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Starliner Fails to Make Journey to ISS

posted by janrinok on Friday December 20 2019, @06:31PM   
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.

See also:

• https://spacenews.com/starliner-suffers-off-nominal-orbital-insertion-after-launch/

• https://spacenews.com/starliner-anomaly-to-prevent-iss-docking/

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Original Submission

• Re:off-nominalRe:off-nominal (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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  [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

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• Re:off-nominal(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?

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