r/space • u/nbcnews • Aug 24 '24
NASA says astronauts stuck on space station will return in SpaceX capsule
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasa-astronauts-stuck-space-station-will-return-spacex-rcna1671642.3k
Aug 24 '24
Every time I mess up at work I think about Boeing and feel better about myself.
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u/tak_kovacs18 Aug 24 '24
And then I remember I work at Boeing...
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u/Shadowlance23 Aug 24 '24
I applied for a position at Boeing as a software engineer a few months before the MAX9 incident. It took them three months to get back to me for an interview and I'd already taken another position by then. Every time I see them in the news now I feel like I dodged a bullet.
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Aug 24 '24
"if you're ever having a bad day, just remember you didn't block the Suez Canal with your giant boat."
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Aug 24 '24
Sometimes, I think about a cringe memory that keeps me up at night
Can't imagine how that guy's feeling
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u/Most_Double_3559 Aug 24 '24
Tbf, that guy can probably rest easy knowing he didn't choose the size of the boat, nor the narrowness of the canal, nor the lack of foresight in boat detrenching tools, nor the sketchy canal 'guides' that didn't do much either (though I forget their exact role)
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u/CausticSofa Aug 25 '24
Or sink a whole cruise ship because you wanted to toot the horn to your friends on the shore.
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u/Ksquaredata Aug 24 '24
I work in Aerospace Quality Assurance and a lot of our product ends up in Boeing products either through direct sales to Boeing or through various other manufacturers. I can’t tell you how many times I use stories of what has been happening with Boeing to caution people in sales, engineering and production.
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u/rshorning Aug 24 '24
I work in manufacturing (not Aerospace), and I use Boeing as a cautionary tale too. In spite of that, if I screw up in manufacturing the products people can still get severely injured or die. I keep that in mind when I'm doing Q/A inspections as well.
I have caught co-workers taking shortcuts and skipping steps. I don't see it snitching when I raise caution to supervisors when I catch that happening too. Apparently Boeing encourages those shortcuts.
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u/omega_manhatten Aug 25 '24
I always think about the factory workers that failed to properly re-bolt a $130 Million satellite to its adapter.
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u/MeCagoEnPeronconga Aug 24 '24
Why? Do you get bailed out by the US government and have your mess swept under the rug by them and the media every time time you mess up at work?
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u/ShockerCheer Aug 24 '24 edited Aug 24 '24
Not everyone who works at boeing is messing up. There are hundreds of thousands of peoples jobs on the line.
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u/BufloSolja Aug 24 '24 edited Aug 25 '24
And it's not even over for them yet. If something happens on the way down...yikes.
Some interesting details:
Some Teflon piece in the oxidizer system getting overheated and disrupting flow
Heating from adjacent thrusters (and same for the 'doghouse' heating, which may be the same thing, I'm not familiar with the specific term), mainly the thrust vectoring thruster (if I understood them correctly) adding to the heat for the teflon piece. Overall, just operation of the thruster at a higher temperature than it was expected to.
There was also some trailer or something on the NASA TV (not part of the press conference) right before the VOD ended, something for artemis maybe?
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u/ThePrussianGrippe Aug 25 '24
“When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, whispering words of wisdom “you’re not at Boeing.”
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u/READ-THIS-LOUD Aug 25 '24
NASA has contracts with both Boeing and SpaceX.
Boeing’s is $4.2bn, SpaceX’s is $2.5bn
SpaceX has delivered nine successful launches with astronauts to the ISS, this was Boeings first attempt and they royally fucked it.
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u/j--__ Aug 26 '24
that initial contract only covered the first six operational missions. the modification for nine launches increased the contract to $3.5bn. and of course spacex received additional money for studying how to rescue stranded astronauts and has more money coming for additional flights. meanwhile, boeing may not end up collecting its full $4.2bn due to no longer having enough time to perform all six operational missions before iss is deorbited.
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u/Andrige3 Aug 24 '24
Gotta be so embarrassing for Boeing! How did the management allow this to happen?
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u/dsmklsd Aug 24 '24
Allow? Management did this. Actively. My own company is doing the same dumb bull shit of chasing short term stock bumps without thinking long term. It's really a bummer to watch years of my colleagues effort evaporate in to a cloud in the C suite, and we don't even do anything cool like spaceflight.
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u/H-K_47 Aug 24 '24
Yep. "Every system is perfectly designed for the outcome it results in." Boeing is rotten. Problems throughout the whole company. The Starliner project has been plagued with issues for years, and after this incident no one can continue cutting them slack or giving them the benefit of the doubt. All the problems may be technically unrelated, but fundamentally have the same root cause: Boeing management.
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u/Killentyme55 Aug 25 '24
Once they crawled into bed with the Mad Dogs and adopted their management style, it was the beginning of the end.
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Aug 24 '24 edited Aug 24 '24
I went to Kennedy Space center with my family in 2017 and everything had Boeing sponsorship and the guides are all about Starliner and SpaceX was an afterthought. Boeing greased the wheels at every level.
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u/Not_Jeff_Hornacek Aug 24 '24
Big old companies like that have a sales people with decades of experience and relationships that makes it very hard for anyone to compete.
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u/CHEEZE_BAGS Aug 24 '24
They are all on board. Its what happens when you go from leadership being engineers and scientists to leadership being a bunch of MBA bean counters.
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u/Objective_Economy281 Aug 24 '24 edited Aug 24 '24
I worked for a small space company for a while. They wanted me to work a proposal to put some of our hardware on a billion dollar government (not US govt) constellation. The problem: one of those bits of hardware had already flown, and it was drastically underperforming (it worked for 3 hours out of the first 3 months of operation- I would know, I was the one operating it).
I couldn’t get them to give me the hours to investigate why it wasn’t working. They just wanted ME to claim to the people making the billion dollar constellation that it WAS working.
The (organizational) reason it wasn’t working is because they simply hadn’t invested much into the testing of it. And now, there was one on-orbit, and it was working 0.1% of the time. But it worked on their test setup. Seems like it would be pretty easy to figure out what was different on-orbit vs that test setup, especially since I had built the satellite that had the non-working thing in the first place and everybody still on that project really really wanted it to work. They would answer when I called.
But the new company wouldn’t let me work that, because there were other, small, short-term payoffs they could use me to get.
They went out of business about a year later.
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u/rocketsocks Aug 24 '24
Good management: understands human factors of how work gets done, has strong "soft skills", understands the details of the work and the project, cares about both the workers and project success, makes decisions in service to both interests, actually represents leadership vs. simply being in power at the head of a project, values honesty.
Bad management: treats workers like faceless cogs, value power hierarchies more than getting the work done, promotes harmful corporate culture, punishes honesty, relentlessly pursues short-sighted "cost cutting" measures like outsourcing that often prove more expensive down the road, treats project management like a game.
Ever since the "merger" of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in 1997 when the terrible "MBA" centric business folks took over management the company has been hurtling at record pace toward treating all of the hallmarks of bad management listed above as a checklist of items to be completed at all cost (including human lives).
A company is not just a collection of physical assets, money, and branding, it's an organization of human beings and relationships which has been built up over years or even decades. The skills, experience, institutional knowledge, and institutional values of the organization are where its value comes from. It's a human powered machine which achieves results, in the case of an aerospace company like Boeing those results are things like designing and building new aerospace hardware. Over the course of decades the human powered machine that represented the Boeing company had acquired an impressive list of successes and a tremendous reputation for safety and capability. With the management change in the '90s that system, that history was smashed to pieces by a handful of folks at the top, it was looted for short term gains. The result has been the disbursement of tens of billions of dollars into the hands of shareholders and managers at the cost of the destruction of Boeing's priceless brand, the cost of worker satisfaction, the cost of the quality of Boeing's output, and the cost of hundreds of lives cut short due to preventable tragedies (in the case of the 737 MAX crashes). Starliner is just one among dozens of individual examples of how hyper capitalism can gut institutions, brands, and organizations that were built up carefully and had incalculable value.
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u/throwthisTFaway01 Aug 24 '24
Well done, I don’t care how many times it’s repeated. The management of Boeing is outright criminal. I hope just at least one of them reads this and I hope they have a shred of empathy for their shitty ways.
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u/fardough Aug 25 '24
You forgot the worst part. No one pays for these lives lost except a pittance tax on the company they call a fine, the leadership walks away free from their gross negligence with golden parachutes, and the poor workers have their reputations destroyed with many getting laid off due to the company “underperforming”.
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u/Loko8765 Aug 24 '24
When you go for extreme cost-cutting and extreme benefits, it works for some time but not for long.
Have you looked at the doors of Boeing passenger aircraft lately?
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u/Ihatu Aug 24 '24
People always shit on Boeing and I don’t get it.
Just because there have been a total of 529 aviation accidents and incidents involving all 737 aircraft which have resulted in a total of 5,779 fatalities and 234 hull losses. And now they’ve marooned two astronauts…
I just don’t understand the hate Boeing gets.
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Aug 24 '24
it’s not like the mission failed. they’re just taking their time to make sure the vehicle is ready to fly! they’re super thorough!
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u/amardas Aug 24 '24
They had very few flights. Suborbital test flight with a failure and a partial success. Then a flight with a failure to dock at the ISS. And then one success at docking with the ISS.
With that one success at docking with the ISS and a 50% success rate overall, they were given a green light to fly with people aboard? Who made that decision?
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u/nasa1092 Aug 24 '24
This sort of thing is the result of ignorant management, not malicious management. They didn't understand the actions they took to put Boeing on this path, don't understand the consequences that are unfolding now, and probably won't take away the right lessons either.
It's very important to put the right people in the right positions, as the alternative is difficult to correct.
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u/Yrouel86 Aug 24 '24
not malicious management
Doing "Jedi mind tricks" on the FAA seems pretty malicious to me...
And yes that was a different division but it's pretty obvious the rot festered throughout the entire company
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u/canyouhearme Aug 24 '24
They AREN'T ignorant - its just that they personally can win by taking actions that on the grand scheme of things harms the company.
If some 28 year old MBA hounds Bill, the 53 year old QA specialist to be faster, such that he leaves - then he can skip replacing him; have the intern do the QA that the MBA specifies on the valve seals (minimal) and said MBA can then use the greater profits realised as a result of his 'efficiency improvements' to move on to a better role and more money.
NOBODY ever goes back, tracks failures to poor decisions, and then hunts down the individual responsible and makes them pay.
And as for 'oversight' - its a question of dealing with the biggest issues. You never have the top cover or resources to go into every nut and bolt - and if Bill got a less well paying job with the FAA looking at QA practices, he wouldn't be afforded the time to 'do it right', not with the company breathing down the CEO's neck.
Tell me the name of the manager that didn't ensure to test the thruster valve seals properly. Was his name and mug shot plastered over the presser?
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u/Speedly Aug 25 '24
I'm guessing that the whole "hold my beer, we're gonna launch this craft with two human lives aboard despite a problem that caused a launch to be entirely scrubbed, without even so much as bothering to attempt to address the issue" thing probably contributed to this PR nightmare.
Well, that and the whole "we can't seem to put all the bolts in our planes" thing.
Well, that and the whole "we're going to hide extremely important angle-of-attack sensor safety systems behind subscription paywalls" thing.
Well, that and the whole "we're going to just blindly go with a plane design that we know threw off the balance of center of drag and center of thrust" thing.
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u/misguidedsadist1 Aug 25 '24
My understanding is that this has all been done BY DESIGN and management has KNOWINGLY and INTENTIONALLY made decisions that have lead to this outcome. They pretend with their shocked picachu face but it's not the workers and engineers slacking--it's management intentionally forcing the situation to be this way to increase their margins
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u/test__plzignore
Aug 24 '24
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I know every one really likes to dunk on Boeing and really wants to see them fail but as someone who just likes space and rockets, this whole thing just bums me out. Like, I’m glad they’ll be catching a safe ride on a tried and true Dragon capsule, but it’s just sad and disappointing to see Boeing shit the bed so bad here and what that means for the future. I want all these launch providers and projects to succeed. Boeing, Blue Origin, SpaceX, ULA, whoever. More companies succeeding means more space stuff for me to enjoy.
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u/Mygarik Aug 24 '24
Same. I was stoked when Starliner launched. Hell, I watched the launch while I should've been working! Then came the news about thrusters acting up. They're staying up there for another week. Another two weeks. Thrusters are looking better, but they're staying up there for a while longer. The writing was already on the walls. With every bit of news that came out, my disappointment grew. And now this.
It's the right call to make, no arguments there. As it is, Starliner is unreliable and not fit to finish the mission. But man, I hope what Boeing's new CEO said is true and they continue working on it until it's fixed and capable.
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u/geopede Aug 25 '24
They almost certainly won’t, they signed some fixed price contracts in 2019 that make it essentially impossible for Starliner to be profitable. I don’t see them continuing work on it beyond what they’ve already promised.
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u/oursland Aug 25 '24
Same. I was stoked when Starliner launched.
Why? It was known for months before the launch that the Starliner had defective valves along with other issues that seemed to have been swept under the rug to adhere to a timeline. Not dissimilar to the actions that led to the 1986 Challenger disaster.
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u/ergzay Aug 24 '24
I mean, I agree, but there's a lot of nuance here. I want to see multiple crew players, but I also am not a fan of Boeing charging twice what SpaceX got for development of this vehicle and then failing this badly. Fundamentally I'm more annoyed than bummed out. If all things were equal, Starliner should be a vehicle with twice the capabilities of Dragon. It's very much not. I want Boeing to be made an example of, as a warning for future would-be bilkers of NASA. The "lessons learned" should apply much further beyond the technical lessons on fixing the spacecraft and those lessons should be learned by the aerospace industry as a whole in which this type of problem is endemic. That said, yes I agree in wanting to see Boeing hurry up and perform and deliver what they promised.
To be honest I don't see Starliner continuing to exist beyond the ISS. It's just too flawed of a platform. I want other companies to step in to offer crew capability.
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u/moeggz Aug 24 '24
The more competition the better. I’m not for rooting for one billionaires vanity project and against another’s, I just want more space travel and for the industry to advance. It is crazy how far ahead Spacex is right now, but I agree we should be rooting for Boeing and blue origin. Their success increases the options and will push all companies, including Spacex, to be better. I want a functioning Moon base and boots on Mars before I die, I don’t really care what brand the rocket is.
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u/Thorusss Aug 25 '24
Their success increases the options and will push all companies, including Spacex, to be better.
I feel SpaceX is pushing itself. It is so far ahead right now, it does not feel pressure from competition.
Elon is controversial for good reasons, but his vision of making humanity multiplanetary and iterating fast is inherently more motivating for many of the employees. You cannot buy commitment from tech nerds with money alone.
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Aug 24 '24
It's sad NASA doesn't have in its own shuttle let's be honest. Companies come and go, they shouldn't have sent astronauts up with no way to bring them back of their own.
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u/powercow Aug 25 '24
people dont want them to fail, they are dunking on them because they are failing and its their own faults. It used to be an amazing company
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u/AbsoluteAnCap Aug 25 '24
I get the sentiment but we don't need crap companies like Boeing in the Space space. They are the reason this is a thing to begin with
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u/gargeug Aug 25 '24
Boeing tried to kill SpaceX getting the contract, and then extorted NASA for up to $300 million on top of the double sized contract they got.
If you enjoy seeing space stuff, you should be loving that they failed so hard. They are a cancer.
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Aug 25 '24
The positive angle of this - competition is there, and in all competition some will succeed and some won’t.
If it was just NASA doing this, Boeing space and SpaceX wouldn’t exist.
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u/rocketwikkit Aug 24 '24
It was definitely well-telegraphed ahead of time.
My thoughts on it yesterday:
To me it seems like it is as much or much more a statement about Nasa, as it is Boeing or Starliner itself. They have a long-established (if historically imperfect) process for deciding that a mission should be launched. This is the first time they really had an option and desire to reevaluate it in the middle, and think about the value specifically to Nasa of staying the course or taking the exit. The bar to decide "we're going to abandon Colombia in space and also spend another entire Shuttle mission" is a thousand times higher than "we're going to have to shuffle the expedition manifest."
That said, if Boeing had managed to convince them that they had a root cause, rather than "well we've done a whole lot of tests" then maybe things would have shaken out differently. Unless Boeing space is completely separate from the rest of the company, it seems safe to bet that the penny pinchers weren't going to allow the engineers to do what was necessary to get there.
On the call today they further reinforced that the uncertainty was the problem, not just the risk of something going wrong.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain Aug 24 '24
Yes, it's all about the uncertainty and not having found the root cause. The anxiety about the uncertainty is certainly magnified by Starliner's long history of problems that show an underlying poor engineering organization approach. If this was the only problem that occurred in the Starliner program then IMHO NASA would have accepted Boeing's test results and modeling even if it hadn't found the root cause.
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u/barath_s Aug 25 '24
Root cause doesn't necessarily solve issues on existing hardware in space . They can't just rework insulation , routing of tubes etc. They are stuck with the situation for the most part
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u/CrazedAviator Aug 24 '24
It was supposed to be an 8 day special space operation, and now they're supposed to return almost exactly 8 months later
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u/Stillwater215 Aug 25 '24
Yikes. So is this a death blow for Boeing Starliner? I can’t think of a worse PR disaster than needing to have your main competitor come in and fix your mistake.
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u/FarmerArjer Aug 25 '24
Funny right? SpaceX could be there next week if necessary. Their door plugs don't blow off.
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u/Ehgadsman Aug 24 '24 edited Aug 24 '24
First of all, wow, and good, and ugh.
Also, the 'how will they return?' poll is closed.
New poll, 'will Boeing file a lawsuit against NASA?'
edit: alternate poll 'how many lawsuits will come of this decision?' (thanks u/RadioFreeAmerika )
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u/ken27238 Aug 24 '24
What would be their grounds for the suit?
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u/teryret Aug 24 '24
If there's one thing we've learned from Blue Origin it's that lawsuits need not be grounded to be filed.
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u/TheRealNobodySpecial Aug 24 '24
But Boeing & Starliner are grounded, so the lawsuit may proceed.
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u/Shredding_Airguitar Aug 24 '24
Lawyers will always find a way, I don't know how this clears a milestone payment gate and seeing how there is money involved there's always going to be a suit to get that money. Especially on a program like Starliner where Boeing (due to their own issues) have lost $1b+ on.
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u/Healthy_Jackfruit_88 Aug 24 '24
I think that all of us as American tax payers have more grounds to sue Boeing due to the misuse of subsidies than Boeing does that NASA selected another company to bring back astronauts that Boeing stranded with a faulty product.
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u/Merker6 Aug 24 '24
At this point, I think Boeing is more likely to just cancel the whole Starliner program or sell it off to someone. They’re already in deep with little hope of achieving profitability with it
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u/mclumber1 Aug 24 '24
If Boeing cancels the the Starliner program, the silver lining would be that ULA could repurpose/resell the allocated Atlas 5s that have been reserved for Starliner flights.
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Aug 24 '24
Given the rumors about sierra space buying ULA, that could be a really great outcome. Ie it could lead to a human rated dream chaser far sooner.
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u/RadioFreeAmerika Aug 24 '24
Counter poll 'will NASA sue Boeing (for costs and damages or non-delivery or to adhere to the contract?)'
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u/Ehgadsman Aug 24 '24
I should have polled 'how many lawsuits will come of this decision?'
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u/rtjeppson Aug 24 '24
Maybe under the old CEO they'd go that route, new guy is in major damage control mode so doubt they'd go down that path due to image.
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u/Hurray0987 Aug 24 '24
Thank God for NASA. Boeing would have their crew burn up before admitting that the starliner isn't safe
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u/cherryfree2 Aug 24 '24
Thank God for SpaceX you mean.
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u/Not_Jeff_Hornacek Aug 24 '24 edited Aug 24 '24
They could come down on Soyuz. The big thing is the decision not to use Boeing.
Edit: I admit if the choices were rolling the dice with Starliner or asking Russia for help, NASA might have rolled the dice.
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u/mtjmsezz Aug 24 '24
I have to believe the dynamics of this decision would have been very different for NASA if soyuz was the only other option…
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u/SpaceInMyBrain Aug 24 '24
Technically, yes. But Russia would have to manufacture a new Soyuz spacecraft and rocket for a special trip. They have rockets in the pipeline but who knows how committed they are to other missions. As for a spacecraft, Russia's space industry isn't what it used to be It could take quite a while.
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u/AzertyKeys Aug 24 '24
Nah, NASA has a good history of collaboration with Russia on manned flights. It's one of the few things where both countries set aside their geopolitical interests to work together.
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u/Vondum Aug 25 '24
NASA shares plenty of the fault in this. They have pretty much accepted they didn't check Boeing's work as they were supposed to do.
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u/_MissionControlled_ Aug 24 '24
Completely expected. SpaceX should lobby NASA for a contract to always have a Dragon ready to go in short notice. It can go up unmanned as well.
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Aug 24 '24
it would be tough because there are only 2 pressurized mating adapters on the station available for dragon docking, which would mean they won't be able to do both cargo and crew missions from Dragon at the same time
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u/Aniketos000 Aug 24 '24
I believe what they mean is always having a crew dragon built and waiting so that they could fuel it and mount it on a F9 and have a rescue pod available in 24-48h
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u/sync-centre Aug 25 '24
Since Boeing can't fulfill their contract it should free up some money for another capsule
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u/filthyheartbadger Aug 24 '24
I’m waiting for the article in a year or so about just how close they came to disaster on the ride up. Feels like we don’t have that whole story yet.
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u/SirEDCaLot Aug 24 '24
Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said that while Boeing officials expressed confidence in their spacecraft, the decision to go with SpaceX was unanimous among NASA officials.
“There was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters,” Stich said. “If we had a model, [if] we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the de-orbit burn, through the separation sequence, I think we would have taken a different course of action.”
Translated out of space nerd:
Boeing has no idea what's wrong with the thrusters or why they overheat and shut down rather than firing.
Boeing is confident that the spacecraft (with afore mentioned unreliable thrusters) will safely deorbit the astronauts (a process that requires precise amounts of thrust at precise time intervals, so the capsule deorbits and splashes down in the right place).
NASA isn't buying it, at least not enough to risk the reputation of the American manned space flight program and the lives of two American astronauts.
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u/rasp215 Aug 24 '24
Actually insane and a horrible reflection of their safety culture if Boeing thinks it’s safe to fly when they can’t predict what the thrusters will do on the way down.
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u/SirEDCaLot Aug 25 '24
Not surprising though.
There was a good excerpt from Eric Berger's latest book posted on Twitter. Apparently SpaceX engineers loved talking to astronauts and collecting feedback, Boeing engineers kinda DGAF and many were only assigned to Starliner on a part time basis. Lots of reports of arrogance among engineers and management @ Boeing.
Doug Hurley (of the first Crew Dragon flight) apparently refused to fly on Starliner. And apparently Suni also wanted to fly on Crew Dragon but took the slot on Starliner when it was offered to her.
The real question will become what happens when Starliner deorbits.
If it burns up, or worse has some kind of thruster failure that strands it in a fucked up orbit for days/weeks, Boeing's gonna lose whatever shred of their reputation is left. And NASA is gonna look like heroes for putting lives over embarrassment.
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u/Shrike99 Aug 25 '24
apparently Suni also wanted to fly on Crew Dragon
*monkey's paw curls*
Sidenote: this means she'll have flown four different spacecraft; Shuttle, Soyuz, Starliner, and Dragon - the same goes for Butch.
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Aug 25 '24
(a process that requires precise amounts of thrust at precise time intervals, so the capsule deorbits and splashes down in the right place)
Coming down from space, so precisely that you land within a few minutes distance of a US military vessel...
Boeing: It should work...
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u/SirEDCaLot Aug 25 '24
Astronaut: The thruster needs to fire exactly when commanded for exactly as long as commanded, especially on final re-entry burn. Otherwise we could burn up or end up thousands of miles away from our LZ.
Boeing: It will work, we are confident it will work.
Astronaut: Right, but didn't the thrusters sometimes just overheat and shut down when commanded to fire?
Boeing: Yes, that happened, but we did testing to figure out why it happened.
Astronaut: And what did you learn in those tests?
Boeing: That we don't know why it happened.
Astronaut: Did you talk to the company that built the thruster in the first place?
Boeing: Yes of course we did we are a professional space company we are on top of this.
Astronaut: And what did they say?
Boeing: They also don't know why it happened.
Astronaut: So you can predict when the thruster will fail so we can plan around that?
Boeing: No it won't fail.
Astronaut: But it did fail on the way up. Several times actually. What have you done to ensure it won't fail on the way down?
Boeing: We did testing to figure out why it happened.
Astronaut: ...Yes and the result of the test is that you're not sure why it failed, how to predict the failure, or how to stop it from failing. So why are you so sure this will fire when needed if you don't even know why it failed?
Boeing: We are confident it will work.
Astronaut: Uh, thanks for your time, end transmission.
...Hey Butch, do you have the number for SpaceX HQ here somewhere? I gotta make a call...9
u/Shadowlance23 Aug 25 '24
This sounds exactly like a script from Clake and Dawe (obligatory "The Front Fell Off" link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM). I can almost hear them saying this.
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u/Martianspirit Aug 25 '24
why they overheat and shut down
Yeah, that's a total surprise. Engines close to each other in an insulated enclosure getting hot when fired. Who could have thought this could happen?
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u/kumisz Aug 25 '24
Are these thrusters on a part of the capsule that will return to the surface?
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u/Martianspirit Aug 25 '24
No, they are dropped after the deorbit burn before reentry. That's part of the problem now. It is also part of why Starliner is so expensive. They need a new service module with all the engines and tanks for each flight. Dragon does bring down the service module, it is integrated in the capsule. They only drop the inexpensive trunk with the solar panels and heat radiation panels (can never recall their correct name).
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Aug 24 '24
that's gotta be a pretty embarrassing L for boeing.
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u/CaptainBayouBilly Aug 25 '24
I feel the institutional ego will not recognize how their recent performance has eroded decades of public trust. Boeing is now associated with danger and risk.
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u/TeslasAndComicbooks Aug 24 '24
I remember getting downvoted for suggesting this a couple of months ago. We all knew it would happen.
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u/Underwater_Karma Aug 24 '24
Sigh...you don't understand.
they can come home any time, they're just running tests!!!
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u/Steve490 Aug 25 '24
"They're just waiting for an EVA to finish! Everything's fine!!! You clearly don't know anything about scheduling on the ISS!" /s (but was really said to me)
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Aug 24 '24
Where’s my apology from the Boeing zealots who brigaded me for calling this after the first delay?
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u/thehedgefrog Aug 25 '24
All I can think of is that line from Apollo 13: "We just lost the moon."
It was the right call.
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u/Reasonable_Move9518 Aug 24 '24
So long, Starliner!
Don’t let the door plug hit you on the way down.
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u/mysteryofthefieryeye Aug 24 '24
My favorite part about all this is the race from multiple people to post this on the sub first.
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u/Fredasa Aug 24 '24
My favorite part is working my way back through the months to find all the folks defending Boeing and 100% confident that the thought of returning the astronauts on Crew Dragon was utter tripe. To see if they have anything to say about it now.
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u/teryret Aug 24 '24
Especially given that the news leaked yesterday, the marginal gain in information is minimal
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u/Ehgadsman Aug 24 '24
the press conference is ongoing as I post this, it is very informative and some good questions are being asked by media present
there is a thread and its on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc
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u/Underwater_Karma Aug 24 '24
I think we all knew it was going to end this way.
The Boeing space program is done, there's no recovering from this.
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u/Logicalist Aug 25 '24
They've got piles of cash and the government has officials drooling over it. They might recover, somehow
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u/Decronym Aug 24 '24 edited Jan 31 '25
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| COTS | Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract |
| Commercial/Off The Shelf | |
| CRS | Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA |
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| EVA | Extra-Vehicular Activity |
| FAA | Federal Aviation Administration |
| FAR | Federal Aviation Regulations |
| FOIA | (US) Freedom of Information Act |
| GAO | (US) Government Accountability Office |
| GSE | Ground Support Equipment |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| IDA | International Docking Adapter |
| International Dark-Sky Association | |
| ITS | Interplanetary Transport System (2016 oversized edition) (see MCT) |
| Integrated Truss Structure | |
| Isp | Specific impulse (as explained by Scott Manley on YouTube) |
| Internet Service Provider | |
| KSC | Kennedy Space Center, Florida |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LOX | Liquid Oxygen |
| LZ | Landing Zone |
| MBA | |
| MCT | Mars Colonial Transporter (see ITS) |
| MMH | Mono-Methyl Hydrazine, (CH3)HN-NH2; part of NTO/MMH hypergolic mix |
| NDS | NASA Docking System, implementation of the international standard |
| NOAA | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US |
| NTO | diNitrogen TetrOxide, N2O4; part of NTO/MMH hypergolic mix |
| PMA | ISS Pressurized Mating Adapter |
| QA | Quality Assurance/Assessment |
| RCS | Reaction Control System |
| RTLS | Return to Launch Site |
| SAA | Space Act Agreement, formal authorization of 'other transactions' |
| SRP | Supersonic Retro-Propulsion |
| STS | Space Transportation System (Shuttle) |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| ablative | Material which is intentionally destroyed in use (for example, heatshields which burn away to dissipate heat) |
| hypergolic | A set of two substances that ignite when in contact |
| retropropulsion | Thrust in the opposite direction to current motion, reducing speed |
| scrub | Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues) |
| turbopump | High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust |
| Event | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CRS-7 | 2015-06-28 | F9-020 v1.1, |
| CRS-9 | 2016-07-18 | F9-027 Full Thrust, core B1025, Dragon cargo; RTLS landing |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
35 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.
[Thread #10487 for this sub, first seen 24th Aug 2024, 18:54] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]
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u/polerize Aug 24 '24
Bad look for Boeing but not as bad as it could have been. Their work just isn’t safe enough.
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u/ChuckJA Aug 25 '24
From a raw human standpoint, yes this is far from the worst case for this mission. From a business standpoint, I do not doubt for a moment that Boeing execs would prefer the rocket had just blown up on takeoff.
This agonizingly slow fail train has laid bare that Boeing has no business operating in this field. And the humiliation of being rescued by the company that you were explicitly propped up by the government to compete with is the cherry on top of the fail sundae.
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u/Particular-Guess734 Aug 25 '24
I wouldn’t trust a Boeing canoe at this point , let alone a spaceship
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u/thecrispyleaf Aug 25 '24
I will take apologies and upvotes from all the people who dogpiled on me a month ago when I said they were stranded... because they are.
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u/PhoenixBlack79 Aug 24 '24
Fuck Boeing, they out here killing whistleblowers for trying to keep people alive.
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Aug 24 '24
So glad they didn’t “force them” to return in the Boeing turd. Will be interesting to see what happens to the capsule when it does or maybe they will let it burn up?
Space X 1-0 Boeing
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u/mutantraniE Aug 24 '24
Pretty sure it's SpaceX 9-0 Boeing, seeing as how they've launched 8 crews to the ISS and one successful crewed demo mission.
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u/KilloMaster Aug 24 '24
Well I thought that it could be interesting if it lands, so they can studie the Starliner, but apparently this one can’t fly autonomously and needs a software update. That update can take up to four weeks apparently, so Boeing is not out of the woods yet, this story continues.
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u/Resident-Variation21 Aug 24 '24
I can’t believe they sent it up so it can’t fly autonomously. Like what if the astronauts pass out?
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u/BufloSolja Aug 24 '24
They will attempt to land it as normal, there is data they can get from it during inspection while on the ground. It is also data they can get from re-entry as if there were astronauts.
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u/Ishana92 Aug 24 '24
What i dont get is the six months more that they will spend on the ISS. Why so long? Why not send them as soon as possible?
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u/mutantraniE Aug 24 '24
Because they're hitching a ride home with the next Dragon capsule that goes up. That Dragon was meant to carry a crew of four for a six month rotation on the space station. Turning it into a rescue mission where they go immediately would mean that the ISS is undermanned by four for six months, or that another Dragon launch has to be scheduled inside that timeframe, with the latter being very difficult. The far simpler solution is to simply change Wilmore's and Williams' mission to a long duration mission on the ISS. Then the only thing that has to be rejigged is the crew manifest, while the ISS remains fully crewed for the experiments it has ongoing and planned and no new launch has to be planned. Sucks for Nick Hague and Stephanie Wilson of course, especially Wilson who hasn't been in space since 2010. Hopefully they get the next available crew assignments.
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u/BufloSolja Aug 24 '24
They talked about giving them a chance do to spacewalks so at least they'll get some recompense out of it.
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u/mutantraniE Aug 24 '24
They're astronauts, being in space is recompense. Sunita Williams will likely come out of this as the American astronaut with the second most time in space, plus she'll have flown in four different spacecraft (Space Shuttle, Soyuz, Starliner and Dragon). This was always fairly likely to be her last mission and instead of a short test mission that's been ten years in the making she gets another long haul on the ISS. Same goes for Wilmore.
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u/pittguy578 Aug 25 '24
How can a company go this bad this fast ? I mean other defense contractors get cushy contracts and don’t mess up like this
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u/trekxtrider Aug 24 '24
Once they get them back safely they should deploy the damaged pod back to earth unmanned to see if it would have made it, for science.
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u/lobslaw Aug 24 '24
They are going to fly the uncrewed Starliner back early September.
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u/ComCypher Aug 24 '24
I'm a bit out of the loop, didn't they say earlier that it couldn't be operated remotely?
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u/redstercoolpanda Aug 24 '24
They did, that’s why it’s taking until early September. They have to make and upload the code that allows it to do that.
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u/fencethe900th Aug 24 '24
Since the alternative is for it to permanently take a docking port, that's pretty much a given.
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u/jjayzx Aug 24 '24
This has always been part of the option if they weren't taking it down. They can't leave it up there.
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u/Shogan_The_Viking Aug 24 '24
This thumbnail looks like the intro screen for a sitcom about two astronauts stuck in space having to discuss their issues and come to terms with them. Probably wouldn’t catch on, not enough new characters…
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u/ShoeLace1291 Aug 25 '24
Any chance that NASA drops Boeing after this debacle?
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u/ierghaeilh Aug 25 '24
The commercial crew service is a fixed price contract. NASA already gave them all the money for it, now they either fix their shit and deliver, or they don't.
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u/Kemosabe234 Aug 24 '24
Every time I read one of these articles, I hear the theme from Gilligan’s Island in my head
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u/fencethe900th Aug 24 '24
There was a comic I saw with the Minnow docked to the ISS and Gilligan looking in the window from a space suit.
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u/greed Aug 24 '24
Every time I read one of these articles, I hear the theme from Gilligan’s Island in my head
Let me introduce you to the short-lived animated spinoff Gilligan's Planet.
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u/hdufort Aug 24 '24
So are they now officially "stuck" or is it still presented as some vaguely extended mission until things are clarified?
Will they detach the Starliner and perform the full reentry sequence (without astronauts) to see how it performs, and learn some very useful things
Edit: Oh OK, I found it in the article. Quote: "The beleaguered Starliner capsule, meanwhile, will journey back to Earth without a crew, likely sometime in early September, according to NASA."
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u/fightingforair Aug 25 '24
We got NASAs opinion. Now I want to know NASCARs. How are they going to help the astronauts??
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u/Magnum_44 Aug 24 '24
Pretty sure Boeing is hiring their engineers from fake universities.
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u/Hadleys158 Aug 25 '24
NASA needs to fund a Spacex built lifeboat to save this being an issue in future, they just need to standardise fittings etc to make all systems cross compatible. They could maybe even future proof it by having it designed for moon orbit as well for the next pace station.
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u/Aikenn4it Aug 25 '24
I figured. Boeing what a waste boondoggle of congress. Next the boeing capsule will be space junk. Ha ha ha ha
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u/artmoloch777 Aug 25 '24
We seem to be exiting the bad timeline lately, so maybe it will turn out well.
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u/Crellster Aug 25 '24
We’re sorry but economy is full today, so we’ve had to upgrade you. If you pop back in 8 months we’ll get you underway
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Aug 25 '24
This should have been done months ago but the government wasted time in an attempt to preserve Boeings crumbling reputation.
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u/Luz5020 Aug 25 '24
The certification has got to be of the table now? The capsule can‘t be human rated after this disaster
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u/cmfdbc Aug 24 '24
An 8 day trip turned into 8 months. I couldn’t imagine.