An investigation of the bungled mission has revealed more problems than officials and engineers alike expected to find. The flaws stem not from hardware, but from the flight software coded by Boeing engineers. The capsule, known as Starliner, turned out to be more dangerous than anyone realized.
“We don’t know how many software errors we have,” Doug Loverro, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told reporters on Friday. “We don’t know if we have just two or we have many hundreds.”
JFC Boeing, weren't you supposed to be the reliable professionals here?
It is what happens when you have total regulatory capture. Eventually they start believing their own story and quality drops.
Talking about budget. Budget proposal for NASA sees slashing pretty much everywhere except for the manned moon mission. Even "peanuts" like SOFIA or programs for engaging the youth.
I really wish a letter to my Congress members would have any weight in getting that shit pulled out of the budgets, but I'm sure they'd be dumped by the corporate handlers the moment they even looked sideways at that budget.
The truly twisted thing of this sort of corporate governance is that even if Boeing has no interests in your district and gives you $0 of campaign contribution, fucking with them is still dangerous because other, completely unrelated corporations will also ditch you. This is why every "Stop the special interests" campaigner is absolutely swimming in special interest money.
Talking about budget. Budget proposal for NASA sees slashing pretty much everywhere except for the manned moon mission. Even "peanuts" like SOFIA or programs for engaging the youth.
The moon mission is chained to the SLS and Orion, which in turn are chained to ULA (i.e. Boeing and Lockheed) pork contracts.
Basically, funding for the moon mission is money for the cash furnace.
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
Both NASA and Boeing officials declined to speculate on whether the software errors discussed Thursday—not to mention the fact that Starliner failed to accomplish its primary task, a rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station—will necessitate a second uncrewed test flight for Starliner before NASA astronauts launch on the vehicle. “I just don’t think we have enough information at this point," Bridenstine said. "We’d be very premature to make any announcements regarding that."
Two software issues, one of which could have resulted in the loss of the craft, but NASA isn't demanding a second test. Sucks to be whichever astronauts are slated for the Starliner flights.
With how big a screw-up this was for Starliner (and how more issues keep falling out when they tug on the thread), I think more unmanned tests are inevitable. They just "declined to speculate" on it for the time being.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Both NASA and Boeing officials declined to speculate on whether the software errors discussed Thursday—not to mention the fact that Starliner failed to accomplish its primary task, a rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station—will necessitate a second uncrewed test flight for Starliner before NASA astronauts launch on the vehicle. “I just don’t think we have enough information at this point," Bridenstine said. "We’d be very premature to make any announcements regarding that."
Two software issues, one of which could have resulted in the loss of the craft, but NASA isn't demanding a second test. Sucks to be whichever astronauts are slated for the Starliner flights.
With how big a screw-up this was for Starliner (and how more issues keep falling out when they tug on the thread), I think more unmanned tests are inevitable. They just "declined to speculate" on it for the time being.
I certainly hope so, but the Boeing-NASA relationship is pretty screwed up (unless you're a Boeing shareholder) so I wouldn't bet the farm on it happening. Having two software failures in one test after the 737 MAX situation really should have resulted in an immediate statement from NASA saying that they'll be requiring an additional test.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Starliner and Orion's manned rating is guaranteed in their contract, which itself is enforced in NASA's budget. It literally doesn't matter what NASA decides, the certification is going to happen.
NASA doesn't have to actually put people in the thing, but can't deny it manned rating for such trivialities as being a terrifying deathtrap.
Didn't quite make it to the barge/landing-ship this time, unfortunately. Naughty rocket, you will be punished for disobeying your programming! :P
That's actually obeying its programming - the default landing course for the first stage involves ditching in the sea right next to the barge. It diverts during the landing burn if everything's going right and the rocket is convinced it can make the landing.
Basically it's a sign that something went awry pretty close to the last minute.
Talking about budget. Budget proposal for NASA sees slashing pretty much everywhere except for the manned moon mission. Even "peanuts" like SOFIA or programs for engaging the youth.
Fortunately I don't think the White House has really gotten any of its big NASA asks so far in this administration. They've tried completely eliminating education funding and most earth science stuff in every proposed budget so far, but even the current boondoggle of a congress keeps overruling that.
The one thing they managed to actually kill was climate change research, which is now going on under some different banner with all the results being released through partners.
Starliner and Orion's manned rating is guaranteed in their contract, which itself is enforced in NASA's budget. It literally doesn't matter what NASA decides, the certification is going to happen.
NASA doesn't have to actually put people in the thing, but can't deny it manned rating for such trivialities as being a terrifying deathtrap.
This is giving me uncomfortable flashbacks to Soyuz 1.
Starliner and Orion's manned rating is guaranteed in their contract, which itself is enforced in NASA's budget. It literally doesn't matter what NASA decides, the certification is going to happen.
NASA doesn't have to actually put people in the thing, but can't deny it manned rating for such trivialities as being a terrifying deathtrap.
This is giving me uncomfortable flashbacks to Soyuz 1.
Personally I think more Challenger and Columbia. In part because this is a foreseen risk happening in an era otherwise notable for safe, reliable, and routine spaceflight*. Also in part because the SLS and it's adjacent projects are tied to legacy contractors from the STS program, and also tasked to use existing parts inventory where possible. So when one of these capsules does fail, there'll be some of the same parts on it and some of the same people involved that ignored warnings about the shuttle disasters, and both of those things will be involved on purpose.
*-Soyuz had its issues early, but the modern manned version has only had one failure and it didn't cost the lives of the crew**, and the unmanned version is only the same in name. And despite having lost a few of those, it's still got a better track record than anyone else doing similar work (SpaceX is catching up). Especially Starliner.
**-The only manned abort ever performed. Lockheed had, prior to MS-10, argued that Orion didn't require a powered abort system and NASA's requirement that it include one with redundant triggers was hamstringing the project. After all, from the days of Vostok and Mercury, such a system had never actually been needed. Then in 2018 they abruptly dropped this argument and quietly improved Orion's beyond NASA's demands.
Didn't quite make it to the barge/landing-ship this time, unfortunately. Naughty rocket, you will be punished for disobeying your programming! :P
That's actually obeying its programming - the default landing course for the first stage involves ditching in the sea right next to the barge. It diverts during the landing burn if everything's going right and the rocket is convinced it can make the landing.
Basically it's a sign that something went awry pretty close to the last minute.
Started typing this before, but got off in the rhubarb about Starliner again.
A whole lot of things need to go right for them to try to land the booster. The minimum thrust on just one of the engines is enough for it to actually take off, so they need to bring the rocket to 0 speed and cut engines just as it touches down in what's called a suicide burn (SpaceX calls it a "hover slam" for PR reasons but space nerds have not adopted the term).
All the variables are checked while it's coming down, and if it doesn't have enough fuel to do the suicide burn, or it has too much (which puts it at higher risk of tipping over), or if any of the moving parts stick during their check, or if the engine had any anomalies during ascent, they don't go for the landing and ditch in the water.
Ditching isn't ideal, salt water hates machines. The whole thing needs to be stripped down and a lot of the engine parts are shot. But it's still better than doing a full expendable launch, and a lot better than having it explode on the barge in a failed landing attempt. That destroys a lot of expensive parts and scatters a lot more into the water and little to nothing is reusable.
Also, it's roughly what they plan around - a successful landing is a bonus above budget, not the game plan.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Incorrect: salt water loves machines; it thinks they are very tasty and devours any foolish enough to stray into its territory.
Machines simply hate being digested. Slowly, from the inside like.
He actually seemed like an 8/10 on engineering skills, but a 2/10 (at best) on scientific literacy.
He would have gotten to a higher altitude by spending all of that money on a small plane and a pilot's licence.
I said some of this in the conspiracy theory thread, but I don't actually think he was a flat earther based on his history.
He's been a daredevil for years, but never a big name. His world record for jumping a limo over other limos was sponsored by a steak house. He'd tried for a few years to get sponsors for the rocket and nobody was willing to put their logo on something that dangerous. Then he tried crowd funding it and pushed it on space related social media groups, but the space nerds weren't buying it, either.
Only after all that, he started going on flat earth groups and saying that his rocket flight could prove the earth is flat once and for all, and he got enough crowd funding support to make three flights (two of which ended in the hospital instead of the morgue). I'm convinced he was just using them for the funding, because he needed somebody who would be excited for the outcome, but who didn't know enough about the process to nope the fuck out before he got himself killed.
Wait he only got 450 feet? I could definitely build a better rocket than that
He apparently hit 1800 feet in 2018. Steam rockets have very low Isp, so it was never going to get him very high, but the parachute deploying during liftoff didn't exactly help in that department.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Boeing basically pulled a Volkswagen with the Starliner testing. Rather than doing a full test run that takes 25 hours, they did a bunch of smaller case testing, missing many critical mission transition points.
They also overlapped tests in such a way that the software on the capsule and service module were not tested together, but with an emulator that turned out to be flawed.
With all that Boeing's special legal status in the budget means that they still might get to go ahead with a manned launch next time.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Well let's cross our fingers they don't get someone killed.
The good news, I suppose, is that the known failures are failures that a crew could correct but ground control won't see until it's too late to fix, as opposed to failures that would kill or strand a crew.
The bad news is that without robust testing and a failed flight there are probably still unknown failures, and Boeing's corporate culture does not engender confidence in finding them.
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
If you have a spare hour, this video is well worth a watch. Destin of Smarter Every Day tours the United Launch Alliance factory in Decatur, AL, with ULA CEO Tory Bruno. It’s a start-to-finish look at the rocket assembly process, going from raw materials to finished product. Don’t worry, it’s ITAR compliant.
ULA's a weird company. It's CEO is actually several steps subordinate to the CEO's of Boeing and Lockheed (and several others, but those two are the big ones). The net effect is that basically the entire company is below the "fail upwards" threshold, its people are all very knowledgeable in the rocketry field (I'm not saying its executives are rocket scientists exactly, but if it came down to a written test I think this guy would beat Elon Musk). The downside is that often those very knowledgeable people are standing in line for the blame gallows for shit Boeing fucks up or Lockheed interferes with.
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
edited March 2020
ULA has perhaps the most impressive launch record and vehicle capabilities in all of the space sector. It's hard to beat their reliability.
Also, Tory Bruno is actually a rocket engineer who transitioned to the C-suite. He has a degree in mechanical engineering and worked on structural design and thrust vector control at Lockheed.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
My daughter was very upset that today's SpaceX launch failed, so we had to find an old launch to watch because she was demanding rockets.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Successful re-use of two faring halves, an engine anomaly at T+ 2:21, a failed landing of the first stage. And a successful deployment of the payload.
SpaceX seems to be running into unforeseen failures as these boosters get to 3+ flights.
Aren't we only at two lost?
And several ditched, which is only slightly better than lost, hence the whole mess of suicide burning them into robot boats and all the ditchable boosters sacrificed to practice.
Overall the number of landed vs lost isn't bad but there have been two recent failures, one of which was due to faulty wind data at the landing barge, so it hasn't become a clear pattern yet.
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
Finally, all of those potential astronauts can breathe a huge sigh of relief.
They will have a ~50%+ chance of experiencing their Pringles getting crushed, their Jim-Jams getting rustled, or the whole capsule exploding because of an errant carriage return somewhere in the avionics code. :P :snap:
I've actually met Cassidy twice at SEAL charity events (sat next to him at dinner the first time). Very calm, unassuming guy that was nice to have a conversation with. Almost seemed embarrassed about me bringing up "Hey you've, you know, been to space."
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It is what happens when you have total regulatory capture. Eventually they start believing their own story and quality drops.
The truly twisted thing of this sort of corporate governance is that even if Boeing has no interests in your district and gives you $0 of campaign contribution, fucking with them is still dangerous because other, completely unrelated corporations will also ditch you. This is why every "Stop the special interests" campaigner is absolutely swimming in special interest money.
The moon mission is chained to the SLS and Orion, which in turn are chained to ULA (i.e. Boeing and Lockheed) pork contracts.
Basically, funding for the moon mission is money for the cash furnace.
Didn't quite make it to the barge/landing-ship this time, unfortunately. Naughty rocket, you will be punished for disobeying your programming! :P
With how big a screw-up this was for Starliner (and how more issues keep falling out when they tug on the thread), I think more unmanned tests are inevitable. They just "declined to speculate" on it for the time being.
I certainly hope so, but the Boeing-NASA relationship is pretty screwed up (unless you're a Boeing shareholder) so I wouldn't bet the farm on it happening. Having two software failures in one test after the 737 MAX situation really should have resulted in an immediate statement from NASA saying that they'll be requiring an additional test.
NASA doesn't have to actually put people in the thing, but can't deny it manned rating for such trivialities as being a terrifying deathtrap.
That's actually obeying its programming - the default landing course for the first stage involves ditching in the sea right next to the barge. It diverts during the landing burn if everything's going right and the rocket is convinced it can make the landing.
Basically it's a sign that something went awry pretty close to the last minute.
Fortunately I don't think the White House has really gotten any of its big NASA asks so far in this administration. They've tried completely eliminating education funding and most earth science stuff in every proposed budget so far, but even the current boondoggle of a congress keeps overruling that.
This is giving me uncomfortable flashbacks to Soyuz 1.
Personally I think more Challenger and Columbia. In part because this is a foreseen risk happening in an era otherwise notable for safe, reliable, and routine spaceflight*. Also in part because the SLS and it's adjacent projects are tied to legacy contractors from the STS program, and also tasked to use existing parts inventory where possible. So when one of these capsules does fail, there'll be some of the same parts on it and some of the same people involved that ignored warnings about the shuttle disasters, and both of those things will be involved on purpose.
*-Soyuz had its issues early, but the modern manned version has only had one failure and it didn't cost the lives of the crew**, and the unmanned version is only the same in name. And despite having lost a few of those, it's still got a better track record than anyone else doing similar work (SpaceX is catching up). Especially Starliner.
**-The only manned abort ever performed. Lockheed had, prior to MS-10, argued that Orion didn't require a powered abort system and NASA's requirement that it include one with redundant triggers was hamstringing the project. After all, from the days of Vostok and Mercury, such a system had never actually been needed. Then in 2018 they abruptly dropped this argument and quietly improved Orion's beyond NASA's demands.
Started typing this before, but got off in the rhubarb about Starliner again.
A whole lot of things need to go right for them to try to land the booster. The minimum thrust on just one of the engines is enough for it to actually take off, so they need to bring the rocket to 0 speed and cut engines just as it touches down in what's called a suicide burn (SpaceX calls it a "hover slam" for PR reasons but space nerds have not adopted the term).
All the variables are checked while it's coming down, and if it doesn't have enough fuel to do the suicide burn, or it has too much (which puts it at higher risk of tipping over), or if any of the moving parts stick during their check, or if the engine had any anomalies during ascent, they don't go for the landing and ditch in the water.
Ditching isn't ideal, salt water hates machines. The whole thing needs to be stripped down and a lot of the engine parts are shot. But it's still better than doing a full expendable launch, and a lot better than having it explode on the barge in a failed landing attempt. That destroys a lot of expensive parts and scatters a lot more into the water and little to nothing is reusable.
Also, it's roughly what they plan around - a successful landing is a bonus above budget, not the game plan.
Machines simply hate being digested. Slowly, from the inside like.
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A sad ending for a rather unfortunately deluded man. A documentary was made about him in 2019:
He actually seemed like an 8/10 on engineering skills, but a 2/10 (at best) on scientific literacy.
He would have gotten to a higher altitude by spending all of that money on a small plane and a pilot's licence.
He's been a daredevil for years, but never a big name. His world record for jumping a limo over other limos was sponsored by a steak house. He'd tried for a few years to get sponsors for the rocket and nobody was willing to put their logo on something that dangerous. Then he tried crowd funding it and pushed it on space related social media groups, but the space nerds weren't buying it, either.
Only after all that, he started going on flat earth groups and saying that his rocket flight could prove the earth is flat once and for all, and he got enough crowd funding support to make three flights (two of which ended in the hospital instead of the morgue). I'm convinced he was just using them for the funding, because he needed somebody who would be excited for the outcome, but who didn't know enough about the process to nope the fuck out before he got himself killed.
She's survived by two children, six grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, and (thanks to her) basically all of the astronauts.
He apparently hit 1800 feet in 2018. Steam rockets have very low Isp, so it was never going to get him very high, but the parachute deploying during liftoff didn't exactly help in that department.
Boeing basically pulled a Volkswagen with the Starliner testing. Rather than doing a full test run that takes 25 hours, they did a bunch of smaller case testing, missing many critical mission transition points.
They also overlapped tests in such a way that the software on the capsule and service module were not tested together, but with an emulator that turned out to be flawed.
With all that Boeing's special legal status in the budget means that they still might get to go ahead with a manned launch next time.
The bad news is that without robust testing and a failed flight there are probably still unknown failures, and Boeing's corporate culture does not engender confidence in finding them.
ULA's a weird company. It's CEO is actually several steps subordinate to the CEO's of Boeing and Lockheed (and several others, but those two are the big ones). The net effect is that basically the entire company is below the "fail upwards" threshold, its people are all very knowledgeable in the rocketry field (I'm not saying its executives are rocket scientists exactly, but if it came down to a written test I think this guy would beat Elon Musk). The downside is that often those very knowledgeable people are standing in line for the blame gallows for shit Boeing fucks up or Lockheed interferes with.
Also, Tory Bruno is actually a rocket engineer who transitioned to the C-suite. He has a degree in mechanical engineering and worked on structural design and thrust vector control at Lockheed.
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Successful re-use of two faring halves, an engine anomaly at T+ 2:21, a failed landing of the first stage. And a successful deployment of the payload.
SpaceX seems to be running into unforeseen failures as these boosters get to 3+ flights.
Aren't we only at two lost?
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
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And several ditched, which is only slightly better than lost, hence the whole mess of suicide burning them into robot boats and all the ditchable boosters sacrificed to practice.
https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-competitor-oneweb-is-reportedly-bankrupt/
They will have a ~50%+ chance of experiencing their Pringles getting crushed, their Jim-Jams getting rustled, or the whole capsule exploding because of an errant carriage return somewhere in the avionics code.
SN3 is dead, long live SN4.
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