA._
|
| https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-
| amazon/inside...
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think many might not be aware of Starliner's sordid history.
| It has failed essentially every qualification test in various
| ways. Their pad abort test (where you simulate a launch abort
| while on the launch pad) resulted in only 2 of the 3 parachutes
| deploying in beyond optimal conditions. NASA considered that
| such a resounding success that they let them completely skip
| the far more challenging in-flight abort test. Their first
| automated mission to the ISS completely failed and did not make
| it to the station. NASA finally required a redo from Boeing and
| their second one did make it to the ISS, but only after
| experiencing widespread leaks and thruster failures literally
| identical to the ones that have now left these astronauts
| stranded.
|
| If SpaceX or another company had remotely similar results, they
| would never have been greenlit. For instance in spite of a
| flawless pad abort test, NASA required SpaceX also carry out an
| in-flight abort. And that's completely reasonable - you don't
| simply skip tests, even with optimal performance. Skipping
| tests following suboptimal performance is simply unjustifiable.
| And so I think we're largely looking at another Challenger type
| disaster caused by a disconnect between management (and likely
| political appointees) versus engineering staff, rather than
| inherent risk. But this is not a vessel that should have ever
| had a single human anywhere near it, and so their official
| comments (and even actions) on the situation are going to be
| heavily biased due to their own behaviors.
| tim333 wrote:
| Sounds like it might be better if Boeing dropped out if their
| thing doesn't work properly, costs much more and is mostly in
| there through political lobbying.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I am certain that if Boeing thought that they could drop
| this without repercussions, they would absolutely do it.
| lupusreal wrote:
| They said a year or two back they will refuse to take on
| new fixed-price contracts going forward. Apparently the
| only way they can be profitable is by scamming taxpayers.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Time for nationalization, then.
|
| If a producer of critical infrastructure cannot make
| profit without cutting corners, it should be nationalized
| so that the need to place profit ahead of anything and
| everything the producer does is eliminated.
| edem wrote:
| then the taxpayers can foot the bill
| Sprocklem wrote:
| It's a contract with NASA. Taxpayers already are footing
| the bill.
| WJW wrote:
| Why would the government need or want to own a producer
| that is not capable of producing things profitably while
| competitors that _can_ do so exist in the market?
| _joel wrote:
| They also wrapped their avionics cables in flammable tape and
| had to redo everything. The original, approved tape was still
| available, not a supply issue. I think that is pretty
| telling.
| xattt wrote:
| Inflammable means flammable? What a country!
|
| /s
| pfdietz wrote:
| My eyes get inflamed just reading the word, wondering
| where it could have come from.
| taneq wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym :)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings_
|
| Inflammable has one meaning.
| Qwertious wrote:
| "in" denotes the opposite, so "inflammable" has been used
| to mean not flammable due to expectations of grammatical
| consistency, and as a result the word is generally
| preferred to be _avoided entirely_ nowadays in favor of
| either "flammable" (or "highly flammable"), or
| "nonflammable".
| jfengel wrote:
| "Flammable" is such a weird word. Folk etymology would
| derive it from a transitive verb "to flame" that doesn't
| really exist (i.e. is not used, at least not that way).
|
| There is a transitive verb "to inflame", which is common.
| It derives from the noun "flame" and the prefix "in-",
| which when applied to nouns makes it a verb meaning "to
| cause [the noun]".
|
| They also ignored the common word "inflammation", which
| nobody thinks means "to stop your tissues from flaring
| up".
|
| None of that matters. People parsed "inflammable"
| differently and arrived at a new meaning. But I just find
| it odd that, while doing that parsing, they never
| considered that they never use the verb "to flame" in
| ordinary speech.
| xattt wrote:
| Inert occurs in the same "domain" of chemistry that
| suggests as nothing will occur to a given material.
| smcin wrote:
| "Inert" goes further, it says the material is chemically
| unreactive.
|
| Whereas wood or fabric could be flammable or nonflammable
| depending on how it's coated or treated.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| 'Flame' as in 'to catch fire' has some rare usage in
| English- "The main blaze of it is past, but a small thing
| would make it flame again" says Shakespeare. The more
| common usages are metaphorical- 'flame with passion', or
| more modern 'flamed them online', though I don't really
| see that usage much anymore either.
| carapace wrote:
| Ayuh, it's English, it doesn't have to make sense as long
| as it makes sense.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > the word is generally preferred to be avoided entirely
| nowadays in favor of either "flammable" (or "highly
| flammable"), or "nonflammable
|
| Noninflammable for the maniacs.
| rtkwe wrote:
| English Trying to make sense for one second challenge.
| Level: Impossible
|
| It's always amusing all the gotchas that exist in
| English. I'm glad I grew up in it rather than trying to
| learn it as a second language.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Uninflammable, please.
| speleding wrote:
| +1 By the way, Dutch has "onontvlambaar"
| bunderbunder wrote:
| This interpretation is based on incorrect decomposition
| of the word.
|
| In this case, the "in" prefix means "in/on". Think of it
| as "inflame" + "able". Similar to how "inflammation"
| doesn't mean "a state of not burning" and "inflamed"
| doesn't mean "not burning". Also see "ingress", "ingest",
| "inaugurate".
|
| I'm only an armchair etymologist and this is wild
| speculation, but I think that the meaning of the "in"
| prefix might depend on whether we get the word directly
| from Latin, or whether it comes through French.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I'm only an armchair etymologist and this is wild
| speculation, but I think that the meaning of the "in"
| prefix might depend on whether we get the word directly
| from Latin, or whether it comes through French.
|
| French has both meanings: the negation as in _interdit_
| (forbidden) or _impossible_ (well, impossible); or "in",
| "towards", "change" as in _interieur_ (interior),
| _inflexion_ (inflection), or indeed _inflammable_ (from
| the Latin _inflammabilis_ ).
|
| Both meanings also exist in Latin.
|
| What I found fascinating learning English is "inhabit",
| which also sounds like the opposite of its actual
| meaning. Is obviously the second meaning, but then the
| prefix is redundant because it came from the Latin
| _habitare_ , which is the verb with the same meaning.
|
| Anyway, that was today's minute on etymology.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| That's arguably a factoid.
| cnlevy wrote:
| To fix your word, just wrap it in-flammable tape. Not
| sure it's going to work, thats what they did with
| Starliner anyways.
| huppeldepup wrote:
| We should coax them into using coax instead.
| romwell wrote:
| Or, we should ax that co. from supplying space missions.
| jahewson wrote:
| I shall join you and will make it a co-axing.
| cdshn wrote:
| Dr. Nik. What a treasure.
|
| Speaking of former Soviet treasures, "hot4words" taught
| me why the "in" needed to be there. Etymologically
| speaking, that is.
|
| How time flies
| belter wrote:
| > They also wrapped their avionics cables in flammable tape
|
| Who approved the design, and are the Engineers still
| employed by Boeing? Curious minds would like to know. Any
| way to trace this from public documentation?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| IIRC it was Kapton tape, technically what they did was
| fine, Kapton tape is commonly used for things like that.
| The problem was that they used it in places that might
| get hotter than the tape was rated for.
|
| Edit: Actually, looking around a bit, doesn't seem like
| there's any official mention of what kind of tape it was.
| Kapton tape seems to be the popular assumption but
| there's no evidence of it.
| belter wrote:
| Digging a little bit on this, it seems it could be a one
| digit part number difference and fat fingering...
|
| P212. Silicon adhesive with up to 200 C insulation. https
| ://www.nitto.com/au/en/products/e_parts/heat_resistant0..
| .
|
| P213. Acrylic adhesive with up to 155 C insulation. https
| ://www.nitto.com/au/en/products/e_parts/heat_resistant0..
| .
|
| https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=gm8
| 40m...
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It might not even be a fat-finger, they might
| legitimately use 200C rated tape where it's needed and
| 155C tape where the higher spec is not needed. I am not a
| kapton expert but maybe higher temp ratings are less
| flexible or less resistant to hard vacuum or something
| like that. This might just be a plain old engineering QA
| issue. These are complex machines, and these sorts of
| things happen.
|
| I don't know how space-rated QA works, as I am but a
| lowly terrestrial engineer, but I imagine there are specs
| for each portion of the machine calling out electrical
| ratings, temperature ratings, vibration ratings, etc. If
| the spec definitions for that section of machine are bad
| it's hard to do proper QA against those specs.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Accounting.
| fredgrott wrote:
| name one Soyuz operation to the same space station that
| resulted in a similar failure....
|
| It would seem that Dragon is being held up to the same
| standard that was set for Soyuz...Boeing is the only one
| failing....
|
| We are looking at a testing and engineering failure combined
| of Boeing.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Soyuz MS-22 had to be ditched last year due to its coolant
| failure.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> It has failed essentially every qualification test in
| various ways. [...] Their first automated mission to the ISS
| completely failed and did not make it to the station. NASA
| finally required a redo from Boeing and their second one did
| make it to the ISS, but only after experiencing widespread
| leaks and thruster failures_
|
| I don't follow spaceflight news in any great depth - but
| doesn't SpaceX _also_ have a rocket thingy that keeps
| exploding?
|
| Isn't "just launch over and over until it stops exploding"
| the way rockets are made these days?
| FactolSarin wrote:
| That's SpaceX's philosophy, but Boeing operates on a
| measure-twice build-once philosophy where everything is
| supposed to be close to perfect in the first place.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| But it's not close enough to perfect and they didn't
| factor a failure into the costs. So now there's pressure
| in not doing a second trial run that may or not be
| perfect because they don't want to lose money.
|
| Not only that but it's year later than planned and has
| failed most of its tests. And even if everything had
| worked as planned it would have lost money.
|
| It's really not a very successful philosophy anymore.
| tim333 wrote:
| Different types of tests. The SpaceX ones were mostly
| supposed to do that.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| How do you know what kind of test it was supposed to be?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| You follow the news and the public statements on the
| goals of the test? SpaceX isn't exactly tight lipped
| about their philosophy and what they hope to learn from
| each test.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Can you share an example of a pre-launch announcement so
| I know what they hope to learn? I haven't seen anything
| about any upcoming test's goals as they approach, but I
| also don't know where I would look.
| tim333 wrote:
| Dunno about that exactly but Everyday Astronaut youtube
| has a lot of stuff. Here on the early starship strategy
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM6WqjJCKQo
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Usually on SpaceX's X or Musk's X, for example:
|
| https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1762237289231757406
|
| https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1798692089766805813
|
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1792629142141177890
|
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1783929534955589885
|
| Or SpaceX's summaries for after the test:
|
| https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starsh
| ip-...
|
| https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starsh
| ip-...
|
| There also tend to be good articles from dedicated space
| reporters like Eric Berger, Stephen Clark or Michael
| Shaetz:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/we-know-starship-
| can-f...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/06/spacex-starship-fourth-
| test-...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/spacex-video-
| teases-po...
|
| The "mainstream" reporting on these tends to be pretty
| awful and a glaring display of Gell-Mann Amnesia, but the
| more popular space journalists tend to be pretty good. I
| provided specific examples because there are also
| "journalists" known for intentionally distorting the
| facts to prop up their biases.
|
| The goals for the next flight test seem to be to try to
| catch the booster (if they can get the necessary
| regulatory clearances) and to try to perform a controlled
| reentry of Starship again, this time with an upgraded
| heat shield to hopefully take less damage than the
| previous attempts. It'll end up being mainly a control
| systems and shield material test since future prototypes
| which are already being built have changes to the fin
| locations which also mitigate some of the heat shield
| issues seen in the previous test.
|
| There's also talk of towing it to Australia after
| splashdown to study (also depends on if they can get the
| necessary regulatory clearances).
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if the goals change though, I
| feel like they might decide to do another simulated catch
| over water for the booster (since while it was
| technically successful in IFT-4, one engine did blow up),
| and similarly I doubt they'll have the clearances to tow
| the ship to Australia as fast as they'd like.
| avhon1 wrote:
| Here's what SpaceX put on their website before their most
| recent (fourth) flight test of Starship.
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20240601140837/https://www.spa
| cex...
|
| and here's what they posted before the third flight test
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20240306183144/https://www.spa
| cex...
|
| Both have pretty clear language about them being test
| flights (especially the flight 3 post), and list what
| they hope to test.
|
| edit: they have not yet made an official page on their
| website for the upcoming fifth test flight
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_integrated_
| fli...
|
| although they have teased about trying to return Booster
| to the tower for a catch attempt.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2BdNDTlWbo&t=149s
| macksd wrote:
| SpaceX is pretty open about optimizing for many
| iterations, a bit like the philosophy in software of
| shipping an MVP to get user feedback sooner for future
| iterations. Boeing has an established culture that's more
| like traditional waterfall development. When you watch
| their launches, they have tiers of objectives that get
| less and less likely to succeed - they plan to push even
| if failure is likely tlso they can learn from both their
| successful objectives and the eventual failure.
| ekimekim wrote:
| The issue is that you don't normally let humans on them
| until you've proven they don't explode. If Boeing had
| followed each of those incidents with a re-do where
| everything went perfectly, it wouldn't be a problem.
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| It's a different philosophy. Starship (the in-development
| SpaceX rocket) has taken the "test as fully as you can add
| often as you can" route, and no people will be getting on
| it until it's reached a high level of reliability.
|
| Starliner was not developed that way at all. It was
| supposed to be developed with much more up-front work to
| make sure that it would work correctly out of the gate. All
| of the mentioned Starliner tests were certification tests,
| whereas all of the Starship tests so far have been 100%
| expected to fail in some way, but with a more ambitious
| goal about how far it gets.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Putting this more bluntly:
|
| Starship: "We expect this to fail, but we will learn
| valuable lessons." -> Fails -> "That was fun! Next!"
|
| Starliner: "We expect this to succeed." -> Fails. "Well,
| shit."
|
| Fundamentally different engineering and design
| philosophies.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's not a difference in philosophies, it's different
| stages of development and testing.
|
| Starship and Starliner are very different things.
| Starship is the launch vehicle and a novel one (as in,
| it's not just a rebuild of an existing system, it's got
| new components and design elements). The failures we've
| seen so far were all, to some extent, expected though the
| particular modes of failure may not have been
| anticipated. They were launched with the intent of
| discovering the failure modes and responding to them with
| changes to design and manufacturing.
|
| Starliner is now where Dragon Crew was with DM-2. Both
| tested with uncrewed flights and various test scenarios
| before their crewed flights. DM-2 and this flight are
| flights where nothing should go wrong. Failure, or
| critical failures at least, are unanticipated events.
| Otherwise you wouldn't be putting people in them yet
| (both vehicles are capable of operating autonomously,
| there's no reason to put a person in them if you aren't
| confident in the vehicle). The same philosophy applies to
| both Dragon Crew and Starliner at this stage.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Completely different case, though most reporting doesn't
| make that clear.
|
| The first time you build a physical rocket and test sending
| it up, it's almost certain to fail. Seeing how and why it
| explodes is pretty much the _purpose_ of launching it!
| supportengineer wrote:
| I could say the same thing about software
| ranger207 wrote:
| Yes, SpaceX has a rocket that keeps exploding, which is
| their new in development rocket Starship. They don't use
| Starship to launch people yet though; they use their much
| more reliable Falcon 9 instead. Blowing up rockets while
| they're in development is fine; blowing up rockets that
| have people on them is less fine. Boeing's Starliner should
| not have carried people until all its developmental
| problems were resolved
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Isn't "just launch over and over until it stops exploding"
| the way rockets are made these days?"
|
| If the cargo was a bunch of rocks and Boeing paid for the
| launch, you would have been right.
|
| But this was a manned mission ordered by the US government.
| At this phase of development, nothing should be left to
| chance.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > I don't follow spaceflight news in any great depth - but
| doesn't SpaceX also have a rocket thingy that keeps
| exploding?
|
| In fact even the rocket that Dragon launches on has a long
| history of explosions. First in the launches, then in the
| landings that resulted in some very spectacular booms. One
| time it landed perfectly upright, engines shut off, and one
| of the landing feet collapsed, causing it to fall over and
| BOOM. That was so funny :)
|
| But now it has had a huge run of successful launches. I
| think it's a better approach because material science does
| not always behave exactly like the mathematical models. And
| space is one area where the margins of failure are
| extremely low.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There will be businesses cases written about what happens
| when any organization becomes completely over burdened by
| risk mitigation. This applies to government as well. One
| reason nothing can be done. (Also interestingly it correlates
| nicely with the average age of decision makers as they
| approach death).
| hedora wrote:
| The issue with Boeing isn't risk mitigation.
|
| The problem is that they have managers that don't
| understand basic engineering and manufacturing practices,
| and that focus entirely on short-term financial
| engineering.
|
| Case studies for those sorts of mistakes have already been
| written. For example, look at the US automotive bailout and
| collapse of Detroit, or read up on IBM and GE's performance
| over the last decade.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| AT&T is another one and you're seeing the same thing play
| out in the entertainment sector with Warner Bros.
| Discovery and Disney and one could argue Google is on the
| same path.
|
| Financial engineering is a dead end in multiple
| industries but will continue unabated because of how the
| management employee lifecycle works -- the people who run
| companies into the ground are long retired with their
| huge comp packages by the time the company is defunct.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| It's fairly obvious at this point that Boeing's problem
| isn't one of too much risk mitigation.
| panick21_ wrote:
| This is a highly inacccurate post.
|
| The companies could themselves propose certification and NASA
| only said if it is ok, if you didnt test you had do more
| certification work. NASA didnt require an abort test for
| either company. SpaceX just decided to have one, Boeing
| didnt.
|
| The parachute test had nothing to do with abort tests.
| autokad wrote:
| I think shade needs thrown at NASA for taking too long to
| make SpaceX a part of this solution. If they are sending up
| an unproven vehicle, why not have SapceX already on stand by?
| These astronauts should have been home in June, now they are
| saying they might not be home until 2025? someone needs
| fired.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| because astronauts being in space isn't a problem. the ISS
| always has a capsule docked to it in case emergency
| evacuation is needed
| adolph wrote:
| Here lies an hyperboloid argument or Catch-22. It isn't a
| circular argument because after dipping down to a
| solution we rebound into ether. 1.A:
| Astronauts stranded 2.B: No they are not stranded,
| there is an emergency evac capsule 3.A: Ok, bring
| them home 4.B: The emergency evac capsules are the
| vehicles they arrived on
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Well if I were one of the astronauts I'd be thrilled to
| have a few months extra in space <3
|
| This is probably the least bad effect of this.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| You forgot (IIRC) 1/4 parachutes failing on the landing of
| second launch and the cables on the remaining parachutes not
| being within load factor.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > So I expect they will certify Starliner even if it comes down
| without a crew.
|
| Considering the 'optics' of this, I imagine they will/should
| certify Starliner not with or without a crew, and at least not
| after 'enough' time has passed for any audit to be meaningful
| and for Boeing to prove that they are getting things right.
| Imagine 'ok-ing' the Starliner, and on the very next mission,
| the same (or different) critical error happens. Then I bid the
| NASA folks who ok-ed the Starliner a good start on their next
| jobs.
|
| If there is one profession with zero tolerance for errors it's
| the 'space-stuff' because 1) good luck repairing things in
| space, 2) "in space no one can hear you scream" (profanities
| because you ended up staying x10 or x100 the time planned)(and
| I do understand that capacity planning, food, toilets, etc.
| etc. have been calculated to ensure that they won't be running
| out of food, toilet paper, etc.)
|
| It would be fun to have a Season 3 of Space Force, and this
| time instead of Malkovich yelling at Microsoft, to be yelling
| at Boeing!
| datenwolf wrote:
| > Some (many?) NASA engineers are at the high end of the band
| and are advocating a return on Dragon instead. Boeing is
| obviously at the low end of the band and thinks it is a low
| risk.
|
| To me this gives a strong impression of history rhyming with
| itself. Back in the early 1980ies NASA engineers "close to the
| hardware" were raising warning, above warning about reliability
| issues of the shuttles, ultimately being overruled by
| management, leading to the Challenger disaster.
|
| Then in 2003 again engineers were raising warnings about heat
| shield integrity being compromised from impacts with external
| tank insulation material. Again, management overruled them on
| the same bad reasoning, that if it did not cause problems in
| the past, it will not in the future. So instead of addressing
| the issue in a preventative action, the Columbia was lost on
| reentry.
|
| Fool me once ..., fool me twice ...; I really hope the
| engineers will put their foot down on this and clearly and
| decisively overrule any mandate directed from management.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| If the concerns aren't addressed then there's a defined
| process by which the NASA Administrator (Nelson) has to sign
| it off.
|
| NASA has learnt from the bad days of blind Mission Management
| teams.
| PopePompus wrote:
| Nelson. The guy who thinks the far side of the Moon is in
| eternal darkness:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daZyPwCQak8&t=153s
| netsharc wrote:
| If one wants to be generous, maybe he means dark "to us"
| because we never see it from the earth.
| PopePompus wrote:
| Well, I'm reluctant to give him the benefit of the doubt
| because he also says "we don't know what's on the back
| side of the Moon" despite the fact that the agency _he
| heads_ mapped the far side of the Moon decades ago.
| neuronic wrote:
| Until management is held accountable and put into prison for
| their conscious unreasonable decisions against all advice,
| which led to the loss of life, nothing will ever change in
| megacorps.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| How many times have engineers been safely overruled?
| realslimjd wrote:
| It doesn't matter when there are lives needlessly at risk.
| The answer should be zero.
| btilly wrote:
| Given the many organizational failures that Boeing has had in
| recent years leading to safety problems ( _cough_ Dreamliner
| _cough_ ), I'm quite sure that Boeing's engineers have no way
| to put their feet down.
|
| Afterwards one might come out as a whistleblower. But the
| fact that the last two whistleblowers wound up conveniently
| dead (no really, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/boeing-
| whistleblower-di...) is likely to have a chilling effect on
| people's willingness to volunteer as whistleblowers.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Except in this case, according to Steve Stich, it is NASA
| engineers vs. Boeing engineers. And the Boeing engineers are
| the ones who are "closer to the hardware", while the NASA
| engineers are just overseeing it.
|
| I have no idea who is right in this case. And even if the
| crew comes down on Starliner successfully, it doesn't mean
| that it was the right call. Maybe they just got lucky.
|
| My sense from the call is that, if NASA engineers insist on a
| Dragon return, NASA management will support them.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Scott Manley mentioned an interesting twist on this in a
| recent YouTube video of his: Kamala Harris, chair of the
| National Space Council, becoming a candidate in this year's
| Presidential election. The NSC is supposed to guide policy,
| so she wouldn't normally be involved in this kind of nitty-
| gritty, but there are people all up and down the hierarchy
| who would be well aware that this isn't how the media or her
| political opponents would think about it in the event of
| disaster.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >And since the contract is fixed-price, this would just add to
| Boeing's losses. So I expect they will certify Starliner even
| if it comes down without a crew.
|
| Yet another Boeing vehicle to avoid ...
| naasking wrote:
| Boeing has burned enough of its reputation at this point that I
| wouldn't trust their assessment one bit. Bringing back
| Starliner without the crew seems like a no-brainer, and is the
| only way to restore some of Boeing's credibility.
|
| So many weeks of anti-Musk cope on Twitter about this issue.
| People really can't think clearly even about factual issues
| anymore.
| elif wrote:
| As a mountaineer, you play with this dichotomy safe/not-safe
| continuously and simultaneously.. but there comes a point
| sometimes where close calls add up the stammering indecision
| enters in, and at that point, in my opinion, you have already
| been defeated by the mountain. The indecision itself will
| consume too much of your energy and attention to perform the
| task even at a risk you could normally tolerate. Your judgement
| is too compromised to trust, and hubris and self-promising gets
| people killed.
| verandaguy wrote:
| > This is probably the only way they'll be able to keep Boeing
| as a provider. A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a
| billion dollars, easy. And since the contract is fixed-price,
| this would just add to Boeing's losses.
|
| As much as I get that Boeing is a major launch partner for the
| US in general and one of the only companies competing in the
| crewed space in the States right now, I don't get this part.
|
| It's not NASA's job to keep Boeing in the running. It's
| completely up to Boeing to produce a vehicle that can safely
| and reliably get crews to _and from_ orbit, and to do the
| appropriate amount of testing beforehand. If they can 't be
| bothered to do that with the understanding the cost of failure,
| that's on them.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It certainly is part of NASA's job to consider long term
| space travel needs. And supporting a competitor to SpaceX now
| as a long term strategic benefit has a lot of value as
| opposed to being held hostage to monopoly pricing in the
| future.
|
| Companies invest in their supply chain and invest in not
| being beholden to a single supplier (unless they control that
| supplier) all the time.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| That feels completely like an excuse used after the fact to
| justify keeping Boeing around rather than a principled
| stance, considering that NASA and Congress were pretty set
| on just giving Boeing the sole source contract for crew
| transport to the station.
|
| It's pretty well documented by Lori Garver, one of the
| people involved in pushing Commercial Crew, how strong the
| opposition was from both NASA and Congress.
| darknavi wrote:
| At this point it'd probably be money better spent raising
| up a Blue Origin commercial crew program than propping up
| the corpse of Boeing.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Better for whom? Better for the involved
| Congresscritters, lobbyists, and Boeing? For all Bezos'
| wealth, I suspect he's behind the curve on his lobbying
| game.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Is Blue Origin anything more than a "Jeff Bezos wanted to
| personally fly in space" company?
|
| If I had his wealth, "fly in space with William Shatner"
| would be on my todo list too.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| For a while it was like that, but after the ex-Honeywell
| CEO was replaced, and with New Glenn flight hardware
| becoming increasingly more common to see being moved
| around and tested, they do seem to be approaching being a
| serious space company.
| verandaguy wrote:
| Surely we can agree though, that given Boeing's recent
| track record and how they've handled calls for improved
| processes, combined with NASA's typical standard of safety
| and care, they aren't a good strategic long-term choice,
| right?
|
| Like, I understand what you're saying here, and I agree --
| if the US wants to have serious private-sector competition
| in the space sector, that's arguably a good thing. SpaceX's
| advances in reducing launch costs by implementing launch
| vehicle reusability to a degree that was never seriously
| approached before are objectively a good thing for the
| sector. Some of the work Firefly appears to be doing is
| really interesting, and could lower the cost of much of the
| work _around_ launches substantially. Blue Origin also
| exists and may at some point be more than a billionaire 's
| vanity project.
|
| Boeing isn't the only competitor in this space, and some of
| the smaller companies are hungrier. They're actively
| innovating, and because their existence is on the line,
| they do the work to make sure their projects are beyond
| reproach by the time they're picking up NASA work or
| sending people into orbit (usually with a pretty high
| degree of success).
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, Boeing is certainly a good strategic long-term
| choice _today_ for an alternative because they are one of
| 2 companies that have the capability to launch people
| into orbit. If you are saying that a different company
| should have been chosen 10 years ago, that 's different.
| If you're saying that NASA should _also_ invest in
| smaller companies, possibly.
| verandaguy wrote:
| > they are one of 2 companies that have the capability to
| launch people into orbit
|
| This is currently, actively, under question.
|
| I'm sticking to my guns here -- Boeing and NASA being in
| this position is not an excuse to go easy on them, cut
| corners, or otherwise lower any standards. If the US
| wants to use taxpayer money to prop up the crewed
| spaceflight sector (which I would agree with in principle
| despite it not being my tax dollars -- this is IMO an
| investment in the future and a way to stay competitive on
| the world stage), then they should reevaluate their
| approach to a public sector crewed spaceflight option
| where fewer parts of the process are profit driven.
|
| SLS was a flop but that doesn't mean that the next thing
| has to be, and while public spaceflight projects
| absolutely do subcontract work out when it comes to
| building components, there are big, traditionally-
| expensive parts of the project that can be offloaded to
| public agencies where profit isn't a consideration.
| jjk166 wrote:
| If NASA, and more importantly its budgetary oversight
| (congress) sufficiently values an additional supply chain,
| it can invest more money in additional tests to get that
| additional supply chain.
|
| If the value of the additional supply chain does not
| justify paying more, they can let boeing pay out of their
| own pocket, or let them drop out. The whole reason Boeing
| was given a fixed price contract at the beginning was so
| that this option could be exercised.
|
| Lowering the bar is not making an investment.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| It would probably be cheaper still for nasa to employ all
| of starliners engineers outright, sans management and
| shareholder profit making. Plus they'd have their own in
| house rocket design arm building stuff at cost.
| pie420 wrote:
| NASA has been held hostage to monopoly pricing it's entire
| history until SpaceX came along lol. Sometimes you have to
| let the rot die away and let something new take its place.
| Boeing needs to be broken up, shaken down, and cut to a
| lean modern family of companies.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > It's not NASA's job to keep Boeing in the running.
|
| In theory it is not. The reality is that a lot of NASA's
| budgeting and decisions are made based on the pork-barrel
| politics of the ones who hold the purse strings -- congress.
| adolph wrote:
| > 4. In some ways, Starliner is being held to a higher standard
| than Dragon Crew-2.
|
| Wat? Have any Dragon missions encountered the number and
| severity of issues experienced by Starliner?
|
| Maybe they have and are not public knowledge because NASA is
| less than transparency about its safety predictions and
| findings. But until the same confidence sapping mission
| performance is established it is not honest to say that
| Starliner is held to a higher standard.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I'm fairly certain that sources from NASA have said the
| opposite regarding scrutiny.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/science/boeing-starliner-...
|
| As it turns out, the official that admitted this was the same
| Steve Stich.
|
| Dragon was held to a higher standard, they were the newcomers
| and the corrupt snakes in Congress were looking for any excuse
| to justify canceling commercial crew and just giving Boeing a
| blank check again.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| For development, you're right. I think NASA considered Boeing
| a known quantity and trusted them to develop Starliner, while
| they scrutinized SpaceX because they were worried that they
| were too cavalier.
|
| But I meant a higher standard for how much risk NASA is
| willing to take in this instance. If something had gone wrong
| with Dragon Demo-2, there was no other way to bring down the
| astronauts. They would have accepted relatively high risk
| because they had no choice.
|
| But with Starliner, because they have Dragon, they don't need
| to accept that risk. The risk NASA will tolerate is lower
| now, because they have an alternative. That's what I meant by
| a higher standard.
| glzone1 wrote:
| Finally a good summary.
|
| I also picked up on the potential to at least payout Boeing if
| starliner comes down in good order (which seemed likely). I
| think that solves Boeings issue and would make them relax on
| forcing crew.
|
| The problem here is they have a seemingly somewhat safer option
| going up and down regularly. That is making taking risk MUCH
| much harder because the downside risk (2 crew trapped in space
| potentially for a long and slow death) is pretty disastrous
| especially if a safer option was sitting right there and it
| turns out the decision to send them down was contract driven.
|
| Given the history of thruster issues that go way back (and keep
| on repeating despite "fixes") I feel like they'll collect about
| as much data sending starliner back uncrewed, and then they'll
| need to be doing fixes for things like the helium issues etc
| that are compounding the risks. Be great if they could do ONE
| uncrewed flight more trouble free before putting astro's back
| on, but their solution is a more expensive with longer lead
| times than crew dragon (the entire service module is dumped on
| every launch I think, the rocket is also totally dumped etc)
| cameldrv wrote:
| I think it's very unlikely that Starliner will ever fly again,
| regardless of the ultimate outcome of this mission. In its
| three flights, Starliner has had so many serious problems, it's
| obvious that it hasn't been sufficiently engineered. Why take
| the risk when there's an alternative that has been essentially
| trouble free?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > In some ways, Starliner is being held to a higher standard
| than Dragon Crew-2.
|
| That's pretty contrived. Dragon has a 'standard' of multiple
| successful flights.
|
| > A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a billion
| dollars, easy. And since the contract is fixed-price, this
| would just add to Boeing's losses. So I expect they will
| certify Starliner even if it comes down without a crew.
|
| This is the problem with old space. SpaceX blows stuff up on
| the regular just to see what went boom. And they absorb the
| cost themselves. They don't fly something that has proven
| itself fully before. It's clear this approach works. If they
| can do it while not wasting billions, why can't Boeing?
|
| And "it will cost the vendor money" should really not factor
| into safety decisions.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Why can't they deorbit Starliner and let it land in the ocean
| without the astronauts ???.
|
| If nothing happens then great rather than killing off the entire
| program with fatalities.
|
| I know the flight control software is not designed for this but
| surely somebody must have thought of this scenario ???.
| __d wrote:
| They _probably_ can.
|
| NASA is worried about the thruster issue meaning that they lose
| control of the vehicle as it undocks and moves away from the
| ISS, leading to a collision. I guess that's independent of crew
| being on board.
|
| But also ... the current Starliner software doesn't support an
| automated (uncrewed) undock. The previous one did, but some
| code and/or configuration changes are required to enable this
| on the current vehicle. NASA has said that making the changes
| to enable this will take about a month (including QA).
| e_y_ wrote:
| In the press conference, they said the collision risk can be
| avoided by undocking the Starliner and then letting it float
| away to a safe distance before starting up the thrusters.
| smallerize wrote:
| Boeing deleted that part of the firmware and it will take
| months to reload it.
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-likely-to-signifi...
| siddarthd2919 wrote:
| What happens to the Boeing stuff that isn't making its way back?
| Space junk?
| me_here_alone wrote:
| This is not NASAs first time dealing with this type of scenario.
| The crew of Skylab 3 had thruster issues in their Apollo command
| module. NASA actually redesigned an Apollo capsule to seat 5 in a
| return to earth. It went so far as the rescue crew starting to
| seriously train for a launch. In the end they found workarounds
| for the issue and brought them home normally.
|
| http://www.astronautix.com/s/skylabrescue.html
| TMWNN wrote:
| The rescue kit built for Apollo during Skylab, while a
| precedent, is not a complete one. Apollo was the only vehicle
| available in that situation, so if the CSM already at Skylab
| couldn't be used, the rescue CSM had to launch. There are
| alternatives to (say) squeezing in more than four people into
| Crew Dragon.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| In case of a true emergency, would squeezing two people into
| one seat be that dangerous? (As in, is the safety envelope of
| the vehicle tied to weight in each seat?)
| wil421 wrote:
| What about duct taped to the floor?
| gomijacogeo wrote:
| Will their existing suits work on SpaceX or will SpaceX-
| compatible suits need to be flown up? If the latter, I wonder
| what the odds are of a suit-related problem (e.g. doesn't fit,
| won't seal, etc).
| cobbaut wrote:
| No, they will need suits from SpaceX that fit.
| Reason077 wrote:
| "If it's Boeing, you're not going (home)" ?
| carlivar wrote:
| They have enough food to stay that long?
| ljlolel wrote:
| Shipments on dragons are safe and work fine
| 38 wrote:
| This is a normal sentence with no double meaning
| big-green-man wrote:
| And they're still trying to play this down like it's not a total
| disaster. Who even buys corporate speak anymore?
| dankwizard wrote:
| That's going to be detrimental to their health long term.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| People have stayed much longer on the ISS.
| eru wrote:
| Yes, and that was bad for their long term health.
| baxtr wrote:
| Better see that it's not a Boeing, even if you're going to space
| now!?
| allie1 wrote:
| Much safer to stay away from Starliner. I'd even avoid a Boeing
| airplane on their commercial flights home.
| blindriver wrote:
| Unless the Boeing CEO and their children fly back down in the
| Starliner along with the astronauts, I don't think anyone else
| should risk their lives on it.
| st_goliath wrote:
| Sure, that worked just brilliantly over at OceanGate
| shiroiushi wrote:
| That one was the exception to the rule. The vast majority of
| CEOs aren't actually that dumb and reckless with their own
| lives, just greedy and sociopathic.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Both Bezos and Branson stepped on board their respective
| spaceships as well.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Those spaceships weren't as obviously stupid as
| OceanGate's sub. Also, those two aren't typical CEOs
| either, they're a bit more like OceanGate's CEO: they're
| ones who built their company from the ground up, and have
| some kind of strong drive to be the next Howard Hughes or
| something and be a leader in some revolutionary thing
| (spacecraft in their case, submarines in OceanGate's).
|
| Boeing's CEO is not like these men. He's just a typical
| CEO who didn't build the company, and is just a temporary
| hired gun really, like most of them.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Let's take a moment to appreciate the stupidity. Of
| course it's not nice to be a cpt. Hindsight. But he tried
| to build a sub in a... Sub-optimal shape (non-spherical),
| used inappropriate tools (wireless PS controllers?
| Wireless? Really?) and the most important idiotic
| mistake, after all these somewhat accepted mistakes - HE
| DIDN'T TEST IT. From what I read he just wasn't into
| testing.
|
| It baffles me the level of stupidity a human can reach
| with no consequences from the society, what so ever. He
| is just a small example! I don't have enough space to
| write here all the CURRENT people who are literally
| running the world and are being proud to be stupid in
| public. How stupidity became a commodity?
| pino82 wrote:
| Maybe it always was. But smartphones and social media
| definitely pushed it a lot.
|
| You can even see it here, whenever people get downvoted
| just for posting something that is too uncomfortable
| (e.g. bcs it's criticism that touches their own
| lifestyle, ...).
|
| There are ripple effects everywhere. Nowadays it's like
| yoi said: People are often explicitly proud to be stupid.
| fakedang wrote:
| Uh, that's the point?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| It also killed other people.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Fun fact - even Boeing engineers thought Ocean Gate was
| really stupid.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Sorry I don't provide any sources, but in ancient Rome the
| engineer that built a stone arc sometimes stood right below it
| when they removed the scaffolding supporting it. If he did a
| good job - he lives.
| SillyUsername wrote:
| International Space Station so why not charter a Soyuz?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| They would end up landing in Russia; with tensions between
| Russia and the west rising (i.e. the US supplying weapons to
| the country Russia is at war with at the moment), this isn't
| ideal.
|
| I mean it's an option for sure and in case of emergency it
| won't really matter whose return pods they use, but it seems
| they prefer not to.
| SillyUsername wrote:
| Seems a bit of a ground control trust issue given there are 2
| Russians up there at the moment, I wonder how they are
| intended to return at a future date.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Russian cosmonauts already regularly fly on SpaceX missions
| [1], and Americans also regularly fly on Soyuz missions. [2]
| The entire point of science cooperation, sports, and the like
| is to rise above politics.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_2#Crew_Drag
| on_fl...
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soyuz_missions
| zo1 wrote:
| And yet here we have this:
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/why-was-russia-
| banned...
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Because there's no need.
| skc wrote:
| There are a surprisingly large number of people who believe that
| space doesn't exist and that all such expeditions are faked.
|
| I sometimes wonder what goes through their heads when they read
| stories such as this one. What exactly is in it for Boeing, NASA
| and Space-X to fake all of this?
| mopenstein wrote:
| I'm no conspiracy theorist but, if it's fake, the money is
| still real. Redistributing billions of dollars to the elite
| heads of the illuminati under the cover of socalled "space
| exploration".
| firesteelrain wrote:
| This is the same scenario people on here said wouldn't happen.
| Shocking.
| croes wrote:
| Too late to shorten Boeing?
| rouanza wrote:
| Starliner needs to autonomously perform a few missions before
| risking human lives.
| gus_massa wrote:
| It's launched on the Atlas V. From
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V
|
| > _After 87 launches, in August 2021 ULA announced that Atlas V
| would be retired, and all 29 remaining launches had been sold.
| As of July 2024, 15 launches remain. Production ceased in
| 2024._
|
| IIRC they only have enough reserved Atlas V to fulfill all the
| manned missions they promised to NASA, so there is no room
| unmanned for test. (And that's a huge problem!)
| unreal37 wrote:
| What's fascinating to me is how they're going to call this a
| success when the mission is over.
|
| I get that there are things that you can only test in space, and
| so they are testing. But if these astronauts get back, does
| Boeing then get certified to carry astronauts into space
| regularly from a successful test?
|
| I should listen to the conference but how would they define the
| whole mission successful?
| multimoon wrote:
| There has to be a lot of egos tied up in this thing for them to
| still be stuck there. NASA delayed SpaceX's next mission to give
| them more time to try to fix Starliner - and then use SpaceX as a
| backup to bring the astronauts home.
|
| After the first month they should've had SpaceX go and get them.
| Elon would've probably done it for free to publicly humiliate
| Boeing for fun.
|
| SpaceX's craft is far cheaper and does the same thing except it
| actually works and has worked fine and time again.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Airbus, SpaceX, Lockheed... Is there anyone not eating Boeing
| lunch at this point?
| hersko wrote:
| In all fairness, SpaceX is eating everyones lunch right now.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, but I'm pointing out that a company with multiple
| sectors is looking weak in basically all of them. Even the
| military contracts they win have increasingly been money
| losers.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| What a complete f-up boeing has been
| m3kw9 wrote:
| With that much experience under their belt, they may just get a
| job to work there at the new station buildup
| bparsons wrote:
| I get the sense that Boeing is in true panic mode. They are
| spinning the media very hard to try and give off a "everything is
| fine" vibe.
| ninjagoo wrote:
| Looks like the problems at Boeing Aerospace run a bit deeper than
| 'disagreements' with NASA Engineers, as some here are wont to
| project in discussions today. [1]
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/a-new-report-finds-
| boe...
| marze wrote:
| Building functioning thrusters should be a routine task, these
| are used on many spacecraft all the time. But rockets are hard.
| SpaceX blew up a capsule on the test stand, due to an issue with
| the propulsion system (thrusters).
|
| The only way they will risk astronaut lives and various
| reputations allowing them to return on the Boeing capsule is if
| they are 100% certain of a positive outcome. There are no rescue
| vessels in space right now, so even a minor problem can be
| deadly.
|
| It seems unlikely at this point 100% certainty will be reached.
| And I'm sure NASA is very annoyed that the capsule isn't
| configured to do an unmanned return. Boeing needs to upload and
| test software for unmanned return, otherwise it is stuck there
| until they have those issues worked out (1 of only 2 docking
| ports perhaps?).
| gumby wrote:
| What is the crew up to on the station? Have they been assigned
| work to do since they are up there already and are rated
| astronauts, or are they just hanging around idle as
| supernumeraries?
|
| I would hate to be in the latter camp and I imagine the kinds of
| people who take that kind of job would be like that too.
| Bayko wrote:
| Bud imagine chilling in a space station and watching Netflix. I
| dunno about you, but me? I would enjoy that life
| gumby wrote:
| I can't just sit around while others are working. I don't
| think it would be any different in zero G.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Rt6QJ
| cmpalmer52 wrote:
| There was an AI picture someone made of a typical person from
| Huntsville, Alabama. It showed an ~60 yo guy with glasses and a
| NASA shirt. Someone on the local subReddit said, "You're looking
| at the world expert on the maximum bend radii of avionics wiring
| harnesses and conduits and he'd be happy to talk to you about
| it." Funny, but it made me think that the engineering shops
| around here are full of people like that with similar, hard
| earned, expertise in aerospace engineering and design and they're
| all retiring or retired. What percentage of this expertise did
| they pass along to the younger engineers? I'm sure they tried,
| but maybe 50-60%?
|
| We know that everything doesn't get written down (hence the
| reverse engineering of the Apollo systems). And the stuff that
| does get written down doesn't have the experience that created
| the document. Remembering a failed vacuum experiment with some
| adhesive which led to "You must use <some different adhesive>"
| isn't going to prevent some bean counter in the future saying,
| "Why don't you use <failed adhesive>? It's cheaper and seems to
| have the same specs." Or, for avionics harnesses, "There's enough
| room. Just make it fit!"
|
| All of that to say, Boeing ain't what it used to be. And I know
| people who have worked there in recent years and they say the
| same.
| Arrath wrote:
| I think loss of institutional knowledge is a huge problem
| across all sectors of the economy. In my niche of specialty
| construction engineering I saw it get exacerbated by the Great
| Recession, companies froze hiring and laid folks off from the
| bottom up, while retaining senior people. Who are now or have
| already retired, without a younger cadre to have absorbed their
| knowledge and carry it on.
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