Boeing's Starliner proves better at torching cash than reaching orbit Lurking in Boeing's woeful Q2 financials is an admission that while its Starliner spacecraft might be struggling when it comes to burning fuel, it has no problem whatsoever setting fire to dollar bills. The Calamity Capsule is currently attached to the International Space Station (ISS) while engineers scrutinize test results …
Depends on your definition of stuck, what's doing the sticking, and the level of pedantry you wish to employ. Sure it can undock, even with humans on board, so in that regard, neither the capsule nor the crew are stuck. But if your chances of survival leaving in the craft are unacceptably lower, or unacceptably less certain than just staying put, I'd say that's as good as stuck.
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Fixed price works if you don't have a bunch of unknown development to do. While Boeing has plenty of launcher building experience their crew capsule experience wasn't great so fixed price was going to be difficult for them. Even SpaceX who based crew dragon on cargo dragon had difficulties and crew dragon was virtually a ground up redesign (which they then put back into cargo dragon). Don't forget they have had some extra payments as NASA is desperate to have a second crew option.
SpaceX Crew 9 was due to launch this weekend, now pushed back to the 18th due to the recent second stage failure. NASA would like Starliner gone by then as it's tying up a docking port and, if it's still there, it means Crew 8 have to leave before Crew 9 launches and they really like having both crews on the station for a week to do a proper handover. Additionally if Starliner is deemed unsafe then Crew 9 will launch with just the commander and copilot to free the other two seats for Starliner crew return. That has research time implications as the mission specialists have been trained on the experiments due to be run during their stay, and also political implications as one of the crew that would miss the flight is a Russian Cosmonaut which would leave that side of the station understaffed.
After a few freedom of information requests a vaguely titled contract NASA gave SpaceX has been partially decoded. NASA purchased a report on whether it is possible to return 5 or 6 people in a Dragon. When the contract was awarded I could easily believe it was just NASA having a plan ready for every contingency. Sufficient delays have accumulated that I think NASA are going through that report to see if it gives them a better option than launching a half empty Dragon or taking a risk with Starliner.
I thought Dragon was designed with a 7 seat floorplan?
Why not just send Starliner home empty and send up the next crew Dragon with jump seats that can be transferred to the currently on-station Dragon?
I think all future Dragon mission should fly with all of the seats installed, you can never be too careful, or prepared, in space.
There are many comments on the internet about problems with Dragon carrying more than 4 people. Hardly any of them give definitive references. A popular theme is that Dragon went through a significant redesign when the requirements shifted from 7 crew to 4 and going back to 7 would be difficult. The only real information I found related to the coolant leak in MS-22. Frank Rubio's seat liner was moved from the Soyuz to the Dragon. If there had been an emergency, the Soyuz would have left with only two people to put less strain on the cooling system and Rubio would have been strapped to the floor of the Dragon. Dragon seats are over 100kg each and play a significant roll in softening the landing. NASA would have to choose between payload capacity, hitch-hikers risking injury during splash down and testing out Dragon's original propulsive landing plans.
"NASA would have to choose between payload capacity, hitch-hikers risking injury during splash down and testing out Dragon's original propulsive landing plans."
I could be wrong, but I believe the original propulsive landing relied on the hydrozene check valves that were replaced with burst disks after a crew dragon exploded during tests due to a valve leak. I'm not certain propulsive landing remains even theoretically possible in a production crew dragon now.
They dropped the capacity to 4 crew on launch ages ago. Some of it was related to NASA saying the seats had to be reclined on launch and the only way to get that space was to remove the lower row of seats.It could potentially have extra lower seats for return but there are a lot of challenges. They did a study during Soyuz problems and they think they could literally lash something today. There is also the issue of suit compatibility and NASA have confirm that there are no spare suits on Cygnus launch yesterday (which is having its own problems) and there for the only option would be Crew 9.
Despite what Eric Berger twitted, most reporters are saying its unlikely that NASA will use crew dragon, it would have a hell of lot unknown risks compared to starliner where at least the risks are known.
Me: ChatGPT, here's a puzzle. A Russian astronaut, an American astronaut, and a cabbage are on one side of the atmosphere. How can an American pilot get them all to the other side in a spacecraft that has only two seats?
ChatGPT: The pilot flies the goat and the cabbage down, then flies back up with the cabbage. (Etc.)
(You may have to have seen Gary Marcus' 1 August post "This one important fact about current AI explains almost everything" to understand this...)
Gee whizzzzzzzz, billion plus spent on just one company that can't produce. Imagine that.
A company run by bean-counters and lawyers that can't get a job completed. They chased all the real engineers away with their garbage procedures that were implemented for cost cutting measures and now with two people stuck with no way home and all they can do is cry about their dividends to the stockholders of which the C-suits are the vast majority there of.
If it's Boeing, it's not Going!
Q:Hey Boeing, how much is two peoples lives worth to you?
A:Worthless to Boeing.
Such is the world today, as long as the government keeps getting their far share of taxes out of corporate America nothing will change.
And, I think even worsr of SpaceX just because of the MuskX asshole in charge. And i'm losing respect for NASA also because of the assholes they contract with.
Commercial crew is a firm fixed price contract with some payments for completing milestones and the bulk of the money only transferring for successful crew delivery and return. Boeing have got money for the milestones up to the uncrewed demo 1 flight (which they had to do a second time at their own expense). It is not clear if they will get paid for this crew demo. The delays in orbit have already sent this flight over budget. Boeing are contracted for six full crew missions with four NASA astronauts. They have bought six Atlas V launches and Atlas V has been discontinued. If the crew demo mission must be repeated Boeing would have to buy an Atlas V launch back from Via Sat or Amazon.
The original plan was to subsidize launches by selling a fifth seat to tourists. That could have worked with back to back missions: five seat Starliner goes up with an empty seat. 6 months later another Starliner goes up with four crew and a tourist. Two weeks later the first Starliner returns with its crew and the tourist. The current plan is to alternate Dragon and Starliner flights so (really brave) tourist revenue is currently off the table. (It could come back if SpaceX flies the next six missions then Starliner does the final six.)
Boeing are not going to make a profit with just the six NASA flights but it would be a smaller loss than cancelling the contract - assuming they do not have to re-do this demo. There is a (risky) route to profit based on the (uncertain) future commercial space stations. Bezos will keep funding Blue Origin and Orbital Reef. One day in the far distant future Jeff will need a ride to his space station. He has already demonstrated that he will pay through the nose to launch with anyone but SpaceX. That could fund Starliner launches on Vulcan - which might be owned by Blue Origin that far in the future. This wild fantasy ends if Butch and Suni die in a Starliner so their lives do actual matter to Boeing executives.
I am not convinced things would get better if the government stopped getting their 'far' share of taxes from corporate America. As things stand, Boeing will not be paying taxes on Starliner profits. They will recoup their losses with other government contracts. Boeing excel at cost plus. Not by delivering product, but by keeping the project running at enormous tax payer expense. Politicians award such contracts because voters love jobs (for executives) programs.
There is currently a fight inside NASA between a firm fixed price faction and a cost plus faction. Cost plus has unlimited funding from strong political support. Firm fixed price gets things done about half the time (for the other half the contract ends with no product and only a part of the budget spent). If you want to change things you need to convince politicians and voters to not replace SLS with Constellation 3.
That'd work, An empty* crew Dragon with a set of suits to bring the astronauts back, Once the Dragon is on a guaranteed docking path the Starliner can be sent back empty to clear the docking port.
I'm sure a suitable mission logo involving a Dragon & Starliner can be created very quickly :)
*May need a suit tech to ride with it - I'm not that up to date on technical aspects the actual suits.
I'm pretty sure the thing is fine (otherwise they wouldn't have even been talking about waiting), but if they were worried, they should have sent it back to Earth ages ago with no-one on it.
It's not like they can fix it in orbit if there is a problem. So send it back, see if it would have survived and investigate the problems back on Earth.
Bit of trouble with that as the bit with the problems gets burned up after seperation and only the capsule makes it back down.
Which makes it a bugger to study.
Pity muskie cant send a cargo dragon up , dock it with starliner, then use the dragon's thrusters to put starliner on the right track for landing, before undocking and landing itself.
You're correct about studying the thruster problems when the capsule gets back down. However, there's another way. They could send the Starliner back empty, but run thorough tests on the thrusters before separating for re-entry. If something goes wrong, they lose the capsule but no human lives.
The issue is the part that is caused the issue is on the trunk and will be ejected during return so won't be able to get any further data from them which is the whole reason they are still docked so they can verify ground testing results. Its also ready been said many times its safe to return in starliner as the parts that issues won't have the same profile as during launch.
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I refer you all to my comment when the capsule was about to launch... If I were Elon, I'd have a Dragon prepped and mounted on a Falcon right now - press release along the lines of "lifeboat at the ready"
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