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Starliner Fails to Make Journey to ISS

posted by janrinok on Friday December 20 2019, @06:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the keep-on-trying dept.

PiMuNu writes:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50855395

The Boeing company is going to have to cut short the uncrewed demonstration flight of its new astronaut capsule.

The Starliner launched successfully on its Atlas rocket from Florida, but then suffered technical problems that prevented it from taking the correct path to the International Space Station.

It appears the capsule burnt too much fuel as it operated its engines, leaving an insufficient supply to complete its mission.

Starliner will now come back to Earth. A landing is planned in the New Mexico desert in about 48 hours.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @11:43PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20 2019, @11:43PM (#934853)

    The capsule is designed for up to 7 folks. The first crewed mission will be 3.
    If they had 3 aboard, how long would the consumables last?
    Tick Tock, tick tock

    Do they think they have the ability to bring them down safely in that time?

    Do they have the ground systematic thinking-through-the-problem infrastructure to know this is the allotted time?

    The first rule for Apollo 13 was not to make things worse.
    "I'll get back to you" or "we are working the problem" can be counterproductive in a time limited situation.

    Clearly they need 'nother non-crewed test flight.
    But this is an opportunity to see how the ground decision systems work for real stuff where there is not a video game pause button.
    Having it happen over the holiday makes it even a better ground test opportunity.

    Hopefully NASA gets are useful set of reality check for resume crewed flight from this.
    On this Friday before Christmas, it would be interesting to see you much of NASA is on the holiday path versus the bring the sim them home safe path.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 21 2019, @12:07AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 21 2019, @12:07AM (#934860) Journal
    Looks like the key consumable is propellant. If you can deorbit before it's a problem, then it doesn't matter much how close you were to running out of the rest. But that stuff runs out fast.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @01:08AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @01:08AM (#934870)

      Or O2 before there is enough think time for the ground to make a plan.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 21 2019, @04:02AM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 21 2019, @04:02AM (#934916) Journal
        The only think Ground has to do is "is there more delta-v left than our designated threshold? If not, land the vehicle."

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:08PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:08PM (#935028)

          Space isn't intuitive. For the obvious stuff: Land on a mountain - crew dies. Land in the middle of the ocean - timely recovery may not be possible. Come in too hot - crew dies. Land in the middle of a city - people die. Land in unfriendly lands - crew may be in danger, recovery difficult.

          But even when you get into deorbiting there's a surprisingly large amount of art involved. For instance atmospheric braking can bring you down even if you don't have enough delta v to get the exact insertion you want, but calculating the exact change in speed there - let alone the resultant trajectory is not really possible, so it comes with a substantial risk:reward calculation especially as you start factoring in the above issues.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 22 2019, @03:03PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 22 2019, @03:03PM (#935181) Journal
            It doesn't matter if space is intuitive or not. That's the decision process either way. No amount of art is going to replace the delta-v required to get to the ISS. And returning to Earth is a matter of waiting a few hours until you get a good position for a return. The O2 and other crew consumables required is going to be a whole lot less than the propellant required to deorbit.