Additional hatch operations on a Boeing vehicle – but this time it's Starliner Boeing's Starliner will remain at the International Space Station (ISS) for several more days. NASA and Boeing are now targeting no earlier than June 26 for a return to Earth. The new date was announced by NASA during a teleconference on June 18 and is the latest in a succession of date revisions. Previously, the return had …
I'm sure that that is extremely reassuring to the highly-trained professionals that are actually in the ISS.
Apparently, access to space has gone from relying on the lowest bidder to relying of the least capable that still has a government contract.
And they want to go to the Moon with these clowns . . .
Being Boeing, whether the delays, first for the spacewalk, and now for 'better understanding', are actually that, or just cover while they are desperately trying to figure out how to get Williams and Wilmore back to earth in one piece, remains to be seen.
In olden times a Soyuz craft was usully on stand-by to use as lifeboat. I would hope that role is now filled by a Dragon or something.
The astronauts are exceedinly brave to have used the Calamity Capsule on the way up, but trusting solely on it for the trip back would be foolhardy on NASA's part
When commercial crew started many people found the idea of a fixed price contract for human space flight incredible. The Boeing bid (the most expensive) gave the project respectability because of Boeing's experience. Blue Origin gave up while their proposal was a barely flashed out concept. Sierra Nevada has kept going despite not getting a government contact. There are actually space companies less competent than Boeing - although some of them demonstrate for more ability with getting investment than actually launching anything.
And for "capabilities" I think we all understand that means limitations / faults / flaws and failures.
All things that should have been understood a long, long, time before this leaky old bucket was flown - let alone flown with people on board.
From what I have read, due to how they attach together and all of the internal cooling pipes there can be issues with body parts getting pinched. Bruises and cuts are not uncommon, they turned the mics off whilst they discussed it due to the 'sensitive body part' being discussed so it was probably his genitals getting pinched.
And then charge boing for the use of a dragon as a taxi
PS did you see the boing CEO at congress yesterday...... untrained staff combined with layoffs led to production problems(which spanner wielder decided to implement MCAS then) and we have no policy of retaliation against junior/middle staff who whistleblow.... well no written down policy.... sheesh blame the shop floor when the problems start at the top and work their way down.
To blame the staff seems to be the go-to excuse these days. That Calhoun now claims that staff were not/under-trained is yet again a failure on Boeing's part. Why would you let untrained staff loose on the factory floor? Why would you let undertrained staff loose on the factory floor? Why would you move your manufacturing from a strong engineering-based organisation to one using cheap labour? Oh, yeah, we know why... because *profits*. Because untrained staff won't complain about how things are not done to spec. Because untrained staff won't go whistleblowing because they value having money in their pocket over being hung out to dry by bastard managers who will happily gaslight staff and engineering and management.
Boeing has lost so many highly-trained engineers in recent years because they objected to reduction in standards and increases in manufacturing rates. They went on strike, and everyone (press, public, PR) slagged them off for being anti-American. And those who blew the whistle were hounded out of the organisation, described as traitors, liars, frauds and blackmailers, and then (if rumours are to be believed) permanently silenced. It's so utterly sad to see Boeing in such a godawful mess.
Slag Airbus off all you want about their European ways of working (including the joys of accusations of bribery, graft and corruption in the last 30 years), but damn, at least their engineering remains sound!
Soyuz seat liners are custom moulded and need to be because of the way the things land
Dragon is much easier to deal with. There's no way I'd ride a Soyuz down without MY personalised seat being installed (seat swapping has been done a few times at ISS, but the point was those who went down on Soyuz also came up on it, so the seats were onhand)
Sure, but Soyuz does not have enough space for everyone (to my knowledge, a maximum of 3 astronauts), and the Soyuz attached to the ISS is the 'the ISS is going to hell, let's get the hell outta here!!' liferaft. Given that the ISS is *not* going to hell in a handbasket right now, wasting Soyuz would be a mistake.
Send a Dragon up, pick up the crew that was meant to come down, and it's done and dusted.
It's not about propaganda or the quality of the capsule, but rather consider the delicate political situation Russia and the US find themselves in (i.e. practically back to the bad old days of the Cold War).
What was easy to do after perestroika is possibly no longer easy to do with the Ukraine War going on (and Putin accusing the West of practically everything short of him getting up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning), and nor does NASA want to put its astronauts in a situation where they can't leave Russia afterwards. It's simple risk management (which NASA seems to still manage to do).
"The crew will perform additional hatch operations to better understand its handling, repeat some 'safe-haven' testing, and assess piloting using the forward window."
I know Boeing has had some difficulty with hatches, but since operating the hatch is part of emergency procedures, shouldn't opening/closing it be simple enough to relegate to muscle memory? What did they do, add wifi cloud capability so the astronauts can open it with a cell phone app?
"We're not going to go fly another mission like this with the helium leaks," noting that the thruster issues also needed to be better understood."
If it were me going up in 2025(6?), I'd much rather those thruster "issues" were properly resolved. I would not take much comfort just having some people on the ground having a better understanding of why the fucking thrusters just bloody well failed again!
Pure BS and spin.
It has thruster problems, He2 leaks and now from their attempts at an explanation for it not returning indicating possible hatch issues.
It was never fit to launch and was launched anyway to save what is left of Boeings tattered reputation and face for NASA's failed partnership with them.
This program is dead in the water and this ship unfit for pirpose. Time to get in the Soyuz and send the astronauts who piloted it home and then remote pilot this space trash to reentry to see if it even survives, without a crew.
I'd definitely send it back to earth without pilots aboard, just to be on the safe side.
You can't send the two pilots home in the soyuz though, that would leave the ISS without an emergency escape vehicle.
I'll let NASA figure it out.
I don't think they have much love for Boeing at the moment.
Who'd have thought the idea of de-orbit and landing, using just a ring of 6 spacehoppers, was in any way flawed?
Boeing: "Managers also confirmed that a "hot fire test," in which seven of the eight aft-facing thrusters were pulsed in two bursts totaling almost two seconds in duration, was successful. Although NASA described the test as "part of a pathfinder process" to evaluate spacecraft performance, the test might also smooth brows left furrowed following the loss of five thrusters during the spacecraft's rendezvous with the ISS. The problem appeared to be software-related, and four thrusters were recovered.
The fifth thruster showed what Stich described as a "strange signature" during the briefing and produced almost no thrust. As such, managers have opted not to use it during undocking and deorbit."
So there definitely is major thruster issues.
Far from the last time they talked about it pre-launch.
Boeing: "As it is, NASA and Boeing officials said in a May 24 briefing that the leak, caused by a seal in a flange, was an isolated problem – none of the other thrusters have the same issue – and even if the seal wasn't there at all, the team was happy to launch to spacecraft as is and manage the leak accordingly."
Just like i said, push through it till its too late (orbit) and then there is no plan to recover it.
Boeing: "Worryingly, while investigating the Starliner's propulsion system, the team discovered a potential vulnerability: a de-orbit burn might not be possible in the event of multiple thruster failures. To handle this admittedly very unlikely failure scenario, a new de-orbit procedure has been developed."
So yeah the "very unlikely" just like i said is very close to the life threateningly likely now.
Me: "That being, known flaws that canceled a launch, were not fixed, hand waved away and now the launch is going to happen regardless of who says what or when because the decision has been made for them.
The danger is in knowing of flaws, minor or otherwise, and willingly, in the face of historical disasters and losses of life, not take this seriously, to the point that reentry may not be possible if the right (wrong) things happen. That's true danger. Knowing there's a problem, and ignoring it until such a time (orbit) that they can do nothing about it."
I would not trust a single word they say ever from now on. Its been lies from the start.
It is sad that this is almost entirely predictabke at this stage.
I just hope someone in the ground crew with zero risk to their own lives makes the right call to not send them back on that Binliner.
And when humans are going to rely on equipment, there needs to be assurance that it will work properly.
So any testing with less than 99.99% outcome is followed by a lot of thinking about implications before doing something.
If an astronaut had even a minor problem when opening a hatch when they've got all the time in the world, then the engineers will then be thinking what if it had to be done in an emergency.
"SpaceX too faced a similar issue with Crew Dragon Demo-1. Retest of the SuperDraco thrusters after landing identified an 'energetic anomaly' that spread fiery pieces the capsule over about 50 acres."
The TPS on the first Dragon brought back from ISS came within a RCH of failing.
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