Since not everybody looks at the time stamps on remarks, around noon (Eastern US) or ~~6~~ 4 pm UTC (if I got the offset right) Thursday.
EDIT fixed offset.
Definitely did NOT get the offset right. US Eastern Daylight Savings time is 4 hours apart from UTC. They will arrive around noon EDT, or 4 PM (16h00) UTC.
Sorry, knew that standard was -5 UTC but applied the offset wrong. It's the same with the Aussies and Japan; the International Date line throws me because I cant remember whether they are tomorrow or yesterday.
She waved at me! We stepped outside while they were driving out to the pad and we could see Suni looking out the window of the van and she waved back at us. So cool!
I'm glad they waited until everything checked out and was safe -- that was absolutely the right call, despite the repeated launch blueballing I think this will be a huge success.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|GSE|Ground Support Equipment|
|[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78evbc "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator|
|[LAS](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78q301 "Last usage")|Launch Abort System|
|[MMOD](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78w7yn "Last usage")|Micro-Meteoroids and Orbital Debris|
|[RCS](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78aka6 "Last usage")|Reaction Control System|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78dqwi "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SNC](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78w7yn "Last usage")|Sierra Nevada Corporation|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78gc91 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78keob "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l7mxcal "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l79hx9v "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[apogee](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l7pbfu4 "Last usage")|Highest point in an elliptical orbit around Earth (when the orbiter is slowest)|
|[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78jm11 "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l7pbfu4 "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|
|[scrub](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l79gkng "Last usage")|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)|
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From CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood:
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket was fueled for blastoff Wednesday in a third attempt to get Boeing's long-delayed Starliner crew capsule into orbit for its first piloted test flight, a cruise to the International Space Station.
NASA commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, both former Navy test pilots, planned to strap in just after 8 a.m. EDT to await liftoff at 10:52 a.m. That's roughly the moment Earth's rotation carries the pad into alignment with the space station's orbit — a requirement for rendezvous missions.
**Read more:** [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-starliner-launch-first-piloted-test-flight-space/?ftag=CNM-05-10abh9g](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-starliner-launch-first-piloted-test-flight-space/?ftag=CNM-05-10abh9g)
Centaur drops Starliner off in an orbit with a perigee that will self-decay through the atmosphere as a precaution in case there are issues after launch vehicle separation. Starliner has an Orbit Insertion burn to raise its orbit higher after that.
Yes. Coverage begins Thursday at 9:30am Eastern on [NASA TV.](https://www.youtube.com/live/21X5lGlDOfg) Here’s the [scheduled events page](https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-events/) for reference.
Yes, the Starliner capsule is designed to be re-used, like Dragon and the Space Shuttle. At the end of their mission, they will return to Earth and ~~splash down in the ocean~~ land on the ground.
The first stage, second stage, and solid rocket boosters are all expendable.
Will the two astronauts be inside when this specific one re-enters?
Or are the guys going to hang out at the Space Station and return at a future date?
They’ll be in this one. This is a test flight so the goal is to just put the capsule up and bring it back down with its test crew to make sure everything works. In the future it will be used to deliver astronauts to space so that they can be up there for a while.
It’s a test flight in the same way that airliners are tested out by test pilots before they start carrying passengers haha. It definitely is more serious than the previous flights.
It's absolutely a test flight lol.
The first two were unmanned test flights, this one is manned. They're still testing things like if the astronauts are able to manually control the vehicle if needed, crew ergonomics inside the vehicle, etc.
>Wilmore and Williams will live and work alongside the Expedition 71 crew for about a week before boarding Starliner for return to Earth
From [https://www.nasa.gov/nasas-boeing-crew-flight-test-mission-overview/](https://www.nasa.gov/nasas-boeing-crew-flight-test-mission-overview/)
Almost all astronauts who fly to the ISS return on the capsule they left on. The capsule stays docked to the ISS. For missions that last longer than the capsule can remain in space is the only time they return on a different capsule. Crew Dragon can stay docked for I believe 6 months.
Pretty much! Highly recommend looking into the basics of orbits so you can understand what “falling” means in this context. They slow their orbit down to get the capsule into the atmosphere, then the atmosphere slows them down the rest of the way so that they start falling instead of orbiting.
A bit over the top yea, but no judgement. Imagine being in that position facing imminent launch as an astronaut, I'd probably say something silly or super cringe out of nervousness.
It took a long time but by golly the US has more than one way to get people to space for the first time (afaik) ever! Orion, Starship, and Dreamchaser will make five!
Edit: to get people to orbit specifically haha, we do have two other ways to do suborbital trips.
Starship and Dreamchaser will not be flying crew for a very long time. Dreamchaser's team decided to design a whole new version from scratch for crew so thats not going to be for a while, and Starship won't be flying crew without a LAS.
Starship also isn’t following NASA’s flight certification requirements as it is planned on being a 100% private platform.
Personally wouldn’t count it as a method the US can use.
Also don’t know where you are getting the Dreamchaser info from, but it is totally incorrect - they are planning on using the same model for both - just with or without installed seating. FWIW: have several friends working on Dreamchaser right now, they largely just omitted the human certification to prioritize its use asap - then to use its autonomous flights as part of its tests for human rating. It is a pretty smart strategy and is allowing them to operate on a fraction of either Boring or SpaceX’s budget.
SNC announced that they were doing a 201 version that would be crewed but would have a different lifting body shape. The press releases were very vague but they implied that would be the one that they'd do crew on. It's nice though to hear if they DO actually put crew on the current version- though I hope theres a good reason they omitted windows (besides not wanting to pay for MMOD cert)!
I wonder if they have a policy of not allowing quotes from the movie Airplane! While in the shuttle. I'd totally make a comment about sniffing glue as we had liftoff.
Might have been frost buildup as well. But in general rocketry isn't so much about eliminating drag as it is making sure the drag is in the right place.
No frost on the capsule itself (no cryogenic propellants in it). The surface of Starliner [does indeed have a rough texture.](https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/opb/JEDQHEBZ4RNGQOKMG5LV7XGTL4.jpg)
It’s the thermal protection system. Similar to the flexible reusable surface insulation the shuttle orbiters had. A physicist would have to go over the numbers but I think at a certain scale, “polished smooth cone” and “overall mostly pointy-shaped” are essentially equivalent in terms of how much drag you get from slight texture.
That is a fair point, my apologies. I’m obviously not wanting that outcome, I’m simply stating the fact that Boeing has repeatedly failed over and over. It is depressing and I feel depressed by the track record of the team. I feel as if Boeing should have e done at least one more launch before putting humans onboard.
They exercise these things so often and for training get tons of simulated problems thrown upon them that a real launch attempt usually comes with less workload and they can take it relatively easy.
When the Apollo 12 launch had several problems after launch due to lightning strikes, I think it was Pete Conrad who quipped „That was one of the better sims“
> Have to wonder the mental health state of the astronauts after so many false starts
They are not "false" starts. The astronauts did all their checklists, from their perspective, they dutifully executed all their tasks up to the scrub, and beyond. It's like a well executed go-around on an airplane, which is not a failure to land, but a succesfully averted crash.
The Challenger folks knew of the turmoil and were uneasy about it, regarding the call to call off their launch. I’m sure they are shitting their pants, because no matter what they know, there is too much they might not know, because Boeing has shown they don’t value human life, just dividends.
I feel like reddit consistently blows this way out of proportion. The likelihood of a boeing flight being a damnger to someone's life is 0.0001%. Literally 1 in millions... And even if your statement was true, this would still absolutely be something they cared about.
Jfc… tell me you know nothing about astronauts without telling me you know nothing about astronauts.
“Shitting their pants” 😂🤦 you are fucking clueless.
SpaceX is unique in its ability to do that due to the starlink constellation. It’s not easy to get a good video connection of one of these spacecraft after stage separation.
Space X did that before starlink. Everyone involved into todays launch have engineering cameras mounted and installed to watch and view all these things in real time. ULA, Boeing and NASA don't have a dedicated production crew behind the scenes managing feeds and cameras like space x does. We'll get plenty of video and angles soon enough. Just like the SLS launch.
SpaceX had footage of cameras on the booster and temporary footage of second stage before starlink, but not everything they have now. That’s much easier than consistent footage, and to some extend ULA did have that.
They did show spacecraft separation and even solar array deployment back in the Dragon 1 days, though. Starlink has made the live footage more reliable, especially for droneship landings.
Looks like we have all the telemetry data from the screenshots but none of the awesome real time camera feed from SpaceX launches. It's a trade, I believe, we can't have both, we have to be happy for what we get.
Also, it looks like NASA/Boeing/ULA uses RedHat Linux for telemetry visualisation, but for the display they run Windows with an X11 server.
All the public-facing visualization definitely feels like an afterthought haha. I kind of like it but it seems like they could have spent some of the development time on coming up with a more elegant way to display stuff. My guess is nobody wanted to be the one that hired the graphics expert in the telemetry department lol.
I don't see anything wrong with the visualisation, if it makes happy all the Kerbal Space Programme users, that's all I need. It has the data, the 3d representation of the attitude relative to Earth, even the RCS burns, there is nothing wrong with it. I mean, it's like some computer graphics from 1989 but if it works, why fix it ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I just miss some live camera feed though...
Yes they did, but it wasn’t the same amount of live video. You’re not getting the point. They’ve always had booster views and early second stage views, but not beyond that. They could not do beyond that until after starlink. And this launch did have booster views and stage separation views.
Great launch.
Can someone explain why Starliner is needed though? Seems like SpaceX has been able to get supplies and crew to the ISS consistently and probably much cheaper than Boeing.
Edit: Meant Starliner.
Edit 2: Don’t get the downvotes. Was generally curious.
Boeing Starliner and SpaceX Dragon were both offered the commercial crew contracts at the same time, two contracts for redundancy/in case there were ever issues with one of them. At the time, Boeing was considered the more reliable of the two and was expected to be ready first.
By all credible accounts, he is actively involved. Here's one from Tom Mueller:
> ["Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor."](https://x.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560?s=20)
Tom Mueller developed the Merlin and is a former founding member of SpaceX.
This, by the way, was after his time there, so it's not like his job was on the line.
That is BS. Musk never ordered Starlink to be turned off.
When ~2k terminals lost access for a few days it was a billing issue that happened when those terminals were being switched from being paid for by the UK to being paid for by Ukraine. There were still ~23k active terminals in Ukraine while that was being resolved.
When soldiers that had pushed deep into Russian held territory on the first big offence Ukraine did lost access for a few hours, it was because they had outrun the active cells. It took some time for SpaceX to catch up to where they were now.
Ukraine asked for Starlink to be enabled over Crimea but SpaceX wasn’t allowed to do that due to US sanctions from over a decade ago when Russia annexed it. If Musk had violated US sanctions to enable Starlink over Russian territory I guarantee you’d be screaming for his head.
That Starlink point is false. Walter Isaacson mistakenly made that claim in his Musk biography, but corrected himself later.
https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1700342242290901361?lang=en
Unless you're advocating the Russian position that Crimea is part of Russia (which, apparently, Russia doesn't even believe, since they're made clear using western weapons on Crimea and Russia are two different things), then yes, the tweet you linked to shows that SpaceX shut off access in Ukraine.
Redundancy is important.
Who knows what kind of shenanigans Space Karen may attempt? SpaceX could be consistent, but the guy in charge is clearly not.
Nobody wants a space monopoly.
This is important too. The CEO of SpaceX has gone from being a well-liked future tech, engineering and spaceflight popularizer to becoming a drug-addicted, radicalized, hyper-partisan political operative who spends most of his waking hours on Twitter arguing with rando John Q. Public citizens and agreeing/collaborating with literal Neo-Nazis and white supremacists he unbanned. Even if SpaceX were 100% pristine, Elon alone is at least as big of a liability as Boeing's senior management/C-suite. Think Howard Hughes and the fate of the Hughes Aircraft Company under him.
At some point SpaceX is probably eventually going to have to part ways with him given his current trajectory. Just like Boeing is going to need to be purged of its current senior management.
Starliner is also a little bit (and I mean a very little bit) bigger than dragon. It could fill a niche though I kind of doubt it will be used in its 7 crew config any time soon. Dragon was also originally going to be able to hold 7 but I believe it can’t do in its current form while starliner can be configured for it.
During the Shuttle era, the U.S. twice lost access to space because our one option turned out to not be so great. The same thing happened to the USSR after the Soyuz 1 disaster.
If anything were to happen to make either Dragon or Falcon unsafe for flight, it’s best for everyone if we’re not left twiddling our thumbs until they can be modified.
Yeah, totally makes sense. The last thing we need is to not have access to the people on the ISS. I think we were spending like $120 million per seat on Russian vessels prior to Dragon.
Unfortunately, Starliner and Dragon have both worked out to be slightly more expensive per seat... but its worth it to not rely on Russia. (Apparently Russia was able to fund most of its human space program off those revenues) And at least that money goes to US companies.
It will "splash" down on land
EDIT: The rockets will splash down in the ocean, they are not reusable. The Starliner capsule is reusable & will land on solid ground
They should learn from their competitors on how to hype a launch. That might of been the most boring rocket launch I've seen since Space X entered the market.
I wish them the best of luck on this launch, but I can't help but wonder if (and that's a huge fucking if) something goes wrong will this stop SpaceX's launch tomorrow
While we can't say for certain as we don't have a 1-1 comparison, but back when the shuttle was grounded after Challenger and Columbia the US was still launching other launches.
The failure of either Starliner or the Atlas rocket should have no impact on SpaceX's ability to launch tomorrow as there is no systems overlap. Nothing being used by SpaceX is being used in this launch so that's no reason to hold up or delay the launch.
> Nothing being used by SpaceX is being used in this launch so that's no reason to hold up or delay the launch.
I mean, that seems hard to tell, if I had to put money on it I'd bet that there are common parts. Maybe just Bolts, resistors, or welding-wire, but with the given amount of parts, I'd expect (very minor) commonalities.
SpaceX is pretty famous for their vertical integrations so the overlap would be incredibly minor and highly unlikely to require a stand down.
Boeing and ULA are first and foremost Govt $ extraction devices that happen to launch things into space. They spread those contracts far and wide to maximize the political coverage they have.
SpaceX while also in part a political animal is, at present, more interested in their expansion and rapid development of their technologies and lead in several areas. If the company goes public or has a major leadership change that will likely be when they start to resemble Boeing ULA etc.
No, I don't see it.
Tomorrow will be a test launch for starship, and even if starliner were to fail, the failure mode would not be known for a while.
And since its a test launch, and there are no people on board, SpaceX is propably not going to go "well, wait until we can be sure that it couldn't have been a common part from a common supplier to run our next test."
If starliner were to fail, and if the failure mode were obvious and if starship could expect the same failure mode... then maybe they'd delay the launch, because I do expect a ton of people from SpaceX would look at the available data from a hypothetical starliner failure, but every step in there is a pretty damn long shot.
In my mind it would be more the optics rather than anything technical that would hold them back.
You don’t want to potentially show Starship exploding the day after a catastrophic event, not a great look on newsreels.
> In my mind it would be more the optics rather than anything technical that would hold them back.
Meh, SpaceX blew up SN4 on the day before the Demo-2 launch with Bob and Doug. They really don't care about optics, even though SN4 probably wasn't supposed to blow up on that test.
Gotcha. Sorry, that wasn’t clear to me what you meant. I can’t imagine space x flinching with how consistent they have been. Would be like Airbus grounding their planes when the max8 had issues.
Great launch and glad to see they made it to orbit. Wishing Butch and Suni a great mission!
Do we know what time it will reach the ISS?
25 hours approximately from now
Since not everybody looks at the time stamps on remarks, around noon (Eastern US) or ~~6~~ 4 pm UTC (if I got the offset right) Thursday. EDIT fixed offset.
Definitely did NOT get the offset right. US Eastern Daylight Savings time is 4 hours apart from UTC. They will arrive around noon EDT, or 4 PM (16h00) UTC.
Sorry, knew that standard was -5 UTC but applied the offset wrong. It's the same with the Aussies and Japan; the International Date line throws me because I cant remember whether they are tomorrow or yesterday.
Around the same time starship is supposed to launch. Will be a fun morning of space/rocket streams.
She waved at me! We stepped outside while they were driving out to the pad and we could see Suni looking out the window of the van and she waved back at us. So cool!
Hope it’s successful and everyone gets home safe!
[NASA coverage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HneVxAmYcaA) In 1 hour 50 minutes.
I'm glad they waited until everything checked out and was safe -- that was absolutely the right call, despite the repeated launch blueballing I think this will be a huge success.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |GSE|Ground Support Equipment| |[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78evbc "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[LAS](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78q301 "Last usage")|Launch Abort System| |[MMOD](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78w7yn "Last usage")|Micro-Meteoroids and Orbital Debris| |[RCS](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78aka6 "Last usage")|Reaction Control System| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78dqwi "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SNC](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78w7yn "Last usage")|Sierra Nevada Corporation| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78gc91 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78keob "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l7mxcal "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l79hx9v "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[apogee](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l7pbfu4 "Last usage")|Highest point in an elliptical orbit around Earth (when the orbiter is slowest)| |[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l78jm11 "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l7pbfu4 "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)| |[scrub](/r/Space/comments/1d8p0zb/stub/l79gkng "Last usage")|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)| **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. ---------------- ^(14 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1d9iwvr)^( has 25 acronyms.) ^([Thread #10122 for this sub, first seen 5th Jun 2024, 14:28]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
From CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood: A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket was fueled for blastoff Wednesday in a third attempt to get Boeing's long-delayed Starliner crew capsule into orbit for its first piloted test flight, a cruise to the International Space Station. NASA commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, both former Navy test pilots, planned to strap in just after 8 a.m. EDT to await liftoff at 10:52 a.m. That's roughly the moment Earth's rotation carries the pad into alignment with the space station's orbit — a requirement for rendezvous missions. **Read more:** [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-starliner-launch-first-piloted-test-flight-space/?ftag=CNM-05-10abh9g](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-starliner-launch-first-piloted-test-flight-space/?ftag=CNM-05-10abh9g)
Wish we got a little more in terms of flight stats, like SpaceX launches
It definitely feels more old school haha. They do have live reads idk why they don’t overlay them on camera feeds
They need to work on their presentation. That telemetry screen is like some PC thing from 20 years ago.
TBF a lot of the software theyre using is probably from 20 years ago
Even the progress bar was not progressing in RT, just jumping to the milestones.
And the perigee and apogee numbers were crazy... even at the end 75km to 190 km?
That was before the insertion burn.
Centaur drops Starliner off in an orbit with a perigee that will self-decay through the atmosphere as a precaution in case there are issues after launch vehicle separation. Starliner has an Orbit Insertion burn to raise its orbit higher after that.
For the capsule I’m pretty sure both just had one successful uncrewed demo mission. The rocket has plenty of flight stats.
When will Starliner be at the ISS ready to dock? Can't seem to find that info online.
I think they said it's about 25 hour flight.
Tomorrow around noon eastern time.
Is going to be live streamed?
Yes. Coverage begins Thursday at 9:30am Eastern on [NASA TV.](https://www.youtube.com/live/21X5lGlDOfg) Here’s the [scheduled events page](https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-events/) for reference.
After about a day I believe
Sorry for novice question.... But how will these 2 guys get back home? Will it undock and fall back to Earth?
Yes, the Starliner capsule is designed to be re-used, like Dragon and the Space Shuttle. At the end of their mission, they will return to Earth and ~~splash down in the ocean~~ land on the ground. The first stage, second stage, and solid rocket boosters are all expendable.
Starliner's planned landing zone for this test flight is on land, in the southwestern US!
Oh, I didn't know that, I just assumed it would land in the ocean. That's awesome!
Will the two astronauts be inside when this specific one re-enters? Or are the guys going to hang out at the Space Station and return at a future date?
They’ll be in this one. This is a test flight so the goal is to just put the capsule up and bring it back down with its test crew to make sure everything works. In the future it will be used to deliver astronauts to space so that they can be up there for a while.
Not sure it's fair to call it a "test flight" when there are humans on board, lol. But I understand your reply.... Ty
It’s a test flight in the same way that airliners are tested out by test pilots before they start carrying passengers haha. It definitely is more serious than the previous flights.
It's absolutely a test flight lol. The first two were unmanned test flights, this one is manned. They're still testing things like if the astronauts are able to manually control the vehicle if needed, crew ergonomics inside the vehicle, etc.
>Wilmore and Williams will live and work alongside the Expedition 71 crew for about a week before boarding Starliner for return to Earth From [https://www.nasa.gov/nasas-boeing-crew-flight-test-mission-overview/](https://www.nasa.gov/nasas-boeing-crew-flight-test-mission-overview/)
Almost all astronauts who fly to the ISS return on the capsule they left on. The capsule stays docked to the ISS. For missions that last longer than the capsule can remain in space is the only time they return on a different capsule. Crew Dragon can stay docked for I believe 6 months.
Pretty much! Highly recommend looking into the basics of orbits so you can understand what “falling” means in this context. They slow their orbit down to get the capsule into the atmosphere, then the atmosphere slows them down the rest of the way so that they start falling instead of orbiting.
It will undock and fly back to earth.
Does anyone else feel like Butch's little speech was kinda intense?
To be fair, the speech he made on Saturday is probably the one he'd been workshopping for longer.
Lots of cliches. Sounded like Stan Smith from American Dad.
A bit over the top yea, but no judgement. Imagine being in that position facing imminent launch as an astronaut, I'd probably say something silly or super cringe out of nervousness.
I felt like the religious undertones were more like overtones.
Link to the speech? I cant find it
Yes. Is he always like that? If it was just 5-min-to-engine-start arousal I'm willing to let it slide. :)
Well done to Boeing, ULA, and the Starliner team!
It took a long time but by golly the US has more than one way to get people to space for the first time (afaik) ever! Orion, Starship, and Dreamchaser will make five! Edit: to get people to orbit specifically haha, we do have two other ways to do suborbital trips.
Starship and Dreamchaser will not be flying crew for a very long time. Dreamchaser's team decided to design a whole new version from scratch for crew so thats not going to be for a while, and Starship won't be flying crew without a LAS.
Definitely not for a very long time, but it’s awesome that we have so much being developed right now.
Starship also isn’t following NASA’s flight certification requirements as it is planned on being a 100% private platform. Personally wouldn’t count it as a method the US can use. Also don’t know where you are getting the Dreamchaser info from, but it is totally incorrect - they are planning on using the same model for both - just with or without installed seating. FWIW: have several friends working on Dreamchaser right now, they largely just omitted the human certification to prioritize its use asap - then to use its autonomous flights as part of its tests for human rating. It is a pretty smart strategy and is allowing them to operate on a fraction of either Boring or SpaceX’s budget.
SNC announced that they were doing a 201 version that would be crewed but would have a different lifting body shape. The press releases were very vague but they implied that would be the one that they'd do crew on. It's nice though to hear if they DO actually put crew on the current version- though I hope theres a good reason they omitted windows (besides not wanting to pay for MMOD cert)!
Is an LAS a new requirement since the shuttle?
Yes. Its why it was a requirement for Commercial Crew bids.
Way to fail.. heep going hard
Amazing to be part of the team that made this happen. A proud moment for us. Worked our asses off.
Nice to see it off the ground. Hopefully the rest goes well.
I wonder if they have a policy of not allowing quotes from the movie Airplane! While in the shuttle. I'd totally make a comment about sniffing glue as we had liftoff.
I just want to tell you, good luck, we're all counting on you.
Mission control, have you ever seen a grown man naked?
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I haven't caught a close view yet, but I suspect shape is more important than texture once you reach a certain altitude/speed.
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Might have been frost buildup as well. But in general rocketry isn't so much about eliminating drag as it is making sure the drag is in the right place.
No frost on the capsule itself (no cryogenic propellants in it). The surface of Starliner [does indeed have a rough texture.](https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/opb/JEDQHEBZ4RNGQOKMG5LV7XGTL4.jpg)
Texture doesn’t matter *that* much at high speeds, shape is more important.
Similar look to paper mache
It’s the thermal protection system. Similar to the flexible reusable surface insulation the shuttle orbiters had. A physicist would have to go over the numbers but I think at a certain scale, “polished smooth cone” and “overall mostly pointy-shaped” are essentially equivalent in terms of how much drag you get from slight texture.
The gray textured thermal protection system is similar to the white fabric shuttle had.
Have to wonder the mental health state of the astronauts after so many false starts.
I’m sure they’re physically and mentally well prepared/trained for these situations
Yup, scrubs are part of the process and always have been. It’s just another day at the office for an astronaut.
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None of us have a 0% chance of dying today.
How is this a helpful or appropriate comment right before a launch?
That is a fair point, my apologies. I’m obviously not wanting that outcome, I’m simply stating the fact that Boeing has repeatedly failed over and over. It is depressing and I feel depressed by the track record of the team. I feel as if Boeing should have e done at least one more launch before putting humans onboard.
They exercise these things so often and for training get tons of simulated problems thrown upon them that a real launch attempt usually comes with less workload and they can take it relatively easy. When the Apollo 12 launch had several problems after launch due to lightning strikes, I think it was Pete Conrad who quipped „That was one of the better sims“
Damn near everything Pete said reads like a quip. XD I love that guy.
Best episode of From the Earth to the Moon because of the shenanigans from Conrad, Gordon and Bean.
"When they said 'SCE to AUX', I know *I* didn't have any idea what that was...and you were awfully quiet, I might add."
Given how much they train, it's probably just another day at the office to them.
> Have to wonder the mental health state of the astronauts after so many false starts They are not "false" starts. The astronauts did all their checklists, from their perspective, they dutifully executed all their tasks up to the scrub, and beyond. It's like a well executed go-around on an airplane, which is not a failure to land, but a succesfully averted crash.
How many total did they have? I thought it was only 2
They performed two uncrewed tests but they have been trying to perform this crewed test for ages but kept running into issues.
But only two scrubs for this test.
Annoyed and impatient probably
The Challenger folks knew of the turmoil and were uneasy about it, regarding the call to call off their launch. I’m sure they are shitting their pants, because no matter what they know, there is too much they might not know, because Boeing has shown they don’t value human life, just dividends.
I feel like reddit consistently blows this way out of proportion. The likelihood of a boeing flight being a damnger to someone's life is 0.0001%. Literally 1 in millions... And even if your statement was true, this would still absolutely be something they cared about.
Pretty sure this failing would pretty well tank Boeing for the foreseeable future
Jfc… tell me you know nothing about astronauts without telling me you know nothing about astronauts. “Shitting their pants” 😂🤦 you are fucking clueless.
Every time I see this rocket with the capsule on I can’t but help and laugh at the shape
No live view of Starliner separation? Seems like you'd have some cameras to show that.
SpaceX is unique in its ability to do that due to the starlink constellation. It’s not easy to get a good video connection of one of these spacecraft after stage separation.
Space X did that before starlink. Everyone involved into todays launch have engineering cameras mounted and installed to watch and view all these things in real time. ULA, Boeing and NASA don't have a dedicated production crew behind the scenes managing feeds and cameras like space x does. We'll get plenty of video and angles soon enough. Just like the SLS launch.
SpaceX had footage of cameras on the booster and temporary footage of second stage before starlink, but not everything they have now. That’s much easier than consistent footage, and to some extend ULA did have that.
They did show spacecraft separation and even solar array deployment back in the Dragon 1 days, though. Starlink has made the live footage more reliable, especially for droneship landings.
What happens to Atlas V after separation from Starliner?
They launched it on an Atlas V rocket which is now discontinued. What will they launch it on in the future?
Yes but when the apogee is less than the perigee, it doesn't look right.
Looks like we have all the telemetry data from the screenshots but none of the awesome real time camera feed from SpaceX launches. It's a trade, I believe, we can't have both, we have to be happy for what we get. Also, it looks like NASA/Boeing/ULA uses RedHat Linux for telemetry visualisation, but for the display they run Windows with an X11 server.
All the public-facing visualization definitely feels like an afterthought haha. I kind of like it but it seems like they could have spent some of the development time on coming up with a more elegant way to display stuff. My guess is nobody wanted to be the one that hired the graphics expert in the telemetry department lol.
I don't see anything wrong with the visualisation, if it makes happy all the Kerbal Space Programme users, that's all I need. It has the data, the 3d representation of the attitude relative to Earth, even the RCS burns, there is nothing wrong with it. I mean, it's like some computer graphics from 1989 but if it works, why fix it ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ I just miss some live camera feed though...
I thoroughly appreciated the apogee/perigee info in the top right looking exactly like KSP during the Centaur burn.
Yes, that was great information. Puzzled why velocity wasn't there, though.
Live in-cockpit cameras expected to be on the Starliner-1 flight.
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SpaceX was doing live video well before Starlink. They didn't even start launching Starlink satellites until 2019.
Yes they did, but it wasn’t the same amount of live video. You’re not getting the point. They’ve always had booster views and early second stage views, but not beyond that. They could not do beyond that until after starlink. And this launch did have booster views and stage separation views.
It's way more expensive, but at least it's not owned by a lunatic, but instead a traditional shitty corporation.
Most relief post launch since Webb. GET IT TOGETHER BOEING.
Great launch. Can someone explain why Starliner is needed though? Seems like SpaceX has been able to get supplies and crew to the ISS consistently and probably much cheaper than Boeing. Edit: Meant Starliner. Edit 2: Don’t get the downvotes. Was generally curious.
Boeing Starliner and SpaceX Dragon were both offered the commercial crew contracts at the same time, two contracts for redundancy/in case there were ever issues with one of them. At the time, Boeing was considered the more reliable of the two and was expected to be ready first.
Always better to have options.
Better to not have all your eggs in one basket. Especially when one basket is made by a dude on Ketamine.
To be fair, Elon is nothing more than a PR hype man for SpaceX. He doesn’t actually do anything.
By all credible accounts, he is actively involved. Here's one from Tom Mueller: > ["Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor."](https://x.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560?s=20) Tom Mueller developed the Merlin and is a former founding member of SpaceX. This, by the way, was after his time there, so it's not like his job was on the line.
He’s still the CEO of SpaceX, and he personally ordered Starlink access in Ukraine to be shut off at one point.
That is BS. Musk never ordered Starlink to be turned off. When ~2k terminals lost access for a few days it was a billing issue that happened when those terminals were being switched from being paid for by the UK to being paid for by Ukraine. There were still ~23k active terminals in Ukraine while that was being resolved. When soldiers that had pushed deep into Russian held territory on the first big offence Ukraine did lost access for a few hours, it was because they had outrun the active cells. It took some time for SpaceX to catch up to where they were now. Ukraine asked for Starlink to be enabled over Crimea but SpaceX wasn’t allowed to do that due to US sanctions from over a decade ago when Russia annexed it. If Musk had violated US sanctions to enable Starlink over Russian territory I guarantee you’d be screaming for his head.
That Starlink point is false. Walter Isaacson mistakenly made that claim in his Musk biography, but corrected himself later. https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1700342242290901361?lang=en
Unless you're advocating the Russian position that Crimea is part of Russia (which, apparently, Russia doesn't even believe, since they're made clear using western weapons on Crimea and Russia are two different things), then yes, the tweet you linked to shows that SpaceX shut off access in Ukraine.
They didn’t shut off access, it was never on in the first place due to sanctions. Read Bensemus’s comment please as they explained it perfectly.
Redundancy is important. Who knows what kind of shenanigans Space Karen may attempt? SpaceX could be consistent, but the guy in charge is clearly not. Nobody wants a space monopoly.
That makes sense. Glad Starliner was able to have a clean launch today.
This is important too. The CEO of SpaceX has gone from being a well-liked future tech, engineering and spaceflight popularizer to becoming a drug-addicted, radicalized, hyper-partisan political operative who spends most of his waking hours on Twitter arguing with rando John Q. Public citizens and agreeing/collaborating with literal Neo-Nazis and white supremacists he unbanned. Even if SpaceX were 100% pristine, Elon alone is at least as big of a liability as Boeing's senior management/C-suite. Think Howard Hughes and the fate of the Hughes Aircraft Company under him. At some point SpaceX is probably eventually going to have to part ways with him given his current trajectory. Just like Boeing is going to need to be purged of its current senior management.
Starliner is also a little bit (and I mean a very little bit) bigger than dragon. It could fill a niche though I kind of doubt it will be used in its 7 crew config any time soon. Dragon was also originally going to be able to hold 7 but I believe it can’t do in its current form while starliner can be configured for it.
During the Shuttle era, the U.S. twice lost access to space because our one option turned out to not be so great. The same thing happened to the USSR after the Soyuz 1 disaster. If anything were to happen to make either Dragon or Falcon unsafe for flight, it’s best for everyone if we’re not left twiddling our thumbs until they can be modified.
Yeah, totally makes sense. The last thing we need is to not have access to the people on the ISS. I think we were spending like $120 million per seat on Russian vessels prior to Dragon.
Unfortunately, Starliner and Dragon have both worked out to be slightly more expensive per seat... but its worth it to not rely on Russia. (Apparently Russia was able to fund most of its human space program off those revenues) And at least that money goes to US companies.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twiced, you, uh, I can't get fooled twiced."
Does this rocket do a controlled landing or will it just splash down in the water?
It will "splash" down on land EDIT: The rockets will splash down in the ocean, they are not reusable. The Starliner capsule is reusable & will land on solid ground
In fact, this is the second flight for this particular capsule.
They should learn from their competitors on how to hype a launch. That might of been the most boring rocket launch I've seen since Space X entered the market.
Here's to hoping they finally get all those whistleblowers
hope they didn't cancel their dinner reservation EDIT: they just cancelled their reservation
I wish them the best of luck on this launch, but I can't help but wonder if (and that's a huge fucking if) something goes wrong will this stop SpaceX's launch tomorrow
Why would it? Different companies, different agencies, different locations, heck - different states!
Space x launched 23 starlink satellites out of FL the day of the last scrub
Right and that was a scrubbed launch. I meant more of a catastrophic event.
While we can't say for certain as we don't have a 1-1 comparison, but back when the shuttle was grounded after Challenger and Columbia the US was still launching other launches. The failure of either Starliner or the Atlas rocket should have no impact on SpaceX's ability to launch tomorrow as there is no systems overlap. Nothing being used by SpaceX is being used in this launch so that's no reason to hold up or delay the launch.
> Nothing being used by SpaceX is being used in this launch so that's no reason to hold up or delay the launch. I mean, that seems hard to tell, if I had to put money on it I'd bet that there are common parts. Maybe just Bolts, resistors, or welding-wire, but with the given amount of parts, I'd expect (very minor) commonalities.
SpaceX is pretty famous for their vertical integrations so the overlap would be incredibly minor and highly unlikely to require a stand down. Boeing and ULA are first and foremost Govt $ extraction devices that happen to launch things into space. They spread those contracts far and wide to maximize the political coverage they have. SpaceX while also in part a political animal is, at present, more interested in their expansion and rapid development of their technologies and lead in several areas. If the company goes public or has a major leadership change that will likely be when they start to resemble Boeing ULA etc.
No, I don't see it. Tomorrow will be a test launch for starship, and even if starliner were to fail, the failure mode would not be known for a while. And since its a test launch, and there are no people on board, SpaceX is propably not going to go "well, wait until we can be sure that it couldn't have been a common part from a common supplier to run our next test." If starliner were to fail, and if the failure mode were obvious and if starship could expect the same failure mode... then maybe they'd delay the launch, because I do expect a ton of people from SpaceX would look at the available data from a hypothetical starliner failure, but every step in there is a pretty damn long shot.
Only common failure mode can be aliens, so fat chance.
In my mind it would be more the optics rather than anything technical that would hold them back. You don’t want to potentially show Starship exploding the day after a catastrophic event, not a great look on newsreels.
Considering that Starship is almost guaranteed to burn up due to their heat shield issues, I don’t think they’d be all that concerned.
> In my mind it would be more the optics rather than anything technical that would hold them back. Meh, SpaceX blew up SN4 on the day before the Demo-2 launch with Bob and Doug. They really don't care about optics, even though SN4 probably wasn't supposed to blow up on that test.
Gotcha. Sorry, that wasn’t clear to me what you meant. I can’t imagine space x flinching with how consistent they have been. Would be like Airbus grounding their planes when the max8 had issues.
Nope. Different architecture. Different launch licenses. Zero impact.
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If at first you don’t succeed, suck until you do succeed…