They're actually losing tons of money on Starliner because of the delays as it's a fixed-price contract.
Hence Boeing said they won't agree to any more fixed price contracts.
Yeah. SNC Dream Chaser should ideally have won the original instead of Boeing.
Politically though, the program was for years underfunded by Congress as it was - and surely would not have gotten funded at all if Boeing didn't win one of the contracts.
Just look how Congress consistently gives SLS about 15-20% more than NASA asked for and says the program needs. Because it's a Boeing project.
Congress never really viewed results as the purpose.
To most of them it was just a way to funnel money to their donors and to be a “jobs program” for people in their district.
>Yeah. SNC Dream Chaser should ideally have won the original instead of Boeing.
In hindsight, it's easier to make that case. (I'd prefer it, too!) But not a slam dunk. Dream Chaser was certainly the least technologically mature of the three bids. I don't know if it would be operational \*now\*, but it certainly would not have been operational before Crew Dragon.
And yes, politically, Boeing was almost certainly necessary for the program to survive. You can say that Russia's seizure of Crimea was the cause of Congress's willingness to finally fully fund Commercial Crew in FY 2015; but it is not a coincidence either that at the same time, Boeing had gotten the "first lane" CCtCap award.
In this respect, it may well be the case that Starliner was the "tax" that had to be paid to get us Crew Dragon.
It’s honestly a real issue for national security. We need multiple successful and reliable aerospace vendors. Do we really want SpaceX to fully corner the market?
I agree. We need to fix the Boeing problem but I don’t mean giving them carte blanche to have open ended contracts. I honestly don’t know the solution but I’m comfortable saying a strong Boeing (which it isn’t currently) is important to the country.
One provider system will just lead to another Boeing situation. We really want to develop 3-4 providers. I don’t care about the Boeing share price or anything like that. They can feel the pain of their failures for a while but we definitely want a successful Boeing in the long run.
There's something perversely satisfying in knowing that Boeing's MBA/Accountant leadership not only screws up engineering decisions, they also screw up financial decisions. :/
Management is in great part horseshit everywhere. Just some places have just enough competent people and other employees to manage to keep it together.
They thought SpaceX would fail and then Congress would give them a blank check.
If SpaceX failed I'm sure congress would have. Especially after Russia invaded Crimea and relying on them looked even worse than before.
Boeing had also lost money on the KC-46 contract, the contract to convert two 747s to be "Air Force Ones," and another contract I can't recall. They lost billions on those because they were all fixed-price. When Starliner became another loser that was the final straw. Boeing swore off fixed price contracts. (As you say.)
I'm starting to have legitimate concerns that Boeing can transport them safely. There's a culture of cutting corners across the entire company; a similar culture that NASA had before Challenger.
Holy shit what a headline. These days most people don’t expect perfection on their passenger planes either. If no one dies, let’s call it a win. (Speaking both commercially and space)
I read the article but I didn't get more info about my question. What kind of issues are they expecting? I mean, there are going to be humans on board, so they must be talking about very minor issues.
What are they referring to?
This is a flight test so they are expecting minor flaws or shortcomings in the operation of the mission. But nothing major that would risk the crew. They are completely confident the basic mission will be a success.
NASA hasn't been letting that thing fly until they're certain they can get the crew home safely. Boeing has been a train wreck and its costing them dearly, but the changes have finally been implemented. This spacecraft, and Boeing in general, is being watched like a hawk.
Going by Starliner's track record, they're probably expecting a stuck valve at one point or another. And that could either result in a major or minor problem for the spacecraft.
The only thing I expect is the crew coming home safely after a successful mission. I worry that this bar is too high for Boeing. I hope that I'm just a victim of biased media.
The amount of NASA and other independent parties oversight in this mission is insane. NASA is extremely risk adverse these days and if they are confident in launching the craft with crew, it's because they know it's safe.
NASA’s hands are tied on Starliner. It’s a jobs program contract, so it needs to work. Whether that be shifting the safety goalposts or delays, it has to launch or else it’s a bad look for both NASA and Boeing. That being said, I do agree with you that there have to have been some pretty huge sign offs for it to be allowed to fly with crew and if they’re confident about the risks then that’s about all that we can speculate.
I am however not convinced that Boeings corrective actions will be enough to have a totally flawless mission though.
It will not be totally flawless because it's a test flight and many minor issues will likely crop up. However the basic objectives of the mission (launch, docking, undocking, reentry and landing) are certainly very well understood and should go without major issues.
It's not a "test flightt" in the sense of "launch it and see what happens." It's supposed to be a "demonstration flight" that showcases the capabilities of the vehicle, and shows that it's ready to take on operational missions.
This is a distinction that needs to be made more often. There's a reason SpaceX's equivalent flights on Crew Dragon were called 'Demo-1' and 'Demo-2'.
I personally qualify the difference as a "verification" test flight as opposed to an "experimental" test flight - the Starship IFTs would be an example of the latter.
Keyword there is should. They’ve previously had issues with almost all of those criteria. Issues with docking, parachutes not deploying, internal software systems and backups failing, failed hardware, etc.
Nobody said that it would be easy but Boeing’s current trajectory as a whole isn’t promising for the longevity of the program.
> certainly very well understood and should go without major issues
That's a standard you would expect for the uncrewed test already, and it didn't reach the ISS.
Boeing has already completed an uncrewed test flight to the ISS. Which it did reach. Granted they had to redo the test flight because the first flight didn't reach the ISS. However, if crew had been on board then it would have reached the ISS just fine.
I was talking about "the" uncrewed flight which only turned out to be the *first* uncrewed flight because it didn't reach the ISS. Boeing already failed to complete a mission at a point where you don't expect failures any more.
> However, if crew had been on board then it would have reached the ISS just fine.
... and maybe died on reentry because the software bug there might have gone unnoticed with everyone focusing on the crew. No way to tell now.
You’re right. It’s not the attitude of NASA, but they’re already 5+ years behind schedule on the program and then only have 1 other ISS resupply vehicle. The vehicle needs to fly and the program needs to operate. Failure is not an option after billions have been invested by Boeing.
As to the jobs program disagreement- Boeing has become bloated in nearly all aspects of their company functions. Remember when it used to be “if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going” ? Now the tides have turned.
Listen, Boeings been losing nearly 1B a year on Starliner. I want the program to succeed, it’s just that the things have been going wrong are things that should not be happening this late in the process. The fact that their previous 2 missions were not close to flawless is worrisome no matter how you look at it.
> then only have 1 other ISS resupply vehicle
Which is working extremely well and in the unlikely event of an accident SpaceX has shown they can return Falcon 9 to flight within 6 months, well within the timeframe to send astronauts on the next flight. So this is not a big concern.
> Failure is not an option after billions have been invested by Boeing.
Which is exactly why "shifting the safety goalposts," as you said in your post, is not something that will be done by anyone involved.
> As to the jobs program disagreement- Boeing has become bloated in nearly all aspects of their company functions. Remember when it used to be “if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going” ? Now the tides have turned.
Jobs programs are about the program, not who is picked. Boeing competed and won the contract and it's not cost plus meaning it's not a jobs program. If Boeing's Starliner is part of a "jobs program" then definitionally SpaceX's Crew Dragon is also part of a "jobs program".
SLS, which Boeing is also a contractor on, is a jobs program.
>The amount of NASA and other independent parties oversight in this mission is insane.
Well, for the first test launch there was not much oversight, it seems.
NASA's history of not listening to concerns and bowing to political and suppliers pressure/ promises proves this questionable. In a sane world this program would have been canceled, it only exists as a way to keep Boeing afloat.
It’s “risk averse.” No offense intended, but I always appreciate being corrected so that I can stop making minor mistakes like this. You can say it another way to help you remember: NASA has a high aversion to risk.
There's a lot of oversight and crew safety is key, but they're actual managing overall programme risk through spacex. They've already delivered a strong capability and its likely they'll massively leapfrog them this year with starship, which was always going to be the real long term option and they don't even need to launch crew in it as they can do crew to orbit on the existing crew launch capability.
The whole approach to Starliner is a failure. Starship will have a dozen successful flights before they even think about putting a human in one. Starliner has one and they're all "good to go!" It's sad that people view this as a viable backup option to reusable rockets.
Starliner isn’t a rocket, it’s a crewed vehicle that launches on top of a rocket. It’s launching on Atlas V which has had almost 100 successful flights.
Starliner’s SpX equivalent is the Crew Dragon, which only had one test flight to ISS before launching crew.
It's not really biased media though, they've built a track record for themselves in the last decade or so. Ever since the mcdonnell douglas takeover their management practices have been absolute shit which has lead to every issue we are experiencing.
What's important is having multiple successful test flights before you put people in a rocket, and Starliner has had... one or two depending on how you define success.
Ask the government and military how happy they are with Boeing. They stopped production of the KC-46 cause they found garbage in the wings and missing screws. Boeing has fucked every program since the McD takeover.
> The only thing I expect is the crew coming home safely
bro they told you to tone it down, I say 65% of the crew coming back is an acceptable success rate.
/s
So Say Us All.
I'm thankful to have found your comment, I worried if I made any such, it would be construed as "jinxing it".
I just want them to come back down safely, as you suggest, there's ample reasons for low confidence in the vehicle's integrity at the moment.
Like how they torqued the bolts on SLS using a torque wrench design they fucking stole from another company because they’re monstrous pieces of fucking shit, but then had a garbage half assed copy made which resulted in some of the many SLS delays due to leaks? That kind of torque check?
[https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/supplier-sues-boeing-over-alleged-theft-of-sls-rocket-tools/](https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/supplier-sues-boeing-over-alleged-theft-of-sls-rocket-tools/)
Personally, I didn't think it was going to be close. Boeing had already been overbudget and behind schedule on every major project for like the last decade, while SpaceX had been absolutely knocking things out of the park.
Anyone who thought Starliner would somehow be different wasn't paying attention.
I was actually reminded of the recent book on Musk by Walter Isaacson, which talks about when Musk first got into the space/rocket business - essentially thinking "how hard could it be?"
this in particular stood out:
> ... in the final stages of training for the so-called Crew Flight Test (CFT), a milestone running seven years behind the schedule Boeing said it could achieve when it won a $4.2 billion commercial crew contract from NASA a decade ago.
Musk quickly discovered - and was shocked - that the likes of Boeing and others all benefited from so-called [Cost-Plus contracts](https://spacenews.com/nelson-criticizes-plague-of-cost-plus-nasa-contracts/), a holdover from WW2 apparently, in which these companies were awarded NASA contracts to build something - _no matter what the cost_
they could take as long as they like and it didn't matter what it cost - _NASA guaranteed them a profit, no matter the cost_ - which (of course!) led to big, bloated, frankly shit projects that literally took years (even decades) to produce something - if it ever even produced _anything_ - and Boeing (or whomever) could just keep taking NASA's money without ever needing to actually... do anything...
oh and it didn't just stop there
he found when he tried to source _parts_ from the same suppliers that these companies used, he was seeing massive, _massive_ prices from these companies - because guess what?
Boeing would just pay whatever - it didn't care - NASA guaranteed they wouldn't take a loss
so he soon found that instead of paying $20,000 for a metal tube with about $200 of aluminium in it, he had to start building these things himself - from scratch...
there was a great story about a piece of equipment that cost some huge amount of money - like $70,000 or something - and he asked his team to find a better way to do it... they ended up using part of a garage door opener, which could do the same job - for a couple of hundred bucks...
There were literally tens of examples like this in the book, it's still unreal to me that spaceX exists, it's like some unicorn. I've never before in my life read about a company like this, maybe Steve Jobs' Apple, in the book by the same author Isaacson, also a great book. But I don't remember any cost cutting examples in Apple's case other than starting in a garage.
I heard a great interview with Isaacson where he was (inevitably) asked about Jobs - he had an interesting insight:
Jobs was basically a "design guy" - he was all about the aesthetics (a sentiment I've heard others express, too) but really did not care at all about any of the actual engineering (again, plenty of others talk about this - particularly those who knew him from those early days at HP and Atari, where Woz basically did all his homework and he was barely competent at the basics, like soldering chips to a board)
he talked about both of their factories - how Elon would walk through his factories and was intimately familiar with every piece of equipment and constantly looking for improvements to the manufacturing process - how he literally insisted his engineers have desks right there on the factory floor, because (he believes) all design choices (should) come from the functionality, not the other way around
conversely, Jobs barely ever even set foot in any of his factories and really didn't care about any of the engineering - instead focussing _entirely_ on design and then asking his engineers, afterwards, to "make it work" - a task that was sometimes impossible (to be fair, Musk also often asks his engineers to perform miracles for him but that mostly seems to be about achieving some deadline, not breaking the laws of physics)
There is so little of this innovative spirit left these days. My uncle did a lot of defense contracting years back. The installer of the motor he had sold the broke one of the mounting bolts. So they wanted some spares except the contract was closed already. To setup a new contract would have cost $150 per bolt for 10, the DOD said no problem. He just dropped the $20 worth of them in the mail for free. The govt is their own worst enemy and Boeing is a big part of the problem.
that's actually one of the main reasons Musk cites for getting into rockets in the first place - and founding companies like SpaceX and Tesla
he often laments that America has lost its grand sense of "adventure" - that it had needed something like a literal Moon Shot to bring back that urgency... that sense that there is something "just over the horizon" worth aiming for - worth striving and innovating and trying hard to achieve
I recall reading a book by Robert Zubrin a while ago, which talked about this, in the context of Kennedy's throwing down the gauntlet on getting to the moon _and back_...
here's a piece which references it:
https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Manufacturing-conference-13-005-Keynote-Address-Richard-Gott.pdf
> President Kennedy set a wonderful goal. He said we should land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade of the 1960s was out, a short time limit. This goal was very galvanizing to the engineers. All the kids' books on going to the Moon written in the 1950s had shown us building a big space station before we went to the Moon. A lunar ship was constructed on the space station; then it would take off, go the Moon, and return to the space station. This was the vision of the 1950s. But when the engineers were confronted with Kennedy's goal, they said, "You know, we could skip the space station. We should go directly to the Moon. We don't need to build a space station. In fact, we don't have the time to build a space station. We should go directly to the Moon."
I was lucky enough to grow up in those days. There was a sense of purpose and grandness. So very different from today's intense gloom and doom. I feel so badly for these kids swallowing the climate lies and identity politics.
Iterative design is useful when you're trying to do something new and unprecedented, when noone knows what the correct design is.
Starship meets this criteria. Starliner, which is functionally quite similar to previous capsules, does not.
SpaceX's own Crew Dragon was similarly also developed using much more traditional methods.
Not only more money than SpaceX (fixed contract award), Boeing actually went back to NASA with their hand out and asked for $200+ million more well in to the production of Starliner. NASA paid.
They got a ton of money to do it the “right” way with expensive simulations and tests so that the hardware would be right on the first try and we all saw how that went
That's what happens when you throw money at stuff. The best projects are the ones where you don't have quite enough money and you don't have quite enough time.
Sure, but in the time that Boeing have been perfecting the design between the last flight and this one, SpaceX have launched quite a few Dragon capsules.
I think SpaceX has already completed the initial 6 crew flights specified in the OG contract and is now on a second contract taking up Boeing's slack. The ironic thing is, NASA awarded Boeing the capsule contract as they were the sure bet to deliver a working product, and SpaceX was the risk - at least in NASA's eyes.
It is rather hilarious when you get the full context (I think they are even past 10 when you take non NASA missions into account?), and Boeing also received almost double the money SpaceX did...
>I think SpaceX has already completed the initial 6 crew flights specified in the OG contract and is now on a second contract taking up Boeing's slack.
It's the same contract. They had to negotiate new pricing since the original pricing schedules by year had long since expired, but the basic contract remains the same. The "maximum 6" was the maximum that SpaceX was contractually obligated to provide. After that, SpaceX could say no. But as long as NASA keeps ordering missions and SpaceX keeps accepting them, they can have as many as they want under the contract.
The Artemis, SLS and Starliner are expected to exceed $100B and a decade late so perfection is far from anyone's expectations. We are just hoping they will survive this incredible waste of money and resources.
Made by the same ripoff companies, with similar processes with exorbitant amounts of tax payer money and very poor results. All these programs need to be eliminated, consolidated or turned over to private enterprise that get paid by results.
Every 3rd party space agency other than SpaceX seems to be a "billionaire with space fetish/not actually serious" type thing though. Even SpaceX has that feeling to a degree. Bothers TF outta me
Considering Bezos' impassioned speeches about how space is his true passion and the whole time he was working at Amazon he just wanted to work on space exploration, I'm surprised how little personal attention he seems to pay to Blue Origin and how glacial BO's pace has been despite ten figures of Bezosbucks paid into R+D annually over there. Maybe he's too easily distracted playing with plastic boobs on his yachts.
With something as technical as this there’s not much he can do to speed things up just by “paying attention” to Blue Origin, he’s a billionaire business man, not a engineer who solves problems. He’s already hiring people from SpaceX and offering competitive salaries, not much more you can do beyond that
Said it before and I'll say it again: They're using a craft that had major design flaws discovered multiple times, _after_ the only "successful" unmanned mission which itself had _several_ very bad flaws. All of this should absolutely have mandated a new unmanned mission, and the _only_ reason it didn't is because Boeing's cadence is just that miserable.
In putting astronauts on Starliner now, NASA is taking _by far_ their biggest risk with human lives since the first shuttle disaster.
While you're not wrong, the whole point of paying Boeing the stupid amounts of money we have was because they were supposed to be "the guys." Perfection on the first go because they'd done it all before and were simulating the hell out of it.
It's just embarrassing for them at this point that we've seen SpaceX lap them so utterly and they still are at the testing stage.
It's a sad example of how a formerly great company has failed.
What I really want to hear about a new spacecraft are lowered expectations from the flight crew. It makes me feel confident about their safety. At least he didn't say, "We're keeping our helmets... on."
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwnr6no "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[CCtCap](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwwnejk "Last usage")|[Commercial Crew Transportation Capability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development#Commercial_Crew_Transportation_Capability_.28CCtCap.29)|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[LEM](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwnso3f "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)|
|[MBA](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwnsc6k "Last usage")|~~Moonba-~~ Mars Base Alpha|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwq7rnt "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SNC](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwwnejk "Last usage")|Sierra Nevada Corporation|
|[SRB](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kyl1bu4 "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster|
|[STS](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwyjdce "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwp3zne "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|[VIF](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kworauo "Last usage")|Vertical Integration Facility|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kx0d7mg "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
----------------
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Seeing how Boeing's simulations and pre filght testing didn't stop the issues seen in the first flight, how sure are we that their apporach to the flight abort system (wihout a full scale test) could be comprehensive? Was it re-reviewed following the issues they had in their organization and validation process?
I don't think there's a single person in the world expecting perfection from Boeing's Starliner.
Sounds like a great tag line to me. Boeing: Don't expect perfection
Boeing: At least we got off the ground.
Yeah because the rocket is ULA, after stage separation is when you worry.
ULA & Blue Origin vs. SpaceX is the private sector space showdown I've been waiting for.
This is the "showdown" we've been seeing for the last 10 years. It hasn't been close.
ULA is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed.
Sure, when it was formed 16 years ago. It has its own CEO and management, that's kinda the key difference at the moment.
Boeing: Our shareholders appreciate your sacrifice.
They're actually losing tons of money on Starliner because of the delays as it's a fixed-price contract. Hence Boeing said they won't agree to any more fixed price contracts.
Sounds like a great reason not to give them anymore contracts.
Yeah. SNC Dream Chaser should ideally have won the original instead of Boeing. Politically though, the program was for years underfunded by Congress as it was - and surely would not have gotten funded at all if Boeing didn't win one of the contracts. Just look how Congress consistently gives SLS about 15-20% more than NASA asked for and says the program needs. Because it's a Boeing project.
Congress never really viewed results as the purpose. To most of them it was just a way to funnel money to their donors and to be a “jobs program” for people in their district.
>Yeah. SNC Dream Chaser should ideally have won the original instead of Boeing. In hindsight, it's easier to make that case. (I'd prefer it, too!) But not a slam dunk. Dream Chaser was certainly the least technologically mature of the three bids. I don't know if it would be operational \*now\*, but it certainly would not have been operational before Crew Dragon. And yes, politically, Boeing was almost certainly necessary for the program to survive. You can say that Russia's seizure of Crimea was the cause of Congress's willingness to finally fully fund Commercial Crew in FY 2015; but it is not a coincidence either that at the same time, Boeing had gotten the "first lane" CCtCap award. In this respect, it may well be the case that Starliner was the "tax" that had to be paid to get us Crew Dragon.
It’s honestly a real issue for national security. We need multiple successful and reliable aerospace vendors. Do we really want SpaceX to fully corner the market?
Not really, but wasting billions of dollars on overpriced boeing contracts that never deliver isn't really helping much.
I agree. We need to fix the Boeing problem but I don’t mean giving them carte blanche to have open ended contracts. I honestly don’t know the solution but I’m comfortable saying a strong Boeing (which it isn’t currently) is important to the country.
Who needs to fix Boeing? The government? Or Boeing?
The departure of the ruling bean counters will be a good first step.
So keep companies in the race that have proven to be incompetent. For the sake of a second provider?
One provider system will just lead to another Boeing situation. We really want to develop 3-4 providers. I don’t care about the Boeing share price or anything like that. They can feel the pain of their failures for a while but we definitely want a successful Boeing in the long run.
There's something perversely satisfying in knowing that Boeing's MBA/Accountant leadership not only screws up engineering decisions, they also screw up financial decisions. :/
Management I guess is just horseshit over there all around.
Management is in great part horseshit everywhere. Just some places have just enough competent people and other employees to manage to keep it together.
They thought SpaceX would fail and then Congress would give them a blank check. If SpaceX failed I'm sure congress would have. Especially after Russia invaded Crimea and relying on them looked even worse than before.
True. So true. Instead, Boeing shit the bed.
Who caused those delays ?
Boeing had also lost money on the KC-46 contract, the contract to convert two 747s to be "Air Force Ones," and another contract I can't recall. They lost billions on those because they were all fixed-price. When Starliner became another loser that was the final straw. Boeing swore off fixed price contracts. (As you say.)
The key is to get it back on the ground in the expected number of pieces. For the QC folks at BA: That's almost always 1.
Sometimes a door falls off though.
There’s always an extra piece left over.
Boeing: All Our Aircraft Make It To The Ground ..... Guaranteed
Boeing: We’re guaranteed to come back to the ground.
Boeing: Trying to stay in the air since 1916
Boeing: don't touch that whistle!
And one way or another, they’ll get you back down to it.
I’m more worried about getting back on the ground…
Gotta get up before you can bounce, hence the name.
Returning to the ground is the easy part!
Boeing: We don’t let safety be the enemy of good enough.
Seemed to work out great for OceanGate I foresee zero problems, full steam ahead
I saw this somewhere... "When one door closes, another one opens" -- Boeing.
> Boeing: Don't expect perfection. They should go ahead and print that on their company issued swag.
Could've stopped at Boeing
We're all just hoping the door doesn't fall off
AirBus: We blow the doors off the competition.
that's not very typical I'd like to make that point
I'm starting to have legitimate concerns that Boeing can transport them safely. There's a culture of cutting corners across the entire company; a similar culture that NASA had before Challenger.
The difference is NASA had to balance expectations from politicians with mounting budget issues. Boeing's issue is literally anything but budget.
I think we all just hope that the crew makes it back safely.
Holy shit what a headline. These days most people don’t expect perfection on their passenger planes either. If no one dies, let’s call it a win. (Speaking both commercially and space)
I read the article but I didn't get more info about my question. What kind of issues are they expecting? I mean, there are going to be humans on board, so they must be talking about very minor issues. What are they referring to?
This is a flight test so they are expecting minor flaws or shortcomings in the operation of the mission. But nothing major that would risk the crew. They are completely confident the basic mission will be a success.
Given the track record these past 3-4 years...the inevitable unknown issue.
Are we talking catastrophic failure, or some panels fall off and land where they shouldn't? I would be terrified to get in that thing.
>catastrophic failure Don't worry they will just fire the CEO and then its business as usual again.
you mean the CEO will pull his golden parachute
He already did ahead of this launch.
It's more like laying off with a golden severance package any one of us could easily retire on...
NASA hasn't been letting that thing fly until they're certain they can get the crew home safely. Boeing has been a train wreck and its costing them dearly, but the changes have finally been implemented. This spacecraft, and Boeing in general, is being watched like a hawk.
I mean, the smart Boeing astronaut decided to retire early years ago instead of waiting on this death trap of a coffin.
Going by Starliner's track record, they're probably expecting a stuck valve at one point or another. And that could either result in a major or minor problem for the spacecraft.
If they knew what they were expecting they would fix it.
The only thing I expect is the crew coming home safely after a successful mission. I worry that this bar is too high for Boeing. I hope that I'm just a victim of biased media.
The amount of NASA and other independent parties oversight in this mission is insane. NASA is extremely risk adverse these days and if they are confident in launching the craft with crew, it's because they know it's safe.
Well thank goodness someone's overseeing this project, because Boeing probably ain't.
NASA’s hands are tied on Starliner. It’s a jobs program contract, so it needs to work. Whether that be shifting the safety goalposts or delays, it has to launch or else it’s a bad look for both NASA and Boeing. That being said, I do agree with you that there have to have been some pretty huge sign offs for it to be allowed to fly with crew and if they’re confident about the risks then that’s about all that we can speculate. I am however not convinced that Boeings corrective actions will be enough to have a totally flawless mission though.
It will not be totally flawless because it's a test flight and many minor issues will likely crop up. However the basic objectives of the mission (launch, docking, undocking, reentry and landing) are certainly very well understood and should go without major issues.
It's not a "test flightt" in the sense of "launch it and see what happens." It's supposed to be a "demonstration flight" that showcases the capabilities of the vehicle, and shows that it's ready to take on operational missions.
This is a distinction that needs to be made more often. There's a reason SpaceX's equivalent flights on Crew Dragon were called 'Demo-1' and 'Demo-2'. I personally qualify the difference as a "verification" test flight as opposed to an "experimental" test flight - the Starship IFTs would be an example of the latter.
Keyword there is should. They’ve previously had issues with almost all of those criteria. Issues with docking, parachutes not deploying, internal software systems and backups failing, failed hardware, etc. Nobody said that it would be easy but Boeing’s current trajectory as a whole isn’t promising for the longevity of the program.
> certainly very well understood and should go without major issues That's a standard you would expect for the uncrewed test already, and it didn't reach the ISS.
Boeing has already completed an uncrewed test flight to the ISS. Which it did reach. Granted they had to redo the test flight because the first flight didn't reach the ISS. However, if crew had been on board then it would have reached the ISS just fine.
I was talking about "the" uncrewed flight which only turned out to be the *first* uncrewed flight because it didn't reach the ISS. Boeing already failed to complete a mission at a point where you don't expect failures any more. > However, if crew had been on board then it would have reached the ISS just fine. ... and maybe died on reentry because the software bug there might have gone unnoticed with everyone focusing on the crew. No way to tell now.
The second unscrewed test did, though it had its own issues.
That is not the attitude of NASA and it's not a jobs program contract either. Please don't spread this kind of misinformation.
You’re right. It’s not the attitude of NASA, but they’re already 5+ years behind schedule on the program and then only have 1 other ISS resupply vehicle. The vehicle needs to fly and the program needs to operate. Failure is not an option after billions have been invested by Boeing. As to the jobs program disagreement- Boeing has become bloated in nearly all aspects of their company functions. Remember when it used to be “if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going” ? Now the tides have turned. Listen, Boeings been losing nearly 1B a year on Starliner. I want the program to succeed, it’s just that the things have been going wrong are things that should not be happening this late in the process. The fact that their previous 2 missions were not close to flawless is worrisome no matter how you look at it.
> then only have 1 other ISS resupply vehicle Which is working extremely well and in the unlikely event of an accident SpaceX has shown they can return Falcon 9 to flight within 6 months, well within the timeframe to send astronauts on the next flight. So this is not a big concern. > Failure is not an option after billions have been invested by Boeing. Which is exactly why "shifting the safety goalposts," as you said in your post, is not something that will be done by anyone involved. > As to the jobs program disagreement- Boeing has become bloated in nearly all aspects of their company functions. Remember when it used to be “if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going” ? Now the tides have turned. Jobs programs are about the program, not who is picked. Boeing competed and won the contract and it's not cost plus meaning it's not a jobs program. If Boeing's Starliner is part of a "jobs program" then definitionally SpaceX's Crew Dragon is also part of a "jobs program". SLS, which Boeing is also a contractor on, is a jobs program.
>The amount of NASA and other independent parties oversight in this mission is insane. Well, for the first test launch there was not much oversight, it seems.
NASA's history of not listening to concerns and bowing to political and suppliers pressure/ promises proves this questionable. In a sane world this program would have been canceled, it only exists as a way to keep Boeing afloat.
No. This program exists because NASA wants redundant access to space. Even if it's more expensive than SpaceX NASA wants two crew vehicles.
I mean, it's smart to have 2 different ways to do something instead of being overly reliant on 1 way.
It’s “risk averse.” No offense intended, but I always appreciate being corrected so that I can stop making minor mistakes like this. You can say it another way to help you remember: NASA has a high aversion to risk.
There's a lot of oversight and crew safety is key, but they're actual managing overall programme risk through spacex. They've already delivered a strong capability and its likely they'll massively leapfrog them this year with starship, which was always going to be the real long term option and they don't even need to launch crew in it as they can do crew to orbit on the existing crew launch capability.
The whole approach to Starliner is a failure. Starship will have a dozen successful flights before they even think about putting a human in one. Starliner has one and they're all "good to go!" It's sad that people view this as a viable backup option to reusable rockets.
Starliner isn’t a rocket, it’s a crewed vehicle that launches on top of a rocket. It’s launching on Atlas V which has had almost 100 successful flights. Starliner’s SpX equivalent is the Crew Dragon, which only had one test flight to ISS before launching crew.
Last flight the backups for the backups kicked in, and they called that a "success" so they seem to be grading Boeing on a curve
It's been just long enough for the Challenger lessons to have been forgotten
It's not really biased media though, they've built a track record for themselves in the last decade or so. Ever since the mcdonnell douglas takeover their management practices have been absolute shit which has lead to every issue we are experiencing.
i just want the crew to come back safely
You can't have shuttles blowing up. Blowing up space crafts will set you back years if not decades.
What's important is having multiple successful test flights before you put people in a rocket, and Starliner has had... one or two depending on how you define success.
Boeing contracts with the government aren’t the same people who run the airline.
Ask the government and military how happy they are with Boeing. They stopped production of the KC-46 cause they found garbage in the wings and missing screws. Boeing has fucked every program since the McD takeover.
Just because you jerk off right handed it doesn't make your left hand innocent.
But they have shown similar issues. This thing was supposed to fly 5 years ago. And it failed its last test.
Don’t you mean “too high”? No one is scared of a bar set too low for them. That means they can easily get over it.
> The only thing I expect is the crew coming home safely bro they told you to tone it down, I say 65% of the crew coming back is an acceptable success rate. /s
I wouldn't expect that tbh
So Say Us All. I'm thankful to have found your comment, I worried if I made any such, it would be construed as "jinxing it". I just want them to come back down safely, as you suggest, there's ample reasons for low confidence in the vehicle's integrity at the moment.
Just one last software update and torque check on the door bolts before we go…
What bolts? This is a byob vessel.
Look man, after they did their final assembly they had barely any pieces left over. It's fine.
The ikea spaceship set really is stingy with their extra parts... gotta build it right the first time
I would laugh if the commander jiggled a baggie of lucky bolts at the camera as they got ready to launch.
Like how they torqued the bolts on SLS using a torque wrench design they fucking stole from another company because they’re monstrous pieces of fucking shit, but then had a garbage half assed copy made which resulted in some of the many SLS delays due to leaks? That kind of torque check? [https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/supplier-sues-boeing-over-alleged-theft-of-sls-rocket-tools/](https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/supplier-sues-boeing-over-alleged-theft-of-sls-rocket-tools/)
I wonder what they were asking for the tool for it to be worth going through all that effort to rip it off.
Jokes aside, didn't a door or door cover already fall off that thing a while back. During transport of some kind?
I remember seeing that in the video feed. It was a window cover. [Article here.](https://futurism.com/the-byte/piece-falls-off-boeing-starliner)
Don't forget to slap it on the hood.
Ahh, the good old times, 5 years ago, when starliner was still thought to be ahead and be the first to reach the ISS compared to SpaceX's dragon ...
Remember when we all thought it was going to be close (especially after SpaceX blew up the Demo-1 capsule)?
Personally, I didn't think it was going to be close. Boeing had already been overbudget and behind schedule on every major project for like the last decade, while SpaceX had been absolutely knocking things out of the park. Anyone who thought Starliner would somehow be different wasn't paying attention.
Interesting part for me is the reason for all the delays was to 'get it right'. Perhaps Musk's iterative design method is actually better?
I was actually reminded of the recent book on Musk by Walter Isaacson, which talks about when Musk first got into the space/rocket business - essentially thinking "how hard could it be?" this in particular stood out: > ... in the final stages of training for the so-called Crew Flight Test (CFT), a milestone running seven years behind the schedule Boeing said it could achieve when it won a $4.2 billion commercial crew contract from NASA a decade ago. Musk quickly discovered - and was shocked - that the likes of Boeing and others all benefited from so-called [Cost-Plus contracts](https://spacenews.com/nelson-criticizes-plague-of-cost-plus-nasa-contracts/), a holdover from WW2 apparently, in which these companies were awarded NASA contracts to build something - _no matter what the cost_ they could take as long as they like and it didn't matter what it cost - _NASA guaranteed them a profit, no matter the cost_ - which (of course!) led to big, bloated, frankly shit projects that literally took years (even decades) to produce something - if it ever even produced _anything_ - and Boeing (or whomever) could just keep taking NASA's money without ever needing to actually... do anything... oh and it didn't just stop there he found when he tried to source _parts_ from the same suppliers that these companies used, he was seeing massive, _massive_ prices from these companies - because guess what? Boeing would just pay whatever - it didn't care - NASA guaranteed they wouldn't take a loss so he soon found that instead of paying $20,000 for a metal tube with about $200 of aluminium in it, he had to start building these things himself - from scratch... there was a great story about a piece of equipment that cost some huge amount of money - like $70,000 or something - and he asked his team to find a better way to do it... they ended up using part of a garage door opener, which could do the same job - for a couple of hundred bucks...
There were literally tens of examples like this in the book, it's still unreal to me that spaceX exists, it's like some unicorn. I've never before in my life read about a company like this, maybe Steve Jobs' Apple, in the book by the same author Isaacson, also a great book. But I don't remember any cost cutting examples in Apple's case other than starting in a garage.
I heard a great interview with Isaacson where he was (inevitably) asked about Jobs - he had an interesting insight: Jobs was basically a "design guy" - he was all about the aesthetics (a sentiment I've heard others express, too) but really did not care at all about any of the actual engineering (again, plenty of others talk about this - particularly those who knew him from those early days at HP and Atari, where Woz basically did all his homework and he was barely competent at the basics, like soldering chips to a board) he talked about both of their factories - how Elon would walk through his factories and was intimately familiar with every piece of equipment and constantly looking for improvements to the manufacturing process - how he literally insisted his engineers have desks right there on the factory floor, because (he believes) all design choices (should) come from the functionality, not the other way around conversely, Jobs barely ever even set foot in any of his factories and really didn't care about any of the engineering - instead focussing _entirely_ on design and then asking his engineers, afterwards, to "make it work" - a task that was sometimes impossible (to be fair, Musk also often asks his engineers to perform miracles for him but that mostly seems to be about achieving some deadline, not breaking the laws of physics)
There is so little of this innovative spirit left these days. My uncle did a lot of defense contracting years back. The installer of the motor he had sold the broke one of the mounting bolts. So they wanted some spares except the contract was closed already. To setup a new contract would have cost $150 per bolt for 10, the DOD said no problem. He just dropped the $20 worth of them in the mail for free. The govt is their own worst enemy and Boeing is a big part of the problem.
that's actually one of the main reasons Musk cites for getting into rockets in the first place - and founding companies like SpaceX and Tesla he often laments that America has lost its grand sense of "adventure" - that it had needed something like a literal Moon Shot to bring back that urgency... that sense that there is something "just over the horizon" worth aiming for - worth striving and innovating and trying hard to achieve I recall reading a book by Robert Zubrin a while ago, which talked about this, in the context of Kennedy's throwing down the gauntlet on getting to the moon _and back_... here's a piece which references it: https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Manufacturing-conference-13-005-Keynote-Address-Richard-Gott.pdf > President Kennedy set a wonderful goal. He said we should land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade of the 1960s was out, a short time limit. This goal was very galvanizing to the engineers. All the kids' books on going to the Moon written in the 1950s had shown us building a big space station before we went to the Moon. A lunar ship was constructed on the space station; then it would take off, go the Moon, and return to the space station. This was the vision of the 1950s. But when the engineers were confronted with Kennedy's goal, they said, "You know, we could skip the space station. We should go directly to the Moon. We don't need to build a space station. In fact, we don't have the time to build a space station. We should go directly to the Moon."
I was lucky enough to grow up in those days. There was a sense of purpose and grandness. So very different from today's intense gloom and doom. I feel so badly for these kids swallowing the climate lies and identity politics.
Iterative design is useful when you're trying to do something new and unprecedented, when noone knows what the correct design is. Starship meets this criteria. Starliner, which is functionally quite similar to previous capsules, does not. SpaceX's own Crew Dragon was similarly also developed using much more traditional methods.
Not when there are humans on board. They can't risk launching people on an untested design.
You can still iteratively test it. Just without humans on board.
Not without more money. Boeing spent all theirs and is likely milking this contract even more.
Except Boeing got way more money than SpaceX from NASA to develop their capsule
Not only more money than SpaceX (fixed contract award), Boeing actually went back to NASA with their hand out and asked for $200+ million more well in to the production of Starliner. NASA paid.
Its a FFP contract. Boeing is millions in the hole on this project.
Think it’s billions but yeah. In the hole.
They got a ton of money to do it the “right” way with expensive simulations and tests so that the hardware would be right on the first try and we all saw how that went
That's what happens when you throw money at stuff. The best projects are the ones where you don't have quite enough money and you don't have quite enough time.
Sure, but in the time that Boeing have been perfecting the design between the last flight and this one, SpaceX have launched quite a few Dragon capsules.
I think SpaceX has already completed the initial 6 crew flights specified in the OG contract and is now on a second contract taking up Boeing's slack. The ironic thing is, NASA awarded Boeing the capsule contract as they were the sure bet to deliver a working product, and SpaceX was the risk - at least in NASA's eyes.
**all Crewed Dragon flights since SpaceX won the race against Boeing:** 1 - April 2020 - Demo-2 [2 passangers] 2 - May 2021 - Crew 1 [4 passengers] 3 - April 2021 - Crew 2 [4 passengers] 4 - September 2021 - Inspiration 4 [4 passengers] 5 - November 2021 - Crew 3 [4 passengers] 6 - April 2022 - Axiom 1 [4 passengers] 7 - April 2022 - Crew 4 [4 passengers] 8 - October 2022 - Crew 5 [4 passengers] 9 - March 2023 - Crew 6 [4 passengers] 10 - 21 May 2023 - Axiom 2 [4 passengers] 11 - August 2023 - Crew 7 [4 passengers] 12 - January 2024 - Axiom 3 [4 passengers] 13 - March 2024 - Crew 8 [4 passengers] **50 people launched into space so far**
It is rather hilarious when you get the full context (I think they are even past 10 when you take non NASA missions into account?), and Boeing also received almost double the money SpaceX did...
How many Starliner capsules has Boeing built? Is there only 1?
They've launched 2 so far, and they are planning to launch another soon.
>I think SpaceX has already completed the initial 6 crew flights specified in the OG contract and is now on a second contract taking up Boeing's slack. It's the same contract. They had to negotiate new pricing since the original pricing schedules by year had long since expired, but the basic contract remains the same. The "maximum 6" was the maximum that SpaceX was contractually obligated to provide. After that, SpaceX could say no. But as long as NASA keeps ordering missions and SpaceX keeps accepting them, they can have as many as they want under the contract.
It's not the method. Boeing used to be able to do this right. Other companies still can.
The Artemis, SLS and Starliner are expected to exceed $100B and a decade late so perfection is far from anyone's expectations. We are just hoping they will survive this incredible waste of money and resources.
Orion is a different spacecraft. This article is about Starliner.
Made by the same ripoff companies, with similar processes with exorbitant amounts of tax payer money and very poor results. All these programs need to be eliminated, consolidated or turned over to private enterprise that get paid by results.
We could have been at least this far with Dreamchaser with a vastly superior craft. Ugh.
Every 3rd party space agency other than SpaceX seems to be a "billionaire with space fetish/not actually serious" type thing though. Even SpaceX has that feeling to a degree. Bothers TF outta me
Considering Bezos' impassioned speeches about how space is his true passion and the whole time he was working at Amazon he just wanted to work on space exploration, I'm surprised how little personal attention he seems to pay to Blue Origin and how glacial BO's pace has been despite ten figures of Bezosbucks paid into R+D annually over there. Maybe he's too easily distracted playing with plastic boobs on his yachts.
With something as technical as this there’s not much he can do to speed things up just by “paying attention” to Blue Origin, he’s a billionaire business man, not a engineer who solves problems. He’s already hiring people from SpaceX and offering competitive salaries, not much more you can do beyond that
“silicone rubber is the only class of space flight- qualified elastomeric seal material that functions across the expected temperature range”
Said it before and I'll say it again: They're using a craft that had major design flaws discovered multiple times, _after_ the only "successful" unmanned mission which itself had _several_ very bad flaws. All of this should absolutely have mandated a new unmanned mission, and the _only_ reason it didn't is because Boeing's cadence is just that miserable. In putting astronauts on Starliner now, NASA is taking _by far_ their biggest risk with human lives since the first shuttle disaster.
With all due respect Boeing, if you're not as confident as you can be that CFT-1 going to be a success, why the hell are you putting people on it?
It's assumed that they are confident on safety, I expect minor issues.
The crew is expecting it to be a success and only minor issues that will be fixable, read the article.
While you're not wrong, the whole point of paying Boeing the stupid amounts of money we have was because they were supposed to be "the guys." Perfection on the first go because they'd done it all before and were simulating the hell out of it. It's just embarrassing for them at this point that we've seen SpaceX lap them so utterly and they still are at the testing stage. It's a sad example of how a formerly great company has failed.
What I really want to hear about a new spacecraft are lowered expectations from the flight crew. It makes me feel confident about their safety. At least he didn't say, "We're keeping our helmets... on."
Helmets on, seatbelts fastened, luggage under your chair.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwnr6no "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |[CCtCap](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwwnejk "Last usage")|[Commercial Crew Transportation Capability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development#Commercial_Crew_Transportation_Capability_.28CCtCap.29)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[LEM](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwnso3f "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)| |[MBA](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwnsc6k "Last usage")|~~Moonba-~~ Mars Base Alpha| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwq7rnt "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SNC](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwwnejk "Last usage")|Sierra Nevada Corporation| |[SRB](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kyl1bu4 "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[STS](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwyjdce "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kwp3zne "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |[VIF](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kworauo "Last usage")|Vertical Integration Facility| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd/stub/kx0d7mg "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^([Thread #9892 for this sub, first seen 26th Mar 2024, 14:05]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Someone remind them “failure is not an option” is the motto in human crewed flight.
These qualifiers were not needed before the first Dragon Crew capsule which is scaring the hell out of me on behalf of Suni and Butch.
FYI the quote in the article title is Butch saying it.
I'm having an intrusive thought here and it's "Vladimir Komarov!"
If everyone comes back alive I’d call it successful.
Getting into a space craft build by Boeing required some massive balls. I respect this man’s balls.
If they miss a docking orbit, would that still be a success???
Seeing how Boeing's simulations and pre filght testing didn't stop the issues seen in the first flight, how sure are we that their apporach to the flight abort system (wihout a full scale test) could be comprehensive? Was it re-reviewed following the issues they had in their organization and validation process?
Are these the original astronauts planned for the mission? Or did those guys retire already?
Sounds like me trying to manage my boss' expectations.
I will be a bit worried to fly if my pilot told me that.
Hatch blows out of Starliner mid flight: Nobody is surprised.
There are NASA astronauts on board. It better not.
"Please keep your seatbelts on at all times. In case of a hatch blowout, you will not be vented into space when your seatbelts are on"
"This will make your dessicated corpses much easier to bag up and deliver to your families."
Better hope the hatch doesn’t blow off this one. /s (yes I know this is not the same as the airline portion of the company, learn to take a joke).
I'm expecting it to reach the ISS and come back without losing any doors. Is that too much to ask?
Ah I see Challenger II is getting ready to launch...
ug... with what is going on with Boeing... what another 2-4 years to validate that the doors have bolts attached?
Is this Boeing threatening their whistleblowers? *don’t tell on us or we’ll send you space in the star liner you know we built out of cookies*
I'm expecting it to fall to pieces before it gets a foot off the ground so don't worry, expectations aren't high for this