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Boeing hit with 61 safety fixes for astronaut capsule:
In releasing the outcome of a joint investigation, NASA said it still has not decided whether to require Boeing to launch the Starliner again without a crew, or go straight to putting astronauts on board.
Douglas Loverro, NASA's human exploration and operation chief, told reporters that Boeing must first present a plan and schedule for the 61 corrective actions. Boeing expects to have a plan in NASA's hands by the end of this month.
Loverro said the space agency wants to verify, among other things, that Boeing has retested all the necessary software for Starliner.
"At the end of the day, what we have got to decide is ... do we have enough confidence to say we are ready to fly with a crew or do we believe that we need another uncrewed testing," Loverro said.
Boeing's Jim Chilton, a senior vice president, said his company is ready to repeat a test flight without a crew, if NASA decides on one.
"'All of us want crew safety No. 1," Chilton said. "Whatever testing we've got to do to make that happen, we embrace it."
Loverro said he felt compelled to designate the test flight as a "high-visibility close call." He said that involves more scrutiny of Boeing and NASA to make sure mistakes like this don't happen again.
Software errors not only left the Starliner in the wrong orbit following liftoff and precluded a visit to the International Space Station but they could have caused a collision between the capsule and its separated service module toward the end of the two-day flight. That error was caught and corrected by ground controllers just hours before touchdown.
Citation: Boeing hit with 61 safety fixes for astronaut capsule (2020, March 6) retrieved 6 March 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-03-boeing-safety-astronaut-capsule.html
Previously:
NASA Safety Panel Calls for Reviews after Second Starliner Software Problem
737 Max Fix Slips To Summer--And That's Just One Of Boeing's Problems
Boeing Starliner Lands Safely in the Desert After Failing to Reach Correct Orbit
Boeing's Failed Starliner Mission Strains 'Reliability' Pitch
Starliner Fails to Make Journey to ISS
Boeing Provides Damage Control After Inspector General's Report on Commercial Crew Program
Boeing Received 'Unnecessary' Contract Boost for Astronaut Capsule, Watchdog Says
Boeing Performs Starliner Pad Abort Test. Declares Success Though 1 of 3 Parachutes Fails to Deploy.
Boeing Readies "Astronaut" for Likely October Test Launch
Reuters: Boeing Starliner Flights to the ISS Delayed by at Least Another 3 Months
SpaceX, Boeing (and NASA) Push Back 1st Test Launches of Private Spaceships
Launch of Boeing's Starliner Commercial Crew Vehicle Could be Delayed by Thruster Issue
Boeing Crewed Test Flight to the ISS May be Upgraded to a Full Mission
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday March 09 2020, @02:03AM
Maybe, maybe not.
You're quite correct about human training needs: it's actually pretty ridiculous when you think about it. Lifespans are typically only 65-100 years (the way we're running our medical system in the US doesn't exactly promote long life for average people, but other places are doing it much better), with, at best, about 75-80 being the cut-off for productivity for most people. Yet it takes 20-25 years to prepare a modern human for productive work. That's at least 1/3 of our lifespan! I can't think of any manufactured product where the construction and testing time would be that great a fraction of its total life-cycle. Aircraft probably have the worst numbers here, except maybe some military equipment (which can be blamed on some other factors really), but even here a normal passenger jet, while it does take a lot longer to build than a passenger car, still enjoys a lifespan measured in decades.
Combine this with the plummeting birth rates in industrialized nations and it's imperative that we develop life-extension therapies and other medical technologies so that we have significantly longer productive lifespans. Spending 20-30 years just preparing to be productive workers (closer to 30 for specialized medical professionals), and then only having ~40 years of productivity, is extremely wasteful. It wasn't like this in the past when someone was an adult at 13-15 and we didn't have that much to learn to be productive in our society, but society has changed a lot.
If we can modify ourselves to have effectively unlimited lifespans, then we have a chance of avoiding obsolescence to AI.