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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: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday December 21 2019, @02:40AM (15 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Saturday December 21 2019, @02:40AM (#934905) Journal

    Evening news said it was a software problem. Apparently a timer was way off or something.

    Maybe it's time to ban outsourcing software. Ask Boeing how much it's cost them so far.

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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday December 21 2019, @03:04AM

    by RS3 (6367) on Saturday December 21 2019, @03:04AM (#934908)

    On another site I commented: It was a relativistic problem: the spaceship accelerated so fast that it altered the space-time continuum just enough and MCAS overcompensated.

    Don't knock those outsourcers. For one, they make the stockholders happy. Well, for a short while. And secondly, they improve my career prospects. :)

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 21 2019, @03:07AM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Saturday December 21 2019, @03:07AM (#934909) Journal

    https://youtu.be/4QKr4-tNtPc?t=285 [youtu.be]

    Scott Manley indicated that there might have been a problem connecting to TDRS satellites when Starliner was over the Middle East region, which could have triggered the software issue.

    Boeing built 3rd-gen TDRS [mediaroom.com] lol

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:47AM (12 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:47AM (#934935)

    A problem like this isn't just software - it's systemic. In rocketry there are a billion different things that can go wrong, and if even a single one of them does - then you have a mission failure, often with catastrophic consequences. So the name of the game is redundancy. You have sensors and then sensors for your sensors for your sensors. This is also why during a SpaceX launch literally any launch related employee can completely cancel a launch at any point completely unilaterally.

    Burning more fuel than you need to 'survive' is something that should set off a million failsafes and triggered immediate manual intervention. That it didn't is something far more systemic than just some software bug that they're blaming. Boeing, as a company, seems to be basically just broken. They've gotten extremely good at getting the government to give them a practically unlimited amount of taxpayer money, but they pretty much suck at actually doing anything with it now a days. Interesting because they used to be a phenomenal company. I blame the Masters of Business Annihilation.

    Saddest thing for me here is that Bridenstine actually seemed like a good guy. No clue what sort of influence Boeing has but he seems to have turned into yet another one of their lackeys.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 21 2019, @02:37PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Saturday December 21 2019, @02:37PM (#934981) Journal

      Saddest thing for me here is that Bridenstine actually seemed like a good guy. No clue what sort of influence Boeing has but he seems to have turned into yet another one of their lackeys.

      Rocket Report: NASA chief hits back at Boeing, Falcon 9’s extended coast [arstechnica.com]

      Bridenstine hits back at Boeing lobbying. As readers of this report know, Boeing has been aggressively pushing for Congress to fund the SLS rocket's Exploration Upper Stage. It has even proposed flying the first Artemis crew mission to the lunar surface on a Block 1B version of the SLS rocket with the advanced upper stage. Among the issues with this is that the EUS is very, very unlikely to be developed in time for the Artemis III launch in 2024 or even soon thereafter.

      Strong words from the chief ... The Washington Post had [washingtonpost.com] a good story tracking these behind-the-scene politics, and it captured NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine's strongest words to date on the issue. "NASA believes that there is tremendous value in the Exploration Upper Stage, but no one at NASA believes it will be available by Artemis III," he said. He also had this to say about Boeing's lobbying effort: "All of our contractors lobby Congress to achieve what is in their best interest even though it may not be in the best interest of the nation. This is another example of that. My job as NASA administrator is to make sure we do what's right for the country and for the taxpayer." As well he should.

      I think he's doing a balancing act. It's an impossible task for a NASA administrator to reel in Boeing's influence because Boeing has allies in Congress. Only a continuation of Boeing's fuckups and SpaceX's successes (particularly Starship) can put a stop to it.

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      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @08:13PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @08:13PM (#935049)

        I'd really like to imagine you're right. And it does indeed make sense. I mean he is the head of NASA at the advent of what is probably the single most exciting time in history in terms of spaceflight.

        Yet I've found that in real life 'walking a fine line', 'playing a balancing act', 'making progress one small step at a time', and so on are often rationalizations we use to justify what, in hindsight, was just simple corruption. He was playing PR for this incident trying to spin a complete mission failure, as a success. And, as the press conference happening right now is emphasizing, this mission was a much bigger failure than was initially let alone. The craft failed to deploy its comms equipment appropriately, it entered into the wrong guidance mode, the engines burned themselves beyond safe margins, all navigation stuff completely flopped, and more. Even better one of the reporters asked why there were no redundancies or fail-safes. Boeing's response 'We're not really sure. We're looking into that.' Point of this being that Bridenstine presumably knew this when he was trying to frame the mission as being 'a complete success, except for that whole docking thing'.

        At some point somebody needs to simply start speaking honestly about Boeing. Because right now pretty much of all of D.C. is role-playing the emperor's new clothes with them, and it's getting increasingly absurd. I mean we could imagine that the goal is to make it absurd but to what end? What's supposed to happen? Why can't that happen now when they are screwing up basically every single thing they're doing in ways that'd be borderline comical if not for the cost, both dollar and human, that they're inflicting on society?

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 21 2019, @05:07PM (9 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 21 2019, @05:07PM (#935007) Journal

      Burning more fuel than you need to 'survive' is something that should set off a million failsafes and triggered immediate manual intervention.

      It did and they did. Not much point to criticizing them for things they did right. And you don't need a million failsafes, you just need one that works.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:19PM (8 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:19PM (#935030)

        No, no such thing happened. The whole point of these systems is you don't end up in space without enough fuel to reach your destination - exactly the scenario they are now in. It's only by dumb luck that they have enough fuel to attempt an orbital insertion, which given Boeing's recent track record they'll probably also manage to fuck up.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:44PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21 2019, @07:44PM (#935038)

          Actually listening to the NASA press conference now. They screwed up far worse than is even being reported. Just about everything on that craft screwed up. It failed to make a proper satellite link, the engines burnt themselves out in terms of both heat and utilization, and more. Boeing is joke, but the punchline is the taxpayer being forced to waste tens of billions of dollars a year subsidizing this useless company that's clearly simply no longer effective at anything other than buying congressmen.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 22 2019, @02:51PM (6 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 22 2019, @02:51PM (#935177) Journal

          The whole point of these systems is you don't end up in space without enough fuel to reach your destination

          So what? As I noted before, you wouldn't need these systems in the first place, if the "point" of the systems could be perfectly achieved. And they did end up with enough propellant to reach Earth, the destination that one attempts to reach when one doesn't have enough propellant to reach the original destination of the ISS.

          It's only by dumb luck that they have enough fuel to attempt an orbital insertion

          So you claim.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @07:07AM (4 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @07:07AM (#935415)

            Listen to the press conference. Everything I said, and a whole lot more, was completely affirmed. Facts tend to be more valuable than poorly honed intuition.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 23 2019, @09:50AM (3 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 23 2019, @09:50AM (#935440) Journal
              Ok, I read the transcript. No, you still don't get it. But let's quote that excellent question in full:

              KEITH COWLING (NASAWatch.com):Yeah. I wanted to go back to the timer thing for one moment. This is kind of a basic Spacecraft 101 thing that we've been doing for a half a century, and I'm just wondering why there wasn't a redundancy string or a backup system that would kick in or have the different systems bode with each other to see if the time was correct.And moreover, this issue of the crew possibly, you know,being in a position, had there been a crew to do something,how would they have known the timing if the timing was wrong? I mean, would they have to look at their wristwatches?And another question.You know, there's no live video from this mission, and I'm kind of wondering why because SpaceX and Russia Soyuz program do it all the time. Why is Boeing so shy about in mission—[audio break].

              ADMINISTRATOR JIM BRIDENSTINE:Did we lose him?

              JIM CHILTON:Is he still on?

              ADMINISTRATOR JIM BRIDENSTINE:I'm sorry. If he's speaking, we can't hear him.

              BETTINA INCLÁN:I think something happened with the system. Everyone from our end, there's nothing on the screen. So.

              KEITH COWLING (NASAWatch.com):Hello?

              BETTINA INCLÁN:Hi. Can you hear us? Can you hear me?

              KEITH COWLING (NASAWatch.com):Can you hear me?

              BETTINA INCLÁN:Yes.

              KEITH COWLING (NASAWatch.com):Okay. Do I have toask the question again?

              BETTINA INCLÁN:I guess where you left off.

              KEITH COWLING (NASAWatch.com):I don't know where I left off. Very simply, the timing system on the spacecraft,this is basic technology that we've been doing half a century. Why is it that there wasn't a redundancy string or a backup system that could detect the error like boding with one system or another to check the time? There has been mention that a crew, had there been one on the spacecraft,could have noticed this, and how would they have known the proper mission time if it was wrong? I mean, would they have had to look at their wristwatches?And, secondly, why is there no live video from this mission? Soyuz and SpaceX do it all the time. Why is Boeing so shy about providing live video?

              JIM CHILTON:Okay. I'll kind of start, and then I'll turn it over to Steve if he wants to go deep on the—we haven't—we haven't delved into this deep enough to answer the redundancy question,Keith. So I just don't know. Obviously,that's a great idea, and in fact, we'll go see why what we had in there didn't perform as expected.On the crew, they wouldn't have been timer activated. They would have been on a mission profile and said, hey, I didn't—they would have known based on spacecraft instruments, "I didn't leave where I wanted to be," and we would have had voice-to-ground and said, "Go do an orbital insertion burn." And they would have done that manually. This spacecraft lets the crew take over at any time. So we wouldn't have been as dependent on those com links.From a Boeing video standpoint, the choice we made on this flight test was just to record it, and had—once we were docked with the Station, all that could have come down through the Station. We just chose to record it and then release it once we land. We thought we'd be sending it down from the Station at about the time we opened the hatch, but since we didn't rendezvous,unfortunately, we don't have it. So it wasn't a "we're not transparent." It was just we architected the avionics not to—on this very first live test not to send it in real time.And, Steve?

              STEVE STICH:And I'll add a little bit more to the crew. I mean, what the crew would have done when the spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle, they would have noticed an extreme amount of jet firings. They would have noticed that the guidance mode was in the wrong mode for where they should have been.They could have went free drift and stop those thruster firings and just kind of flown the spacecraft manually. This spacecraft has a manual capability to bypass the flight computers, which is a very elegant design. They could have gone to the manual mode.And then the crew is also trained to know that "I need to execute a maneuver at about 31 minutes to get the vehicle into orbit," and so they could have gone to a manual mode of the software and executed a—or manual mode and executed a burn at approximately 31 minutes to just get the vehicle into orbit safely and at that point then work to recover com.They also—there's a manual capability with the com system to where if there's something going off nominal with pointing to TDRS, the crew can actually command various antennas and decide to get a com link. So having been in the ops world in the past, I think the crew would have methodically worked those steps, recovered com, talked about executing a burn if they got com back with the ground, and then executed that burn and got us in a safe orbit. And then we can recover the rest of the mission.

              So yes, it was a subtle timing issue that caused the mission to fail. And yes, that sort of thing is systemic, which shows that there likely are other such subtle problems that could kill missions and perhaps crew in the future.

              But you got it completely wrong. Redundancy (or rather vastly more mission redundancy) is not a panacea for whatever breaks. It adds things that can break as well. And it takes up mass, volume, and mission capabilities. Nor are the presence of the above problems of the press conference an indication that Boeing's effort has somehow gone off the rails. That's the whole point of flying unmanned missions now - to find this stuff and get a working vehicle. Meanwhile, a genuine "million failsafes" means you don't fly, for one reason or another.

              Sure, a spacecraft is complex, but it's not that complex. Slapping more redundancy on it isn't a long term solution. Testing it repeatedly so that you can figure out what parts need redundancy and what parts don't is a better approach.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @03:55PM (2 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @03:55PM (#935517)

                Now you're just babbling because you know you're wrong so the mental gymnastics kicks in to avoid acknowledging that. Keep this up and you'll be voting democrat before you know it.

                The Delta IV has a payload capacity on the order of 50,000 pounds depending on the orbit. The Atlas V around 30,000. Redundancies and redundancies for your redundancies have a negligible mass cost - and provide unimaginable value. There's no technical reason they didn't include redundancies. We're not even talking some hugely complex stuff. Boeing is screwing up things as simple as mission timing. Many of these redundancies can be entirely implemented in software and with negligible scale hardware redundancies working as redundancies for your redundancies. The one and only problem here is Boeing. They're an incapable relic of a company that would have crashed and burned long ago if not for their position at the height of crony capitalism, alongside their coasting off inertia and taking credit for what entirely different people under an entirely different company, that happened to share the same name, achieved decades ago.

                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 24 2019, @01:19AM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 24 2019, @01:19AM (#935720) Journal

                  Redundancies and redundancies for your redundancies have a negligible mass cost

                  Nonsense, particularly when you get to engine systems and life support.

                  and provide unimaginable value

                  Sorry, I can "imagine" quite well their value. That's why I'm complaining in the first place.

                  Many of these redundancies can be entirely implemented in software and with negligible scale hardware redundancies working as redundancies for your redundancies.

                  Then they aren't redundancies. No amount of software can replace a bad engine or life support system.

                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 24 2019, @03:54AM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 24 2019, @03:54AM (#935784) Journal
                  I see the Starliner just landed without major damage. So despite the alleged problems, it still operated pretty well. I think this brings up one of the strategies more important than some imaginary level of redundancy, namely, aborts. When not if things don't work out, it's better to have a plan B than to have a backup doodad.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @07:11AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @07:11AM (#935417)

            Also I suspect you're not the sort to actively seek out information on your own here you go:

            Main NASA Page [nasa.gov]
            Audio of conference [nasa.gov]
            Transcript of conference [nasa.gov]

            The second to last question is particularly great. It was originally supposed to be the last question but they decided to take one more. Could be a coincidence but it's a question that ended up painting Boeing in an unimaginably negative light, based on their own answers. Great stuff. 'Why were there no redundancies or failsafes?' 'We're not sure. We're looking into that.' Hahaha.