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Boeing Starliner's first crewed ISS flight delayed due to technical issues:
Boeing's Starliner was supposed to fly its first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on July 21st, but a couple of technical issues has kept the company from pushing through with its plan. Together with NASA, the aerospace corporation has announced that it's delaying the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft's Crew Flight Test date yet again to address the risks presented by two new problems Boeing engineers have detected.
The first issue lies with the spacecraft's parachute system. Boeing designed the Starliner capsule to float back down to Earth with the help of three parachutes. According to The New York Times, the company discovered that parts of the lines connecting the system to the capsule don't have the ability to tolerate the spacecraft's load in case only two of the three parachutes are deployed correctly. Since the capsule will be carrying human passengers back to our planet, the company has to look at every aspect of its spacecraft to ensure their safety as much as possible. Boeing expects to do another parachute testing before it schedules another launch attempt.
In addition to its parachute problem, Boeing is also reassessing the use of a certain tape adhesive to wrap hundreds of feet of wiring. Apparently, the tape could be flammable, so engineers are looking to use another kind of wrapping for areas of the spacecraft with the greatest fire risk.
The Crew Flight Test is the last hurdle the company has to overcome to regularly start ferrying astronauts to the ISS. NASA chose Boeing as one of its commercial crew partners along with SpaceX, but it has fallen behind its peer over the years. The Starliner has completed uncrewed flights in the past as part of the tests it has to go through for crewed missions. But SpaceX already has 10 crewed flights under its belt, with the first one taking place way back in 2020. In addition to taking astronauts to the ISS and bringing human spaceflight back to American soil since the last space shuttle launch in 2011, SpaceX has also flown civilians to space.
[...] "Crew safety remains the highest priority for NASA and its industry providers, and emerging issues are not uncommon in human spaceflight especially during development. If you look back two months ago at the work we had ahead of us, it's almost all complete. The combined team is resilient and resolute in their goal of flying crew on Starliner as soon as it is safe to do so. If a schedule adjustment needs to be made in the future, then we will certainly do that as we have done before. We will only fly when we are ready."
(Score: 5, Touché) by Spamalope on Saturday June 03, @01:50PM (1 child)
The issue: We feel we still have some cost over-run margin we haven't milked 100%...
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday June 04, @02:39PM
My non-expert understanding is this is a fixed-price gig and Boing-Boing doesn't get anything extra for not getting this right on the first try. The economic incentive was to get this right in the smallest number of flights possible and they are struggling.
Their annual financial reports are now reporting significant costs from this project.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Fnord666 on Saturday June 03, @02:19PM (8 children)
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday June 03, @05:00PM (2 children)
For parachute systems, I think "fall = fail"
(Score: 4, Funny) by canopic jug on Saturday June 03, @05:32PM (1 child)
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Sunday June 04, @03:32PM
Boeing's Starliner the 737 MAX of spacecraft.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 4, Funny) by hendrikboom on Saturday June 03, @05:59PM (2 children)
There has never been a controlled double-blind test of whether parachutes actually reduce the death rate of people falling out of airplanes.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Rich on Sunday June 04, @12:09AM (1 child)
Well, there has been an investigation of the topic using a scientifically rigorous procedure, just not sure if they included the "blind" part: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094 [bmj.com]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday June 04, @11:47PM
The article itself says that the study was not blinded.
And yes, I've seen this result before.
They couldn't recruit test subjects unless the airplane was parked on the ground during the trials.
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Insightful) by corey on Saturday June 03, @11:00PM (1 child)
“the company discovered that parts of the lines connecting the system to the capsule don't have the ability to tolerate the spacecraft's load in case only two of the three parachutes are deployed correctly.”
Sounds like they just did an FMEA and one of the items (failure modes) was ‘only two parachute deploy’, then an oh shit moment ensued. I’m amazed it took them until now to actually have done this.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday June 04, @03:53AM
Yeah, how was this not caught before now?? Even from the start of the design phase I would have expected a 2-out-of-3 would have been a hard requirement. That part isn't rocket science!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday June 03, @03:27PM (5 children)
Qualifying the materials for wrapping tape and designing parachutes for off-nominal deployment are activities that belong early in development.
When I was at Boeing, the incompetence from people like the degreed engineer who confidently assured me that friction decreases with increasing speed was held in check by a force of graybeards.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday June 04, @03:58AM (4 children)
Friction between what precisely? Aside from the extra energy needed to overcome initial inertia, I never come across situations where alpha (friction coefficient) changed. Then again, I didn't do a physics degree. Is there something fun hiding in fluid dynamics? /curious
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday June 04, @02:52PM (1 child)
Barring fiddly bits like melting at the material interfaces or abrasion changing the contact area, it is constant. That's parent's point. When Parent was at Boeing, they had experienced people (graybeards) that would perform a craniorectoectomy (removing one's head from their ass) when someone did substandard work. The implied question is "Are those guys all gone now?"
They very well may be; I don't know.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday June 05, @01:43AM
Yeah I was trying to give the no-beard the benefit of the doubt here, thinking maybe there's something funky whereby at higher velocities you might end up with different drag zones due to having an immediate air layer effectively adhering to the surface but as a result exposing a different coefficient to the rest of the surrounding air, resulting in perceived reduced friction. I have observed that higher education can at times dole out teachings which while technically correct also have little relevance to practical applications, and was curious whether this might've been one of those cases (and I might learn something cool-but-probably-useless by asking). Sadly, it seems I was overly optimistic.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Sunday June 04, @05:09PM (1 child)
He went on to say that your car has less friction at high speeds.
It was not the only example. The person who told me a hydrazine thruster didn't use hydrazine for thrust was another.
Eventually, my co-worker who didn't know the difference between a bit and a byte (I am not kidding) got forced out, but only after the project manager had spent months telling everyone they should "learn from him".
It wasn't just Boeing. I interviewed with someone at another company who could not understand, after repeated explanations, the difference between on-the-ground mission planning software and onboard flight software.
I treasure the memories of some highly competent people, but I think they've all retired. What's left are the kind of people who make a life-safety critical system depend on a single sensor with no checking.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday June 05, @01:51AM
Well technically I suppose a hydrazine thruster uses mainly nitrogen and water for thrust, but that's reaching for it.
Working with genuinely competent people is a delight. Working with people genuinely keen on improving their skill is good. Outside that envelope work becomes a progressively painful environment to be in!
Whenever I get exposed to the workings of a new domain, I always end up marveling at how things haven't completely fallen over yet :(
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Saturday June 03, @07:45PM (2 children)
Given the development history, who would want to fry - er, *fly* - in this high-tech coffin?
(Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Sunday June 04, @03:59AM (1 child)
But... but... this has been the most rigorously designed coffin ever! Just look at the amount spent on it compared to that space cowboy thing SpaceX flies!
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Sunday June 04, @10:37PM
I mean, gaming chairs and touchscreens in a spacecraft? And those suits? SpaceX is a joke, Jeff Bezo says so.