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ASAP reviews Boeing failure, positive SpaceX success ahead of Commercial Crew announcement
As NASA prepares to provide updated launch date targets for the uncrewed and crewed Commercial Crew demonstration missions from both SpaceX and Boeing – as well as flight crew assignments for each provider – the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) held its quarterly meeting last Thursday, during which they outlined a failure on Boeing's part that could potentially lead to a redesign of a critical element of Starliner. The ASAP also outlined multiple points of positive progress on SpaceX's part.
As was first reported by Eric Berger on Ars Technica, Boeing suffered a test stand failure of Starliner's critical pad abort thrusters in late-June, a failure that reportedly ended with the leaking of volatile propellant from the thruster system.
In multiple statements to numerous outlets thereafter, Boeing stated that they were "confident we found the cause and are moving forward with corrective action." But that wasn't quite the take-away from the ASAP meeting that occurred days after the company issued its statement.
"Boeing recently conducted a hot fire test for their low-altitude abort milestone for the CST-100," noted a member of the ASAP panel. "And there was an anomaly on that test that we need to better understand in terms of its potential impact on the design and operation and the schedule. And so although there's a lot of interest in this issue, Boeing has asked for some additional time to step back and understand that a little better."
New launch target dates, as well as the names of the astronauts assigned to fly to the ISS on Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon, will be announced on Friday, August 3, at 11 AM EDT.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 31 2018, @09:49PM (5 children)
If SpaceX got the kind of money that ULA gets, I wonder what they would be able to do?
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @09:56PM (3 children)
Too much money can be a curse. Just look at Mozilla.
However, if BFR and Starlink are successful, SpaceX could be rolling in a lot of dough in 10 years. In fact, they predict that Starlink will be the company's biggest source of revenue [soylentnews.org], not launch services.
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(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday July 31 2018, @11:39PM (1 child)
Boeing's contract is 4.2 billions for 2-6 flights of 7 seats capsule. SpaceX's is 2.6 billions for the same.
Assuming the best scenario (6x7) it comes down to 100 million per seat for Boeing and 62 for SpaceX. That's a very wishful thinking given the protect delays and general shape of the industry.
Russians are charging 75-80 per seat (and 1-2 seats can be bought - bulk is way cheaper)
Therefore I predict that no American company or the government will ever be able to send humans to space more efficiently than Russia, let alone China or India.
Having said that, Russia have stopped accepting orders so perhaps our government really has no choice. https://www.rt.com/usa/372667-nasa-spacex-boeing-iss/ [rt.com]
Perhaps, Americans will never again leave this rock; in our lifetimes at least.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:14AM
$62 million is about what a Falcon 9 cargo/satellite launch is supposed to cost, but it only gets you one seat, eh? NASA has pretty much always overpaid for the commercial launches to the ISS, and the existence of their NASA contract is why SpaceX is alive today.
SpaceX may be a cheap launcher, but there is more work that goes into manned flights (especially their very first ones) to make sure we don't have dead humans on live streaming video. On August 3rd, we will learn the names of the astronauts who may get the opportunity to DIE on SpaceX's or Boeing's rocket.
This is only the first such contract for SpaceX, and they significantly underbid their Boeing competition. It's possible that they will have to make even less money per seat in the future (Blue Origin may be entering the fray with New Glenn).
SpaceX plans to skip human spaceflight certification for Falcon Heavy and fly humans on BFR next. Which could carry an absolute arseload of humans or cargo to the ISS or other space station, supposedly with cheaper launch costs than Falcon 9 or Falcon 1. They could also put up a BA 2100 [wikipedia.org] with it.
SpaceX also plans to send humans to Mars... with a target date of around 2024. Even if that date slips by a decade, that will be within most of our lifetimes.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @11:46PM
This is correct. More money = managers hire more people (manager salary is based on the number of people under them). It's a pyramid scheme. More people take longer to do anything. A small number of people in an organization do the real work. An internal NASA study found that number to be 1 in 30. Your job as an engineer is not to solver problem, but to work through the morass of people around you clogging up the system.
Aviation Week & Space Technology had an article about 20 years ago on the Indian Space program and compared it to China and how they were undercutting China's price by a huge factor and one of the engineers in the Chinese space program lamented they couldn't get any work done because there were too many people and it was nearly impossible to get anything done. For related, see adding manpower in The Mythical Man Month and why.
Space has long been the perfect jobs program because it's rocket science and who understands any of that stuff. If they say it takes 14,000 people to design a toilet seat, they must know what they're talking about because they're geniuses. Right?
(Score: 1) by Type44Q on Sunday August 05 2018, @12:28AM
Build flying cars that can travel to Uranus.