Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 16 submissions in the queue.

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.

See also:

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Starliner Fails to Make Journey to ISS | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 45 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (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.