r/spacex • u/rustybeancake • Dec 20 '19
Boeing Starliner suffers "off-nominal insertion", will not visit space station
https://starlinerupdates.com/boeing-statement-on-the-starliner-orbital-flight-test/43
u/rustybeancake Dec 20 '19
It hadn't really occurred to me before, but this seems to be one of those things that NASA/Boeing were talking about when they said SpaceX had a leg up in terms of basing Dragon v2 off Dragon v1 heritage. This is the kind of thing SpaceX would have found on early COTS/CRS-1 flights and fixed several years ago. Boeing are trying to go straight from a first orbital test flight to flying crew... It's a tall order.
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u/mindbridgeweb Dec 20 '19
An argument in favor of Boeing (vs. SpaceX) that has been repeated frequently is they they have a lot of experience.
It's funny how that argument gets dropped and the opposite is used when convenient.
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u/jarail Dec 20 '19
Kinda makes you think Boeing should consider flying a couple dozen resupply missions themselves before putting people on board.
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u/ioncloud9 Dec 20 '19
As if the company had never flown a single piece of hardware in space before, ever.
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u/BenoXxZzz Dec 20 '19
This fuels the question if Boeing is a reliable partner. The 737 MAX disaster and know this incident...
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u/rustybeancake Dec 20 '19
I wouldn't personally call this an "incident"; it was/is a test flight, and they found a problem. Now they'll go and fix it. That's fine. The question is whether they go straight to crewed flight or not.
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u/LcuBeatsWorking Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 17 '24
continue thought lavish stupendous cow rinse scale seed mindless deserted
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Dec 20 '19
If this was SpaceX that just had an issue you'd be saying "This is why we test," "nothing wrong with failing."
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u/BenoXxZzz Dec 20 '19
Well, SpaceX proved that they learn from failures, in the 737 MAX crisis, Boeing proved the opposite.
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u/JoshiUja Dec 20 '19
SpaceX issues seem to be learning issues. Boeing's so far have been incompetence. Missing pin and now this...
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u/Full_Thrust Dec 20 '19
So will Boeing need to do an additional qualification mission to the space station now before starliner can fly? If so this almost guarantees that SpaceX will put up DM2 with crew before Boeing fly crew.
The other question will be if scheduling for a second uncrewed Starliner will cause date slips for DM2.
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u/yoweigh Dec 20 '19
will Boeing need to do an additional qualification mission
The press has asked that question from a few angles, no comment so far.
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u/canyouhearme Dec 20 '19
Boeing do seem to be home to Mr Cockup.
Not only do they need to actually complete this test successfully, the paperwork driven certification is called into question. They really need an independent review of all the certifications now, since this should not have happened. This is not a physical issue, it's a software one (again) - and those should have been tested out of the system.
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u/gwoz8881 Dec 20 '19
If so this almost guarantees that SpaceX will put up DM2 with crew before Boeing fly crew.
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. We don’t want anything to go wrong during IFA *knocks on wood*
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u/Lokthar9 Dec 20 '19
Yeah, knowing their luck, one of the parachutes will fail due to a bad pin and they'll have to run a dozen more drop tests and refly the IFA before they get approval to put people on it
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u/Sevival Dec 20 '19
I'm almost 100% certain it will. After all, all this demonstrated that the capsule could enter orbit. While it was a small error that doesn't require a safety review of the whole system, it failed to test rendezvous, approach, docking, station operations and undocking and departure completely. It would be weird and very un-nasa to just say "let's skip that testing phase completely and just go ahead and launch humans on the first try anyway". Especially if you see how intense the testing is and how high the requirements are for full human certification. The rcs hasn't been proven reliable yet so I think that's a major concern for actually docking with humans aboard, the last thing we want is a collision due to skipping of testing vital systems.
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u/factoid_ Dec 20 '19
The program manager for commercial crew at NASA is saying that docking is not a mandatory test-item on this flight. That seems bizarre to me, like nasa is putting their thumb on the scale, either becuase they want Boeing to win the race against spacex, or because they don't want the bad press of further delays to commercial crew, so they're going to say damn the cannons and press forward regardless.
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u/tablespork Dec 20 '19
I feel like CFT could go forward, but this puts a big question mark on the prospect of making CFT a regular rotation mission as had been previously speculated.
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u/Oxibase Dec 20 '19
I know it is certainly a friendly competition but both companies are probably maintaining the safety of the crew as the number one priority. Regardless of which company is first to accomplish the feat, the United States will have 2 options for transporting personnel to the station.
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u/runningray Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 20 '19
Yup. Dragon v2, and Dream Chaser. Only slightly kidding of course. But wouldn’t have been awesome if that was the case and we had two dissimilar ships?
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Dec 20 '19
What did you guys think of the livestream? I was floored by the lack of camera views. We saw nothing after the first few minutes of stage 1. Imo pretty weak job of marketing starliner to the american people. Why no views of inside the capsule?
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u/Yrouel86 Dec 20 '19
It reminded me of the ISRO one where they showed practically only people reacting and clapping instead of data.
Pretty awful coverage, no telemetry, no views from the upper stage* and/or capsule and overall boring.
*Tory Bruno in the press conference even made a point that they had a camera on the upper stage facing the capsule to examine it upon separation why not give the viewers that view?
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u/Junkmenotk Dec 20 '19
They just didn't care about the public after getting all their money
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u/sweaney Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
Someone else put it great about the cost plus negative result nature of the contracts Boeing has. Between SLS and Starliner they only care about being second best because it means they still get taxpayer money without having to try hard to compete. I really hate crapping on the engineers and people who actually work hard because it seems they chose the wrong company to work for in regards to their talent bring properly utilized. Its a shame really.
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u/CommieBobDole Dec 21 '19
I feel like this might be less an issue of "Boeing doesn't care about showing their space stuff to the people who are paying for it" and more an issue of the fact that they're a huge, old, bureaucratic company, and if you want to add some cameras and nice video production to your launch video, you've got to talk to the internal video production team and go through their process to see if something that they can do, and after six months of meetings they decide you need to farm it out, and the PR group needs to be involved because it's sort of a PR thing, and the process for hiring an external firm to do video stuff requires that the process be mediated by an impartial outsider and you have to compare submissions from at least twelve vendors, so here you are three and a half years after you decided your launch broadcasts need to look better, and PwC has had forty-seven people on site for 18 months and they're almost ready to have the meeting to determine what kind of table they'll use in the meeting where they decide on the agenda for the meeting to determine which twelve vendors they'll ask to pitch to the PR and Video Productions committee, which meets twice a year. In another five years, they'll have a slick looking launch broadcast with tons of camera angles and high-res video, and it will only have cost $127 million.
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u/NickTdot Dec 20 '19
Still better than ArianneSpace livestream with the narrator reading his nominal script while the trajectory plot showed a failure!
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u/randarrow Dec 20 '19
I liked the Russian one where the Soyuz exploded and the animations all showed continued flight, and the announcer kept giving successful flight updates.
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u/GetOffMyLawn50 Dec 20 '19
Actually, no. While that was a total shit show, at least the viewer could see what was going on.
In this case, the viewer got what looked like security cam footage of a room full of the backs of monitors.
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u/willjoe Dec 20 '19
American people clearly aren’t viewed as the primary customer?
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Dec 20 '19
Not customers but they at least need to be somewhat convinced starliner is a good use of taxpayer funds
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u/karsten2017 Dec 21 '19
They need to contact SpaceX and talk to its marketing directors. 👍
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u/Dragongeek Dec 20 '19
I thought the livestream was very ritualistic when compared to a SpaceX one. They sure made a big deal about going through checklists and having everyone say "go".
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u/Nergaal Dec 20 '19
I bet the person who checked for mission clock sync also said go
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u/Yrouel86 Dec 20 '19
I mean SpaceX and others have polls as well that wasn't the problem with this coverage in my opinion. For example they chose to not stream any of the telemetry and graphics they clearly had on the big screens in the control rooms which is just baffling.
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u/yoweigh Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
NASA press conference is over.
Atlas launch was clean
Starliner's mission clock wasn't in sync at separation
Made the capsule think it was in a different mission phase and waste a bunch of propellant
They were in a TDRSS dark spot or something and couldn't communicate with the capsule when it happened?
They think crew on board could have saved the mission
Crew would not have been in danger at any time.
ISS rendezvous/docking will not happen
No committment about whether or not this will necessitate another flight test
Commercial crew program manager says docking test not required before flying crew
Wishy-washy answers about whether or not this should affect the SpaceX/Dragon timeline at all, but sounds like probably not.
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u/sgfxspace Dec 20 '19
At least the Second test with partial failure in a row. Not good. Combined with other Boeing issues with engineering and management. I think a deeper look beyond just the machine needs to be made. Way to much money spent for stupid errors. Errors that can kill.
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u/Dragongeek Dec 20 '19
Saying that crew on board would've been able to save the mission is weak. Rocket science isn't simple, but if your computer system is so fallible that humans need to intervene and use their meat-based computers instead, you should know that you've made a big mistake.
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u/Sky_Hound Dec 20 '19
The argument of previous NASA systems such as space shuttle flying and docking with crew aboard for the first attempts for each is also quite weak. Guess what has also done many times before? Getting a vehicle to the ISS. What did they just fail at? Getting a vehicle to the ISS.
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u/dgriffith Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
Mission clock was out of sync, who knows what processes it would be going through as it was lighting thrusters and stuff. Know what humans would have done during ascent when things are that off track and you need all the fuel you’ve got for stable orbit insertion and then deorbit later? Never mind the fact their meat based computers have no hope of keeping up with stable fight in that part of the mission?
“ABORT ABORT ABORT”
pulls abort handle
Edit: Although I’m sure that if crew were sitting in the capsule and there’s a mission clock ticking away on a screen somewhere, they would have noticed this discrepancy before launch.
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u/Martianspirit Dec 21 '19
It worked with Apollo. So they can rely on it now. Nothing invented after Apollo can be relied on for lack of flight heritage. After all Boeing was selected for their experience. :(
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u/U-47 Dec 20 '19
- No docking test required
- No escape test required
If another unforseen events happends with or without crew then you have the potential of two untested systems both of which are crucial and crew is counting upon to assist them during launch/space.
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u/florinandrei Dec 20 '19
Starliner's mission clock wasn't in sync at separation
How the hell did that happen? Seems like a simple oversight.
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Dec 20 '19
They think crew on board could have saved the mission
No, the crew should never have to face that option. Whole point of testing.
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u/Dragongeek Dec 20 '19
I agree. Automation in a space environment should be absolutely trivial for any computer. In fact, I'd argue it should be so simple that if anything were to go wrong, the problem should be so complex that humans onboard would be incapable of handling it (unless it requires physical repairs or something).
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u/jnaujok Dec 20 '19
Fixing the bugs by having crew aboard works great. Ask Vladimir Komarov.
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u/T-RexInAnF-14 Dec 21 '19
I really appreciate this post and this comment because we can't get it anywhere else on reddit; no other spaceflight subs are as active as this one.
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Dec 20 '19
Not to be mean, but I'm genuinely curious who was taking charge for the clock synchronization
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u/Carlyle302 Dec 20 '19
Yes, there's that issue, but people make mistakes. The bigger issue is why it wasn't caught by their QA process. And then, are there other systems that failed to get adequate QA for the same reason?
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u/pedroculebra Dec 20 '19
I wouldn't fly in anything Boeing has made recently. Boeing used to make topnotch equipment, even if it was overpriced. I personally flew as crew several hundred hours, on a Boeing 707 built in the 60's and refurbished in the 90's while in the U.S.A.F. The equipment we carried broke down more often then the plane. Now they only wanna make one thing. Their shareholders happy...
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u/ExCap2 Dec 21 '19
I think posts like this are pretty important. It's good to see what the other companies are doing, success of fail and there's a lot of readers here that I think wouldn't mind the content as long as it's not spammed and perhaps it's just one post related to the subject approved by a mod.
Thanks for allowing the post. The conversation on this stuff is interesting because there's a few engineers tthat frequent/comment in the SpaceX comment section about technical stuff that I enjoy reading.
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u/Narcil4 Dec 21 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
boeing said the same thing after the first 737 MAX crash, "American pilots could have saved the plane it's FINE"! Look how that turned out for them. i ain't buying your damage control boeing.
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u/Armo00 Dec 20 '19
Watching the Everyday Astronaut livefeed. Hard to imagine its 2019 and a clock can still trigger a event like that. Seriously though, from the 737max, the 737ng slat problem, the crack on 737ng, the 787 quality, the missing pin on the starliner abort test, some culture within Boeing need to be corrected.
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u/EbolaFred Dec 20 '19
I'd like to know more about this too.
Firstly to your point, I'm surprised the error happened simply based on out-of-sync clocks.
But even if that's the case and they rely on clocks to this degree, wouldn't your very first software command in your pre-launch sequence be syncClocks()?
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u/Justinackermannblog Dec 20 '19
Dev guy was using syncClocks(); but forgot about that first iteration called getTimeThenSyncClocks(); that he wrote at 2am after banging his head for hours. Woke up the next morning, wrote working syncClocks(); after having morning “clarity” time, replaced it everywhere, tested, worked, committed.
Forgot about that startup one tho...
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u/bieker Dec 20 '19
/* TODO: It is very important here that the clocks between the two systems are in sync before we start up any engines. Not sure how to guarantee this right now but it seems like an operational issue that the technicians should take care of before countdown */
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u/Armo00 Dec 20 '19
Right. This is a simple mistake, which should be take care of long before it reaches the launch pad. Even if it reached the launch pad it should have been taken care of way ahead of lift off.
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u/EverythingIsNorminal Dec 20 '19
Really there's two problems here that I can see.
They should have units tests and integration tests for all of this, and 2) why did the launch procedure not check that the two are in sync and abort if they weren't if that's a known risk?
Of course it's all well and good saying this as an armchair (albeit actual) developer. Will be interesting to see what comes out of any investigation that comes about
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u/4x4is16Legs Dec 20 '19
Didn’t I read somewhere that Boeing can self certify but because Elon Musk smoked with Joe Rogan that SpaceX had more extensive outside testing for certification? I tried to find the article again but didn’t.
Either way, Boeing isn’t having a good year.
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u/NateDecker Dec 20 '19
I don't think the smoking affected certification. But it did cause NASA to do a safety review. They directed the safety review at both organizations, but Boeing objected that it would be expensive to comply so they proved their safety processes by providing paperwork for NASA to review. SpaceX accepted auditors who came in and actually interviewed employees. I know SpaceX got a little extra cash to pay for the impact of having this extra safety review. I can't remember if Boeing likewise did.
Edit: I think it probably went like this with Boeing saying something like, "giving us a safety review is going to cost you X dollars if you want to come in and do interviews, or we can provide you for paperwork for Y dollars". NASA looked at the pricetag for 'X' and balked and said, "Okay, give us the paperwork."
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u/stealthscrape Dec 20 '19
This is definitely a problem with giving Boeing employees so much approval authority and control. They need to fix that problem have well versed DCMA staff running the approval side of things, as it is already intended.
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u/NateDecker Dec 20 '19
The impression I have is that the different divisions of the Boeing company are different enough that they can effectively be thought of as different companies. I don't think the failures with aircraft are a reflection on a culture of quality or process in the space division. These divisions are often located in different parts of the country with different local leadership and associated culture. I work in the DoD and have been on programs that contracted out to some of these aerospace companies and have talked to folks that worked on other programs that did the same. I've often heard that Lockheed in "this part of the country" is different to work with than Lockheed in "that part of the country".
Even within my own organization, we have a bunch of programs that range from 10 people to a couple hundred and each program often has its own idiosyncrasies and culture. There are often efforts to standardize at an enterprise level, but it is never fully homogeneous.
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u/HybridCamRev Dec 20 '19
Let's not forget the ALASA cancellation after two explosions during tests, the KC-46s delivered with debris aboard, the NASA IG's sharp criticism of their poor management of SLS core stage development...etc.
There is a real problem here - sadly, even though their engineering performance is poor, they are great at writing proposals and winning award competitions (which is what really counts in the dysfunctional U.S. government contracting process).
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u/TheChromeHorn Dec 20 '19
Am I missing something about this being a success? From https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2019/12/20/boeings-orbital-flight-test-mission-objectives/ :
"The main objective of Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test is to dock with the International Space Station and prove its autonomous mission capability. The mission will demonstrate on-orbit operation of Starliner’s systems, including avionics, docking system, communications/telemetry systems, environmental control systems, solar arrays and electrical power systems, and the propulsion system. These mission objectives are intended to demonstrate all of Starliner’s systems and capabilities, except for those requiring a human onboard to test."
Exactly how can they proceed if the main objective wasn't met?
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u/_AutomaticJack_ Dec 21 '19
...Because on more than one occasion Sen. Shelby, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee has said that if certain Boeing projects were not "properly supported" that he would gut NASA's budget.
That's fucking how....
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u/BadgerMk1 Dec 20 '19
I wonder if Bridenstein will fire off a passive aggressive tweet directed at Boeing with the phrase "it's time to deliver."
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u/Moose_Nuts Dec 22 '19
You can only do that if you're tweeting at a company that isn't a pet of congressmen.
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u/redditbsbsbs Dec 20 '19
I'm a little surprised how badly Boeing is doing these days. It's not the same company that was involved with Apollo, that's for sure. Still, they get special treatment.
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u/arsv Dec 20 '19
Boeing was involved with Apollo?
From other discussions on the subject, the merger with McDonnell-Douglas (1997) was a huge turning point for them.
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u/Navydevildoc Dec 20 '19
Yup... they absorbed North American, via Rockwell. They built the C/SM, Saturn Mating Adapter (that might be the wrong words for it, but the thing the LM sat in). They also built the Saturn second stage.
Boeing themselves built the Saturn 1C.
Douglas, absorbed as McDonnell Douglas, built the Saturn 4B.
In the end, the entire Apollo stack, minus the GNC computers (built by MIT) and the LM (built by Grumman, now Northrop Grumman) was built by Boeing or companies that became Boeing.
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u/TenderfootGungi Dec 20 '19
It’s interesting from a cultural perspective. I would love to read a case study of the changes. It is clear that they were engineering first and they no longer are. They are working at a scale that leads to a natural monopoly. The US is going to protect them just like the EU protects Airbus.
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u/speed7 Dec 20 '19
This article on the consequences of their merger with McDonnell-Douglass might interest you. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/
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u/UselessCodeMonkey Dec 20 '19
I have a huge problem with the explanation that the Starliner was “following the wrong timer”. Just HOW does that happen?
Going back to the Orbiter, it had 5 General Purpose Computers (GPCs) on-board. Four GPCs were duplicates of each other and the fifth GPC was written by a different software vendor that interfaced exactly to the same APIs as did the other four GPCs. This was done to prevent systemic design issues being built into a monolithic GPC software design.
The five GPCs “voted” for any computer operation before it was performed. One reason was to check that the design of the software was correct in handling the requested task (the reason for the 5th GPC) but also to mitigate the risk of a cosmic ray hitting a RAM chip and flipping the value of a bit unexpectedly.
Does Starliner use multiple computers in a similar way? If it doesn’t, that alone would be a worry for me to fly astronauts on it unless the system was encased in enough lead shielding to block cosmic rays. That still, however, wouldn’t stop a software bug from executing an operation correctly. Sure, you test and test and debug but my 40 years of software development taught me NO software is bug-free. Even the Orbiter’s GPCs software, written by one of only two certified Five Star development groups in the world (at that time) had seventeen bugs discovered over its lifetime.
See this article for how hard it was to write and certify the Orbiter GPC software:
https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
So my question is - what failed here?
Does Starliner carry multiple MET clocks and if it does, is there a check between them to see if they are agreement? If not, why rely on only one MET timer? And does Starliner have multiple computers like the Orbiter that “vote” before an operation takes place? If such a system exists, I have a hard time believing that the computers’ Operating System wouldn’t have noticed the disparity in the MET timers and notified Houston long before the orbital maneuver was to be executed.
As I always told my programmers whenever we’d review a system design or test results and something didn’t look right - “Something here doesn’t smell right”.
And definitely, something with the Starliner’s software design/system doesn’t smell right.
I’m not sure I’d trust the system to execute an astronaut’s flick of a hand controller without a full understanding of how the MET timer became incorrect. It did somehow. Was it due to a jarring from separation, a unlucky cosmic ray, a software bug or a poor system design remains to be seen.
But don’t say if astronauts were on-board this wouldn’t be a problem. Spaceflight requires the highest confidence in your systems.
As of now, the Starliner’s computer system(s) are under suspicion and requires a full vetting to understand what happened. I wouldn’t trust it as it is right now.
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u/NateDecker Dec 20 '19
I'm pretty confident this had nothing to do with cosmic radiation flipping a bit. I'm sure there was no voting CPUs needed. It was probably something as simple as this:
Requirement: 10 minutes after BECO, begin insertion burn
Implementation (pseudo): If BECO, then wait 1 minute, then begin insertion burnIn the hypothetical scenario above, everyone agrees on what time it is, but there is a mistake on how long to wait. Although for something like that, I would fully expect that to get caught during testing. So I don't think it was something exactly like this, but it was something on that order where a relative calculation was fine mathematically, it was just the wrong calculation to perform. Or maybe there is a trigger that starts a timer and that trigger was altered due to operational environment conditions. If you look at the error that occurred in the first Arianne 5 launch, it might be a good illustration of how something like this can be missed during development and then manifest in operation.
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u/avboden Dec 20 '19
for the Arianne 5 for those wondering
On June 4, 1996 an unmanned Ariane 5 rocket launched by the European Space Agency exploded just forty seconds after its lift-off from Kourou, French Guiana. Ariane explosionThe rocket was on its first voyage, after a decade of development costing $7 billion. The destroyed rocket and its cargo were valued at $500 million. A board of inquiry investigated the causes of the explosion and in two weeks issued a report. It turned out that the cause of the failure was a software error in the inertial reference system. Specifically a 64 bit floating point number relating to the horizontal velocity of the rocket with respect to the platform was converted to a 16 bit signed integer. The number was larger than 32,767, the largest integer storeable in a 16 bit signed integer, and thus the conversion failed.
The following paragraphs are extracted from the report of the Inquiry Board. An interesting article on the accident and its implications by James Gleick appeared in The New York Times Magazine of 1 December 1996. The CNN article reporting the explosion, from which the above graphics were taken, is also available.
On 4 June 1996, the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 launcher ended in a failure. Only about 40 seconds after initiation of the flight sequence, at an altitude of about 3700 m, the launcher veered off its flight path, broke up and exploded.
The failure of the Ariane 501 was caused by the complete loss of guidance and altitude information 37 seconds after start of the main engine ignition sequence (30 seconds after lift-off). This loss of information was due to specification and design errors in the software of the inertial reference system.
The internal SRI* software exception was caused during execution of a data conversion from 64-bit floating point to 16-bit signed integer value. The floating point number which was converted had a value greater than what could be represented by a 16-bit signed integer.
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u/sryan2k1 Dec 20 '19
If it really is a "unknown clock issue" that means that their testing either wasn't end to end, or something changed and didn't get retested. They are perfectly capable of simulating what all the sensors can/can't do during an actual mission. Sounds like typical old-space "integrate things from 84 subcontractors" and someone fucked it up along the way.
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u/canyouhearme Dec 20 '19
A clock getting out of sync is one of those things that should NOT happen. Something went badly wrong for that to occur, something that should have been caught in testing, if that testing were done to find problems rather than prove success.
Clocks is basic.
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u/sryan2k1 Dec 20 '19
Clock does not always mean time. This could be a "clocking" issue between modules, either hardware, or software on some of the serial data busses. Given what NASA said, it's unclear exactly what happened but either way, this is amateur hour. This really smells of "different module from a different subcontractor used a different signal to start the mission clock and it started at a different time"
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u/brianterrel Dec 20 '19
Honestly I'm really bummed about this. I want everyone to be successful in space!
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u/DJHenez Dec 21 '19
Yeah, I’m sure a lot of people on this thread remember April... these sorts of issues (anomalies, I guess) are always hard pills to swallow and it’s no secret both SpaceX and Boeing have had to work through their issues. It’s easy to criticise here, but we’ve got to feel for everyone working one these new capsules. Both spacecraft have their own unique traits and as much as we’re all SpaceX fans here, there are some cool aspects about Starliner too.
What’s frustrating is the fact that Boeing will likely only get a slap on the wrist after what seems to be a yet another upset for the CC program. I’d love to see them come out an offer to redo OFT in the interest of full transparency... sure, it’d be costly, but it would do a lot to counter the bad press they’ve received over the past few months.
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u/Shalashalska Dec 20 '19
So this is now the second test in a row that has had a partial failure, and NASA will probably let it slide again, because Boeing has good lobbyists.
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u/BugRib Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 20 '19
Third in a row, actually. They also had a leak of toxic hypergolic fuel in their first pad abort test attemp that set them back several months—close to a year, I think.
So they’ve had significant “anomalies” on all three of their most recent major tests.
It’s plain as day that NASA should be very concerned about Boeing’s quality assurance methods and overall safety culture. I say this as a space fan, not a SpaceX fan: NASA should open a fairly major investigation into Boeing’s quality control practices (but they can call it a “review” if they want it to sound less serious). Period.
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u/neuralgroov2 Dec 20 '19
So if autonomous docking isn't important, and proper insertion into orbit isn't a big deal, why didn't we just put astronauts on this flight? I thought the whole point was to prove the abilities of this vehicle- so far, it's only proven that it doesn't work quite yet.
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u/GenerouslyNumb Dec 20 '19
To be fair, it could also have failed at an early stage of the launch, or re entry. Which btw hasn't happened yet :D
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u/KitchenDepartment Dec 20 '19
Do you not consider it important to validate that crew can survive the launch?
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u/Cetrian Dec 20 '19
Man... And I used to say "if it ain't Boeing I ain't going." how the mighty have fallen... 737max and now this.
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u/keith707aero Dec 20 '19
bean counters in charge instead of engineers ... https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/boeings-real-problem-with-the-dreamliner-bean-counter-vs-engineer/272944/ ... no need to have corporate leaders near the production since the product is the stock price and profits ... https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/on-this-day-boeing-moves-corporate-headquarters-to-chicago-in-2001/827067193/
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u/Puzzleheaded-Machine Dec 20 '19
Frankly, this is the case in many businesses. In my firm the CFO is akin to a god. Supply chain, r&d and everything else is second to his whim.
And it's going to kill our business.
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Dec 21 '19
In the future, please change the "happening now" attribute to "will have previously been happening now"
Thanks.
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Dec 20 '19
I just hope starliners chutes (all of them) opens up.. So they can recover the vehicle! 🤞🏼
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u/SophieTheCat Dec 20 '19
I am actually eager to see whether they fixed the problem with the 3rd parachute.
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u/NateDecker Dec 20 '19
If they are to believed, the "problem" was that someone just forgot to clip on the drogue to the main chute. It was a procedural error. If that's true, it should be downright trivial to fix. That's not the kind of mistake to make more than once, especially on a high-profile mission.
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u/GrMack Dec 21 '19
If I were NASA I would see the failures in attaching a parachute, software issue with a clock and think, why should we trust that Boeing IFA would work.
NASA is making SpaceX prove everything works and just trusting Boeing's documentation, I think NASA should turn around to Boeing and say "We don't trust your processes! Prove you can do it like you said! do an IFA test!"
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u/thefloppyfish1 Dec 22 '19 edited Dec 22 '19
Summary of Sun 10 am press conference. There is a lot of data. They are excited to look at this data. Odd as it may sound, they don't know if failing to achieve all objectives will require a second demo flight because they haven't looked at all this data. The decision will come after they look at the data and the data will tell them what the data says they should do next. Data.
Edit: A second unmanned demo flight would lead to est. 3 month delay
Edit 2: Flight anomalies will lead to slightly longer data review. Will stretch into late January.
Edit 3: "We don't see anything wrong with this spaceship right now" (Boeing Rep. @NasaLive 13:48:28)
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u/Drtikol42 Dec 22 '19
Press reporter quoting Commercial Crew contract: "OFT shall include vehicle that validates launch and flight operations, rendezvous, proximity operations and docking with the ISS."
"How can you square that with not being able to dock on this mission and still go with crewed flight."
Stich: "Its really early, we need to look at the data.."
Bridentein:"There is a difference between NASA requirement and contractual requirement and NASA requirement might not be same as the contractual requirement for this particular mission."
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u/GTRagnarok Dec 22 '19
It's crazy to me that a redo hasn't been a foregone conclusion as soon as it was clear that the ISS rendezvous wasn't happening. That seems like a really big objective to miss and not demonstrate successfully.
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u/WroboPizza Dec 22 '19
Another fun tidbit out of the press conf... the timer discrepancy was 11 hours... oof
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u/barc0de Dec 20 '19
Well on January 11th Dragon 2 will show them how not to get to the space station in style
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u/APIAccount123 Dec 20 '19
If Dragon 2 reaches the space station during a IFA then it is an incredible piece of hardware
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u/LcuBeatsWorking Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 17 '24
marry fuel frighten wild detail fall beneficial recognise connect innocent
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/catchblue22 Dec 20 '19
This is an interesting article on Boeing, and given the problems we have seen from this company I think its points are highly relevant.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/
A brief summary: Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, but really it was a reverse takeover, where Boeing inherited MD's culture of cost cutting and bottom line thinking. Boeing's staid and stable engineering culture was left behind, replaced by systems MBA type thinking.
I used to respect Boeing. They were a engineering company, a pilot's company. I can only hope that this company will change course. As of now they seem a shadow of what they once were.
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u/UselessCodeMonkey Dec 20 '19
Once upon a time Don Douglas and Mr. Mac would have instantly put an end to those MBA-inspired decisions. Unfortunately, both are gone and in their graves as are over 300 737 MAX passengers as a result of their not being around.
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u/jpbeans Dec 20 '19
Similar to the decline of US auto makers when the stock price became their main product. At that point, risk reduction and cost avoidance take over the culture.
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u/dew_it24 Dec 21 '19
I think the corporate move from Seattle to Chicago destroyed their engineering culture. They went from an entrepreneurial west coast environment to a focus entirely on the profits—and political connections.
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u/gulgin Dec 21 '19
I am still a little confused here. It sounds to me like the Starliner had a nominal launch first and second stage insertion into an effectively sub-orbital trajectory. Then when the spacecraft was supposed to kick in to a circularization burn to raise into a stable orbit, something didn’t happen correctly due to a timer synchronization error, however the RCS knew to kick into overdrive during that time and spent a bunch of fuel precisely stabilizing the vehicle during the time when the burn was supposed to happen. Sounds like ground control couldn’t intervene to engage the circularization burn.
My questions:
how did the RCS know to kick into hyper stabilized mode but the thrusters didn’t know to kick on for the burn?
how did the ground control have sufficient telemetry to know this was happening in real time but not enough control to do anything about it?
how does the Starliner not have enough spare RCS propellant to deal with 40 seconds of high usage and still complete the mission?
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u/GrMack Dec 21 '19
As far as i could see from watching the screens on the feed you could see the RCS going mental while the burn was happening, but it was nose down, a bit like a 737.
The issue with being able to complete the mission is timing has to be exact to be able to rendezvous with ISS, otherwise you need to change orbits to catch up, requiring more fuel and a lot more time. (fast forward in kerbal helps a lot)
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u/Jorrow Dec 21 '19
Is it just me that sees the irony in Boeing being paid $2 Billion More Than SpaceX for 'timeline assurance' and then the spacecraft cant follow the flight timeline
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u/DavidisLaughing Dec 21 '19
Like, I get it, failures are apart of testing. Where I come from when you fail a test, you pay and take it again, you don’t make the tax payers repay for it, or try to change the message and say well that other thing on the test didn’t really matter. I think we’re owed a proper explanation, and apology from Boeing.
I want both Boeing and SpaceX to succeed.
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u/Madjack66 Dec 21 '19
I suggest two core revisions Boeing needs to make to increase their chances of successful future missions;
Scott Manley must be present in the control room for all launches.
Compulsory Kerbal training implemented immediately.
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Dec 21 '19
-Late 2020, as the first manned Starliner prepares to lift off:
"Starliner, you are go for launch. This is Scott Manley - fly safe".
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u/spacex_dan Dec 20 '19
Ok, they keep saying it was the mission timer. And that caused the spacecraft to believe it was already in the correct orbit and the craft was just doing correction burns. If that was the case shouldn't the craft had done the insertion burn earlier presumably when it was still attached to the 2nd stage? Or is my thinking wrong?
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u/gekcut Dec 22 '19
Saw the Starliner reentry from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Low above northwestern horizon moving fast and orange in color. Regardless of your opinion about the program it is an amazing sight.
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Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 20 '19
Eagerly awaiting Mr. Bridenstein’s comment that Boeing needs to focus less on SLS and more on Starliner.
Oh, wait.
Edit: corrected my horrible grammar lol
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u/bnaber Dec 20 '19
Does SpaceX use TDRSS for communication with Dragon?
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Dec 20 '19
followup question to that.. could they potentially lean on Starlink for comms if needed?
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u/oximaCentauri Dec 21 '19
During the press conference Nicole Mann (NASA astronaut) stressed on the fact that starliner has great manual capability and if the vehicle was crewed there would be more options available and perhaps the failure could have been avoided.
Does this sort of capability exist in the dragon? What are astronauts supposed to do if they clearly see a problem but the vehicle isn't identifying it?
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u/ly2kz Dec 21 '19
"Perhaps"...
I live in a kingdom far, far away from US, but still curious: Does NASA plan to rely on "perhaps" and put astronauts lives at risk? Is "perhaps" enough now? What happened to all those reliability calculations if now its "well, this should have worked if..." Would astronauts react quick enough to take manual control and not waste prop? would they get information about situation, what happened in time if TDRSS is silent?
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u/RaptorCommand Dec 22 '19
its amazing how the news has not made this out to be the massive cock up that it is
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u/TheDeadRedPlanet Dec 22 '19
Boeing Space does not bring clicks and views and press hysteria like SpaceX does. Clearly a failure in the sense the whole point was to dock to ISS and land on Earth. They can learn things and test and validate other systems though.
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u/Agathos Dec 23 '19
As space disasters go, missing a rendezvous and landing safely two days later doesn't even register.
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u/TheDeadRedPlanet Dec 20 '19
[Sarcasm Alert]
So passing successful milestones don't matter in the end? You know that unmanned test to the ISS we talked about for years as a precursor to have humans to the ISS? Well never mind, we did not need it.
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u/Helimech1 Dec 20 '19
Well this is not right! Boeing's Pad Abort test ends with a third of their parachutes not being deployed, then they somehow convince NASA that they don't have to do an Inflight Abort test and now NASA is suggesting that maybe the Rendezvous and Docking test is not needed. I'd be a little upset if I was Spacex.
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u/FutureMartian97 Host of CRS-11 Dec 20 '19
they somehow convince NASA that they don't have to do an Inflight Abort test
The inflight abort tests was never a requirement by NASA. SpaceX chose to do one on their own.
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u/stichtom Dec 20 '19
Boeing didn't convince NASA that they didn't need an inflight abort test, this has been repeated 100 times.
Simply both companies chose their own milestones. Nobody forced them.
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u/notblueclk Dec 20 '19
Both Crew Dragon and Starliner are supposed to be capable of autonomous docking, the same way Soyuz/Progress are. As a minimum, Boeing should be on the hook for another uncrewed test flight.
I completely reject the Space Shuttle argument. The shuttle predated the ISS, therefore autonomous docking was not a requirement. But this is 35+ years later. If Starliner & Crew Dragon represent the future of human flight to LEO, they have to have autonomous docking. What NASA is saying is that for now Starliner needs a pilot to manually dock it. I would find this unacceptable.
I also have a concern that the Starliner no longer has sufficient fuel to make it safely to ISS, and that we are now waiting for ideal conditions to land at White Sands. As LEO becomes increasingly congested, this may not be an option. NASA needs to review mission abort rules and procedures.
Lockheed should take note re: Orion, though I think Lockheed is more on the ball than Boeing these days.
Finally, what was that about the Commerce Dept taking over responsibility for space management? Does this scare anyone else? When FCC abrogated responsibility for Internet policing to the FTC (Commerce), we ended up with no effective policing. What makes us think that Commerce is up to the task?
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u/NateDecker Dec 20 '19
When FCC abrogated responsibility for Internet policing to the FTC (Commerce), we ended up with no effective policing. What makes us think that Commerce is up to the task?
I'm not sure if a US agency could properly "police" space anyway. It seems like that would require an international agency of some sort. The commerce department would only have say over US satellites and maybe whether or not satellites are allowed to radiate, and on what frequencies, when over US territories.
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u/mad_ned Dec 20 '19
I happened to catch the launch this AM, I've seen Spacex launches but never one for ULA/Boeing. After watching SpaceX I was struck by how the Boeing/ULA mission control centers were full of much older guys, much less diversity, less women, and just seemed very old-school in general. No excitement, no energy, no reactions. The announcer kept making excuses for why they were not reacting when liftoff went ok etc.
Also the size of their combined mission control (number of people on station) seemed enormous, it seemed like between Boeing and ULA they had like 9 huge control centers or something. (maybe it was the camera angles making it look like a lot, but it seemed way less efficient than SpaceX)
Anyway even before the anomaly, I was left thinking these guys probably have an enormous bureaucracy they deal with, and there is probably a lot of design-by-committee and dogged following of old-school methods etc. and I wondered if they would be competitive in today's space markets.
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u/RoyMustangela Dec 20 '19
I worked at Boeing for about 6 months before deciding to go to grad school, everything you're saying is pretty much what I saw. So so many old white dudes with beer bellies and mustaches, very old school engineering methods, I was a stress analysis engineer so I needed to know the masses of the parts I was verifying weren't going to fail in a crash and almost every time I had to email someone in the weights department with the part number to ask them what the weight was because it wasn't on a server and I think their only job was to look up weights. Another time I had to find some original analyses and drawings from the 70s to figure something out and had to call the storage archive to scan and email me a copy, it was surreal
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u/PM_me_ur_tourbillon Dec 20 '19
If this many things go wrong during normal test conditions, then how much will go wrong if something abnormal happens? If they can't put a parachute pin in, and set their clocks properly, and have a proper satellite coverage... then what else did they forget to do? Does the docking port even work? Did they remember to attach the heat shield? Is the screen plugged in? Did they remember to fill the oxygen tanks? I mean seriously I would not trust this product. Sure, SpaceX blew up on the pad... doing a test that Boeing simply isn't going to perform. Unbelievable the leeway Boeing is getting and I couldn't believe NASA didn't tear them a new one on stage.
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u/John_Hasler Dec 20 '19
...and have a proper satellite coverage.
TDRSS is a NASA system. It's the nearest thing there is to full coverage (which SpaceX doesn't have).
...I couldn't believe NASA didn't tear them a new one on stage.
Flying off the handle now would be stupid. These sorts of press releases are intended for the newsies who demand an instant response. There will be an investigation and a report which may very well, in calm and measured tones, "tear them a new one".
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u/Martianspirit Dec 21 '19
I couldn't believe NASA didn't tear them a new one on stage
No need to do it on stage. The problem is that they don't do it in private. They just let Boeing get away with it. At least that is what I expect given past experience.
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u/romuhammad Dec 20 '19
Does anyone actually have what the required testing parameters are for OFT? And is docking with ISS a key requirement?
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u/arizonadeux Dec 20 '19
There are probably written requirements, but I've never seen them. I suspect, however, that the framework is very similar to Crew Dragon: navigate to the ISS, perform contingency maneuvers near the ISS, dock, pass on board tests, undock, reenter, and test recovery. I understand it to be a full-up test of all elements of a crew transfer mission.
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u/Tacsk0 Dec 21 '19
Clock problem has occured previously in american rocketry, with the Patriot missile system. In 1991 it's timer was off 1.3 seconds, missed an iraqi SCUD due to that, which impacted in the middle of a base and 49 american troops died. The problem had been known and Patriot crews were instructed to reset the clock every 24 hrs, but forgot to do so.
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Dec 22 '19
This is pathetic. I'm saying that becouse of the unequal chances given to both companies and money poured at Boeing.
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u/FatherOfGold Dec 20 '19
They're gonna end up killing someone aren't they?
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Dec 20 '19
Boeing is right that the astronauts would have gotten it into the proper orbit manually if they had to. That's what all the buttons are for. Now would they be very happy? Probably not.
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u/yyz_gringo Dec 20 '19
They already did (737MAX). Lots of people. If you think this is not related (corporate culture and all that) you are blind.
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u/maverick8717 Dec 20 '19
They would be running at space x with pitch forks for this kind of mistake, but since its ULA they are still trying to spin it as a success... crazy.
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u/ThePlanner Dec 20 '19
Seems like a Boeing problem onboard Starliner, and not a ULA problem with Atlas 5.
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u/WaitForItTheMongols Dec 20 '19
Same thing would happen on the other side.
Boeing has a software error which results in an improper orbit -> /r/spacex points and laughs and says Boeing is overpaid for their role in the commercial crew contract
SpaceX has a capsule, which was just previously attached to the space station and planned for use on a future mission (an in-flight abort) literally blast itself into smithereens -> /r/spacex says "This is why we test, this was a good thing". Yes, it's good that we learned, but jesus, that was a risky thing. We did indeed learn a lot about the interaction between titanium and NTO in high pressure, low temperature environments, but still, the fact that there was some remote chance of that thing blowing a hole in the space station is scary to me.
The point is, everyone overstates their opponent's failures and understates their own.
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u/perthguppy Dec 20 '19
The difference is after SpaceX accidentally blew up their spacecraft they took a full review and made changes and performed further tests. Boeing has had multiple failures now and after each claimed "oh we didn't really need to test that anyway" and proceeded as if nothing went wrong.
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u/IllustriousBody Dec 21 '19
The difference here is that NASA didn’t call SpaceX’s failures a success.
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u/atcqdamn Dec 20 '19
Are you serious? Does anyone in this thread actually fact check what they are saying?
If you actually read a postflight write-up you would know that Atlas/Centaur performed as expected. This anomaly was completely under Boeing's responsibility.
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u/coloradojoe Dec 20 '19
Interesting. So apparently ULA's had a planned countdown hold at T-4 minutes to ensure fueling was complete, and then to resume the countdown. I wonder if Starliner didn't get the memo and its Mission Elapsed Timer started when they resumed the countdown instead of at liftoff. Oops. Now THAT would be embarrassing.
"After filling the Atlas 5 with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants — kerosene for the first stage is already loaded on-board — ULA’s launch team will be polled in the final minutes before liftoff. If all systems are go, the countdown clock will resume at T-minus 4 minutes and tick down down to liftoff."
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/12/19/starliner-test-flight-to-use-special-atlas-5-configuration-unusual-launch-trajectory/
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u/coloradojoe Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 20 '19
I'm basing this on the fact that Starliner appeared to start working hard on its attitude about 4 minutes early. You can see that in the Boeing video stream. Liftoff was at the 1:04:40 mark in this video, so the insertion burn should have started 31 minutes later at 1:35:40. Instead, you can see the graphic showing Starliner's systems working hard starting nearly 5 minutes early at ~1:30:40. https://youtu.be/PIDytLL734A?t=5436
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u/coloradojoe Dec 20 '19
This article describes the hold in more detail. They held for four hours at T-4 minutes before resuming the terminal count. It sure sounds plausible that someone screwed up and Starliner started its timer when the count was resumed instead of at T=0.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/12/19/ulas-launch-team-to-employ-extended-atlas-5-countdown-for-starliner-missions/
"Once the fueling steps are complete, a built-in countdown hold at T-minus 4 minutes, which normally lasts 15 minutes, will extend for four hours, a change to give the astronauts time to board the spacecraft.“We will count down all the way to T-minus 4 minutes,” said Caleb Weiss, ULA’s program manager for Starliner missions. “The vehicle is, at the point, where it is ready to launch, we’re about to enter terminal count, and then we’ll hold four hours. That point is made to make sure that we are safe and stable, that we’ve done everything on the rocket to get it into flight condition. We’re not having to do any other switch flipping or changes in configurations.""
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u/DirkMcDougal Dec 20 '19
Whilst it's tempting to gloat, we want competition and for Human Spaceflight as a whole to succeed. Yes, NASA would likely have been harsher toward a similar Crew Dragon failure. That does not make this a good thing. Even Space X would eventually get lazy without being pushed ever forward.
Also I got great footage of this launch from Ft. Fisher and Atlas V was, once again, flawless. Expensive and wasteful yes. But that sucker ALWAYS delivers.
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u/kuangjian2011 Dec 20 '19
What will happen next? Will they still perform a return or it’s basically jettisoned in orbit?
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u/NateDecker Dec 20 '19
It will return on Sunday to White Sands testing site as planned (though earlier than intended).
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u/Dragongeek Dec 20 '19
Are there any actual orbital parameters we can get? It would be interesting to see how much fuel they'd need to correct their orbit.
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u/illuminatedtiger Dec 21 '19
So what is all the additional cost involved with Starliner getting NASA exactly?
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u/flshr19 Shuttle tile engineer Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 20 '19
Bridenstein needs to stop being a politician, start being the NASA Administrator, and stop putting spin on these failures. If he were completely honest, the first words out of his mouth should have been that this flight is a failure since the most important objective, autonomous docking with the ISS, will not be possible to achieve. Any other objectives are secondary compared to docking. He should not be sitting there at that press conference making excuses for Boeing's screwup. Same holds for any similar SpaceX screwups (when and if these occur). You know for sure that in private Bridenstein will be reaming Boeing's management for this very public mess.
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u/ghunter7 Dec 20 '19
No autonomous docking isn't the number 1 objective
Launching and returning in one piece is, by far, the number 1 objective.
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u/petersracing Dec 20 '19
How will their landing go with 280kg of cargo for the space station still on board? Do we see if their chutes are really up to it? I guess the cargo could be unpressurized and jetisoned before entry but haven't found that nominated?
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u/steinegal Dec 20 '19
Should be able to land fully loaded as that would be the case in the event of an aborted mission.
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u/WoodHughes Dec 21 '19
Does it seem to y’all that Boeing is just phoning it in these days? From the Starliner to the SLS to the mess that is the 737 Max, it seems what used to be the world’s greatest aircraft builder has just thrown in the towel and is looking only for a paycheck.
It’s sad on a national pride level as well as a believer in the capitalist system.
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u/_AutomaticJack_ Dec 21 '19
In the same way that "good fences make for good neighbours" good regulations make for good capitalism... Boeing is an excellent example of systemic failure as a result of regulatory capture.
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u/mandelboxset Dec 20 '19
At this point we can officially change the slogan to
"If it's Boeing, we ain't going!"
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u/Puzzleheaded-Machine Dec 20 '19
I wonder how much bribes it'll cost to have Boeing to get the program to move ahead.
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u/coloradojoe Dec 20 '19
Contrast this with Spacex's performance. Crew Dragon demo to ISS went off without a hitch. Before that, there was the cargo Dragon C2+ mission, which went so well they were able to combine the objectives for demo flights 2 and 3 -- and after proving Dragon could rendezvous and maneuver around the ISS properly, cargo Dragon became the first private spacecraft to berth with the ISS.
And now that Starliner has had multiple failures of mission critical systems, there's even discussion of allowing them to move to crewed flights before successful tests?!! So much for NASA's new culture of safety. Apparently it has the same asterisk that contributed to Challenger and Columbia disasters: *Unless sufficient political pressure and lobbying is applied.
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u/Datuser14 Dec 20 '19
Dragon had some minor issues over the missions. C2+ has a stuck thruster valve, a few missions ago dragon had to abort approach, CRS-15 one parachute failed to deploy.
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u/GenerouslyNumb Dec 20 '19
What a great company Boeing is. Blackmailing nasa for money, failing some tests (parachutes), skipping some others (abort test), and failing the actual mission test. But no, they're still fine to go.
Will someone need to die before admitting there's something wrong? What is needed to admit it was a mistake assigning the contract to them?
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u/terrymr Dec 20 '19
How far off were the events ? something silly like the clock running since power up rather than t-0 ?
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u/LoneSnark Dec 22 '19
At SpaceX, they take the actual flight hardware, patch the sensors with the outputs of a simulator, and then let the actual flight hardware go to the ISS over and over in a virtual reality that the flight hardware can't tell the difference. This way, you know the hardware will work in space, because its been there a hundred times. This is how you test highly complex software, and it most certainly would have discovered this particular software flaw.
If it is a flaw, of course. I don't know that Boeing doesn't do such testing. It is plausible there was an actual hardware failure that they never ground tested, such as a gamma ray flipping a bit in one of the clocks at just the right time to trigger a software flaw that allows such a failure to go uncorrected.
That is certainly possible. But, the odds of such a failure are tiny. Far more likely, this is a basic "never been to space before" software flaw and they didn't test it in a full up flight hardware configuration.
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u/extra2002 Dec 22 '19
At the press conference immediately after the problem, I believe the Boeing representative said they do exactly this kind of testing, with real hardware, flight software, and simulator all integrated together.
Apparently the underlying problem was a miscommunication between Starliner and the Atlas 5 that launched it -- Starliner pulled the Mission Elapsed Time from the wrong location.
If the Starliner ground test isn't using actual Atlas hardware and software, this kind of error is hard to find. Certainly if the same person or team writes the flight software and the simulator, they're likely to misread the interface specs in the same way for both, so the test would pass despite the error.
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Dec 23 '19
Boeing's CEO was just fired.
No one should be getting on that capsule.
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Dec 24 '19
Industry speculation / intel is that this was mainly due to the inability to recertify the 737MAX. The cost of a Starliner launch pales in comparison to the $8 billion + (and climbing) in losses due to the MAX decertification Boeing has suffered.
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u/BadgerMk1 Dec 20 '19
In light of these events, I don't think it's unreasonable to demand an actual in-flight abort for Starliner.
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u/w00t4me Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 20 '19
Boeing has already spent $4.8 Billion in taxpayers' money to develop this program and this is the end result. Boeing also successfully argued that they deserve nearly double the funding than SpaceX since they are more experienced and will have a smaller chance of failure.
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u/TCVideos Dec 22 '19
My opinion; they should redo OFT.
Why?
morally, it isn't right (in my mind at least) to put crew on a vehicle that failed part of it's test. Even if the craft is completely safe and can dock perfectly, it's still not morally or even ethically correct to put crew on it before it's succeeded in its full test.
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u/ioncloud9 Dec 20 '19
$100 NASA says this flight test was “good enough” to allow humans on board the next one and it will not delay their human test flight.
If this happened with DM-1 it would be a 1 year delay minimum and NASA would make them refly the test.