SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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 :(