NASA orders more tests on Starliner, but says crew isn’t stranded in space
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"Suni and Butch are on ISS enjoying their extended vacation provided by Boeing exactly as planned."
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They are lying. Plain and simple. NASA is trying to cover up the utter incompetence of Boeing/Lockheed. The astronauts would be nuts to get into that leaky capsule.
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There is a reasonable case to be made that bringing the crew home safely via the Starliner crew module may allow Boeing a chance to survive as a company. Any other scenario just hastens a clock that is already ticking.
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These aren’t mass produced items. Nor is settling on a single format always a win. These are experimental vehicles and there is still a lot more to learn about space and exploring it.
The massive ROI on space tech is by trying new things. Staying the same would have left us with just old space.
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No, this is the final validation flight of one very particular item. How do you feel it's going and what are you learning from it?
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Not what I’m saying. Having different setups for each of the vehicles is a plus.
That Boeing have screwed the pooch on this is becoming par for the course. However think of the reverse where Boeing used its lobbyists to make it their designs were the ones selected for all craft. Having standardization is great until it creates ossification of the industry.
As for have identical flight suits, that would assume identical seating or at least close enough that all the cabling would line up. That would be nice but then these suits are determined by the seats and other considerations like the toilet design.
At this point the question would be can a starliner flight suit fit in a Crew Dragon seat and would an adaptor work. Otherwise, what would it take to make a functional flight suit for two.
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I mean… could be as simple as “certifying a given set of batteries takes more time/money the longer they’re certified for, it’ll be up there for like 15 days max, 3x buffer is good enough for this flight”?
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Its fine. They get a couple of astronauts out there for a space walk to give it a good shove away from the station, like push starting a car downhill.
The have a little instructional video narrated by the vault-tec mascot from Fallout explaining everything.
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My guess is some mix of the above. They think the vehicle is ok, but they don't know for sure, can't prove it, and don't want to talk about their uncertainty. As to the underlying truth, my bet would be that the vehicle is in fact ok to return in. But I personally wouldn't return in it until I knew as much as Boeing does about the problems. Which makes me wonder what depth of communication there is with Butch and Suni about the issues.
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I agree, and that's exactly my expectation for a certification flight. It's not supposed to be an example of a routine flight, but a demonstration that everything works to a particular standard--even the things that ideally will not be used during a routine flight.
Sure, a demonstration is technically a test, but it's to demonstrate that the product works as claimed for the benefit of the customer. The manufacturer should already have a high degree of justified confidence in their product if they're ready to demonstrate it to a customer. It's understandable for some issues to pop up during a demonstration, but serious issues should have been identified and fixed during the testing campaign. Boeing is scheduling their missions as if they were confident that their product is ready, but that confidence is clearly not justified.
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The Sheep Look Up
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Coming in at the tail end of this -- 45 days is what Boeing chisels into marble and lays at the feet of mission command, or is the minimum design spec. Boeing may think that it should work for five times as long, but they're willing to state with the nearest thing to certainty that it's 45 days. Now that they're in the situation they're designed to perform for, they're getting data back. If it exceeds what they and NASA have projected, they start saying, "Hey, we're getting more and more certain these are minimum 90 day batteries." This may be reflected in how future iterations of the same or similar design are rated.
Boeing has infinity government contracts. It has a multiyear backlog on airframes for commercial customers, even after the long list of oopsies. It will never be allowed to fully fail, as it's the only US airline manufacturer. If we ever had to go full MAEK PLANE NAO for reasons, we want the production line and basic expertise. LockMart alone won't cut it.
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If NASA extends the mission to 60 days and the batteries end up going sideways, who takes the blame?
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The Sheep Look Up
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
This specific mission? NASA, if they choose to make a change. How is this a question? Boeing: "We told you those were 45 day rated batteries."
A future mission? If Boeing and NASA concur that everything points to the batteries having a rated on-station life of, say, 46 days, then now it's a 46 day battery. Battery didn't change, confidence in performance did.
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I don't understand how the tests performed resulted in the pattern of delays so far.
From the article, the thruster tests while docked to the station were completed on June 15th, which at the time was the rationale for delaying the return. That seemed totally reasonable, in light of the issues seen while docking - test the thrusters again in a safe scenario, prior to depending on them.
Now, two weeks later, another delay is announced because while the thrusters successfully fired during the docked test, the test itself wasn't valid for proving that the vehicle was safe to return on? Presumably, if the test didn't have clear success criteria, it shouldn't have been the only test used to clear Starliner for undocking, and unless there's some subtext here I missed, this was known before the test was performed.
If that's the case, why is the upcoming test on the ground just now being performed, instead of having been planned immediately after the docking issues? Or if it was planned, why hadn't it been made public knowledge until nearly a month after? Why does it take a month and a half to perform a ground-based test? That last question might have a perfectly valid answer, but it's certainly not being explained by Stich or Nappi.
Saying that NASA communications on this aren't "always timely, and often lack details and context" is a bit of an understatement. The gaps between them and missing information make them logically incoherent at times, which can lead the public to think that either NASA doesn't know what they're doing here, or they're being intentionally misleading.
It's worth remembering that this type of obsession with saving face in public was disastrous in the case of Columbia. It's hard not to read accounts of internal discussions around the viability of it as a return vehicle, and wonder if this is exactly what's happening right now.
From the article, the thruster tests while docked to the station were completed on June 15th, which at the time was the rationale for delaying the return. That seemed totally reasonable, in light of the issues seen while docking - test the thrusters again in a safe scenario, prior to depending on them.
Now, two weeks later, another delay is announced because while the thrusters successfully fired during the docked test, the test itself wasn't valid for proving that the vehicle was safe to return on? Presumably, if the test didn't have clear success criteria, it shouldn't have been the only test used to clear Starliner for undocking, and unless there's some subtext here I missed, this was known before the test was performed.
If that's the case, why is the upcoming test on the ground just now being performed, instead of having been planned immediately after the docking issues? Or if it was planned, why hadn't it been made public knowledge until nearly a month after? Why does it take a month and a half to perform a ground-based test? That last question might have a perfectly valid answer, but it's certainly not being explained by Stich or Nappi.
Saying that NASA communications on this aren't "always timely, and often lack details and context" is a bit of an understatement. The gaps between them and missing information make them logically incoherent at times, which can lead the public to think that either NASA doesn't know what they're doing here, or they're being intentionally misleading.
It's worth remembering that this type of obsession with saving face in public was disastrous in the case of Columbia. It's hard not to read accounts of internal discussions around the viability of it as a return vehicle, and wonder if this is exactly what's happening right now.
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Spot on. This is the kind of incoherence that comes from trying to CYA by minimizing the public exposure of a serious problem.
It sounds exactly like how NASA has handled the Orion heatshield issue - repeated assurances that it wasn't a big problem, while repeatedly pushing back deadlines. We still wouldn't know it was so serious if the inspector general hadn't posted photographs that NASA wasn't willing to share on their own.
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A bit of speculation here: all of the tests and all of the analysis count against the cost side of a fixed-price contract. I suspect that they are trying to be intelligent about their test plan. I favor more chaos in the testing, but I know that there are a lot of people that would not agree with that. Trying to be intelligent before you have enough data can make things look really strange.
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The Sheep Look Up
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
The entire government behaves like this, every department, every administration. (Please, present exceptions, I'm begging you.) Deflect, deflect, deflect. Present half information or fluff unless you're FOIA'd, and fight that to the hilt. Which, even when there's no there there, still creates its own problem. It's a culture of perpetual fear of blame. It's part of why the classification system is so broken -- what better place to stash your fuckups than behind a Classified or Secret stamp in a file cabinet no one ever sees?
Transparency builds confidence. If you're confident, be transparent. When you don't do that, you look like this.
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You seem to have completely missed the point, given you're talking about his politics and twitter rambling. Two things that I never actually mentioned.
I have purely talked about his ability to run a company. After he bought twitter, he completely mismanaged to and turned it into a shell of what it was when he purchased it. But it was on track to be profitable again at the time he purchased it. As an engineer I can tell you he horrifically mismanaged the company and judged engineers based on the volume of code they wrote.
But maybe Twitter was a one off mistake by Musk. Maybe no one could have saved Twitter. So lets discount that.
How do you explain what is going on at Tesla right now? He did the equivalent of firing his entire rocket design team and the team who run the launch pads at Tesla, because he was miffed at two senior level executives. You also have Tesla's EV business declining at the same time everyone else's is growing.
You now have two companies with highly irrational business decisions taken by Musk that have severely damaged the companies. What is there stopping Musk from doing this to SpaceX?
In the end, I said both company's had a cancer in the C-suite. Boeing's is further along than with at SpaceX. But we've seen the effects of the one at SpaceX at both Twitter and Tesla. So yeah, if you're looking at this rationally, you got to be deeply worried about both providers at this time.
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“I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in space (now, where did I put Elon's phone number?)"
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How is the fact that we're not yet to the point where you can make that determination reversing the proof?
If we were at the point to know that, NASA would be announcing the astronauts returning on a different vehicle.
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It's a damn good thing that they didn't forget to bring the urine processing fix with them.
"Houston, wee, wee, we've got a problem!"
"Houston, wee, wee, we've got a problem!"
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It also isn't the first extension to this mission with a very similar rational that they want more time to investigate, and announced new round of on the ground tests they are doing with the system. This seems like a pretty damn rational thing to do if you're forcing Boeing to prove it is absolutely safe to complete the mission.
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The most obvious way to return them to earth besides Starliner doesn't involve calling anyone. It is just rearranging crew rotations. You send either of the other two operational vehicles up with two empty seats.
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Pretty damn accurate. Possibly even optimistic because of that one shuttle flight which would have been a disaster if the debris strike had been shifted maybe a foot.
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Damnit, Boing should no longer be allowed to produce so much as a can-opener, much less vehicles that carry human beings through the air and space. They simply are no longer capable of doing this kind of stuff.
How bad is Boing? Elon Musk is far better at this stuff than anyone at Boing. That says A LOT.
How bad is Boing? Elon Musk is far better at this stuff than anyone at Boing. That says A LOT.
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There are no serious plans under consideration to bring Wilmore and Williams home on a different spacecraft.
Notice they didn't say there are NO plans to use a different spacecraft....just no "serious" (i.e. formally signed off) plans so far......
Notice they didn't say there are NO plans to use a different spacecraft....just no "serious" (i.e. formally signed off) plans so far......
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Boeing is currently under investigation for making alloy-mixes with fake paperwork, so struts and important safety bars etc on aircraft could just buckle under stress, due to being diluted with aluminium/copper etc.
And this affects fucking AIRFORCE ONE! which had to be grounded for tests....Boeing could have killed the President. How the hell are they allowed to do ANYTHING for the US ever again?
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I wondered what background the article image was showing.
There are not too many river deltas like that one in the image.
On the left, next to Starliner, is the river Nile delta at Alexandria in Egypt. Above the river delta is the red sea with the Suez Canal.
There are not too many river deltas like that one in the image.
On the left, next to Starliner, is the river Nile delta at Alexandria in Egypt. Above the river delta is the red sea with the Suez Canal.
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the spin machine might reach orbit at this point.
"We've gotten a really good test flight that's been accomplished so far" bull fucking shit. having to perform tests on the ground during a mission because you aren't sure how the spacecraft will behave doesn't inspire confidence at all.
"We've gotten a really good test flight that's been accomplished so far" bull fucking shit. having to perform tests on the ground during a mission because you aren't sure how the spacecraft will behave doesn't inspire confidence at all.
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There are two different things at play here, and we shouldn't mix them up.
First: Is the Starliner that is now docked to the ISS in good enough working order to return the astronauts home? That's unclear.
Second: Has Boeing demonstrated that Starliner in general is safe and reliable? Can we trust that the next missions conclude without major issues? I say no, regardless the rest of current mission. When 18% of the thrusters fail, there are no guarantees Boeing can manage the issue satisfactorily. Even if they now find the cause and a solution, they still need to demonstrate that that solution works in all phases of the mission.
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Unlike the folks on Apollo 13. Yes they have time to spend but we've gotten so spolied with almost instant fixes that are gud nuf that we've forgoten that actual lives are at stake here. Of course, it doesn't help that Boeing is in the news almost every day for another screw up
"What are we doing today Brain?" "Screwup Boeing Again Pinky." Seems to be Boeing's Fate right now
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Risk assessment is, by nature, hugely subjective. Quantifying it is difficult. As you work your way back along the failure chains, you always run into points where there's no solid statistical data.
And that's where human bias comes in.
You can have a standardized, thoroughly vetted, statistically valid process for all the math and logic that goes into calculating risks and failure probabilities for a complete system.
But the people who want the thing to be ready for the customer on time are always going to err one way in their estimates of the four million individual parameters that go into the modelling. The people whose job it is to enforce functional safety are always going to err the other way. And there might be three orders of magnitude difference between them – one says "our supplier's lifetime modelling program says that part XK-2275C is limited by ball screw fretting at 700,000 cycles" and the other says "yeah but there's a high FOD zone right beside XK-2275C and if coarse particulate gets stuck in the grease then XK-2275C might actually be limited by linear bearing wear after 700 cycles."
So they agree to put extra FOD control and cleaning checks in, but now nobody knows what the true MTBF of XK-2275C is in the actual as-built condition. Some will say it's now the 700,000 projected by the supplier for perfect conditions, while others will say it's closer to 7,000 and with a worryingly long tail because you're relying on difficult administrative controls.
Repeat for 3,999,995 more parts.
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They do care whether your car runs on gasoline, diesel, CNG, hydrogen, propane - or some other fuel. They all have different connections. You can buy cars with any of those fuel types today - we don't even need to get into "Jay's Garage" with the Stanley Steamer, or the wood-gas conversions or LNG (I believe LNG has all been commercial vehicles.)
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Apparently you are unaware that NASA traditionally sets mission/equipment timelines VERY conservatively. This has been going on for a very long time.
For example, Voyager 1 and 2 were 5 year missions to see Jupiter and Saturn. Then they added Uranus and Neptune, then kept on exploring - the "5 year" missions are approaching 50 years now.
In a more recent example, Spirit and Opportunity were 90 day missions. Spirit lasted ~20x that planned duration, Opportunity lasted nearly 60x that planned duration.
I'm not particularly concerned if NASA continues evaluating battery performance and concludes that the Starliner batteries can last longer (even much longer) than the original 45 day certification. NASA has a lot of experience with evaluating battery life in space.
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I suspect the reference was a couple of years older, when Starliner itself had 13 of 24 oxidizer valves misbehaving/sticking with the apparent root cause of "We forgot that our oxidizer penetrates Teflon and we forgot that it can get humid in Florida ".
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Nice characterization.
Having participated in such a risk management program for about 40% of my career, what mostly saves you is the number of eyes of the different disciplines against the risk register. My experience is most of the participants are well-meaning, but their individual perspectives and biases can get in the way of sorting through those statistical ambiguities. And the folk I tend to worry about more are those closest to the problem - they can be too close to the problem "to see the forest", so to speak.
It still all boils down to statistical characterization of non-zero probabilities, and so the fundamental endeavor is to keep the decision makers continually aware of the implications of that. That becomes really hard when you put "1 in 100,00" probability criteria in the likelihood part, it's still not Zero...
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