Boeing comes clean on parachute borkage as the ISS crew is set to shrink While astronomers winced and Musk's rocketeers cheered the deployment of another 60 Starlink satellites into Earth orbit, there was plenty of other action in the rocket-bothering world. Following the pad abort test of the CST-100 Starliner capsule, which both Boeing and NASA insist was a success, the aviation giant has …
"Of course, redundancies in the system meant the capsule descended safely on just two parachutes and had there been a crew onboard, the 'nauts would have been fine. The test, trumpeted Boeing, actually validated that redundancy and highlighted "the robust and redundant safety features" of Starliner."
We design redundancy into our systems knowing the QA team have done slap-dash work and something is definitely going to go pear shaped.
Boeing has damaged its credibility over the last few years with regards to quality and safety.
While I am sure it is completely separate to their aircraft manufacture, it does make you wonder if the company itself has a cultural problems that are putting profit and speed ahead of safety.
787 battery fires,
737 Max crashes,
and now parachute failure.
Hey now, the parachute didn't fail, it was whoever's job it was to correctly insert the pin which attached the main parachute to it's drogue that failed.
And everyone who's job it was to check that the parachutes were connected to their drogues, they failed too.
And possibly whoever designed a system that perhaps made it too easy to not properly connect the etc.
(And everyone who reviewed and signed off on that design and so on and so forth.)
What I'm getting at is that it's less a problem with the systems, and more a culture of failure and insufficient checks.
Yes, and all that culminating in the end result: The Parachute failed. The cause was immaterial.
One cannot take any part of a system in isolation because it was the end result that mattered.
I can speculate that it was the built-in redundancy that led directly to the lackadaisical application of constructing the project. It's not really that important that I do my job correctly - there's back-up.
Just imagine the fuss has there been three such failures all happening at the same time - possible.
Processes clearly weren't followed if a pin was omitted. If you can omit one then why not omit two? Or event three? I mean it isn't like a Lego kit where there's the odd tiny spare part left at the end. If you've assembled a crew capsule and have parts left over... that should have rung alarms.
(I'm reminded of a friend who took apart and reassembled a Mini engine years ago, ignored the left-over 'spares' and ended up down the scrap yard for a replacement quite quickly)
So nobody noticed they only used two pins instead of three. And whoever performed QC... didn't. I'm sorry, if I were a potential passenger this wouldn't fill me with confidence.
As described in the article, the pin wasn't omitted, but it wasn't through the appropriate loop in the main chute. So they wouldn't have had any left-over bits... but there should certainly have been a different set of eyes checking this before it was signed off. Packing a parachute is for experts, and that's one reason why...
Ever seen one of those magician tricks where something that's supposed to be hooked inextricably through a hoop just slides apart like nobody's business...? Threading a pin through the wrong part of a big pile of coiled rope such that it doesn't, in fact, engage securely with it is probably the easiest thing in the world, and nobody will know until you actually extend all of it under tension...
"Packing a parachute is for experts, and that's one reason why..."
I wonder how hard they looked for the "expert" on this parachute system.
This is why you test. Testing is where you make your mistakes and learn from them because for something like this, there are no experts with the specific experience.
The following assumes something about the quality-review that is not detailed in the article.
The quality unassuring-assurance lies in the apparent static nature of the photographic documentation and review of assembly. There should be four hi-res video cameras above and around every assembly station, that loop-record 24/7. Nobody has to turn them on or off.
No looking at stills. Too static: you could miss something that was not connected properly, because connecting is verbal, not nominal; it is an action, not a series of states.
24 hours before test, 3 people will have watched the packing of the parachute second-by-second, minute-by-minute. Those will be the packers themselves. Seeing the connecting process as a streaming flow, they will be matching visually, and by kinaesthetic memory, what they are seeing by what they know to be correct.
> We are a step closer to landing the American astronauts on the Moon by 2024. With the final engine attached, technicians are now working inside the rocket to make all the final connections and complete assembly on the SLS core stage for Artemis I.
Except Artemis 1 isn't going to the moon and the chance of NASA astronauts landing on the moon by 2024 is nil. None of the tech is ready, Congress won't fund it and SLS is good for nothing except keeping a certain senator from Alabama happy.
Yeah, but it was also fucking awesome and it could lift 140 metric tons into orbit.
Today's best lifter would apparently be the Falcon Heavy with up to 50 tons (taking into account only those rockets that have actually lifted something into orbit).
There are a number of rockets promising to approach the venerable Saturn V's record, but none of them exist anywhere except on paper yet, so we'll just have to wait and see.
So three Falcon heavies can lift about the same as a Saturn V. I wonder which costs more and/or carries the greater risk, three Falcons and a bit of docking or one big [censored]parent-abuser and go for a beer?
Project Orion is clearly the safest and best option. Will lift much higher payloads to orbit - and is mechanically much simpler. Everything's easy apart from the multiple nuclear bombs...
There are a few downsides. I mean the launch is going to be much louder than a Saturn V, and people living near the launch site may object. But these are footling little problems in comparison to the top science you get to do.
Plus Orion laughs at your house-lifting capabilities, as you can use it to lift a factory or hotel if you so choose. Or perhaps a Space Battleship?
Admittedly the pub you need to retire to will have to be at a much safer distance. But that just gives you more opportunity to drive your customised V8 at great speed. You do have a customised V8 right? With massive chromed fins on it? No? What kind of lousy excuse for a rocket engineer are you?!?!
It's only recoverable if there is margin between mission needs and capability of the rocket. For something like going to the moon, every erg of capability will be needed so the booster is going into the drink and not being reused.
Granted it hasn't flown yet but SpaceX's BFR has most definitely made it off the drawing board even if the prototype has yet to fly (should be sometime quite soon). It is designed to loft 100 tons and take it all the way to the moon or 150 tons as far as low earth orbit. Both are in excess of what the Saturn V achieved but yeah, let's not count our chickens.
I was looking into seat costs in the Soyuz.
To put one US astronaut into space on one, the price of that seat alone covers the entire cost of the launch vehicle and the ground control and maintenance of the same, with money left over.
By having just one seat taken by the US, Russia gets to put everything they want into space for essentially negative cost.
Like being a dog-sitter, but your clients also pay you to look after your own dogs in addition to their own.
Look if the F35 and Little Crappy Ships proved anything its that at least if we blow the money on the Russians we mostly get people into space and back. Else like the Boeing virtual border fence if we do it ourselves with so many heads in the trough we spend the vast sums of money and still haven't left the ground. Honestly with the Boomers in charge now not sure if the US could successfully go to the moon for any amount of money these days. I gots to get mine first.
"To put one US astronaut into space on one, the price of that seat alone covers the entire cost of the launch vehicle and the ground control and maintenance of the same, with money left over."
Supply and demand. Every service supplier charges all the market will bear. If you are the only tradesman that can do certain restoration work on Grade 1 listed buildings, you don't charge peanuts or take any poo. You charge the moon and take long lunches.
November 9 was the fifty-second anniversary of the first Saturn V launch.
It would seem that in the USA, state-sponsored rocketry has made no progress in that half century and may even be going backwards. That launch was a success!
In perspective, the 50 years from 1919 to 1969 saw commercial aircraft development go from wooden bi-planes to the 747.
I don't think you can say that US rocketry is going backwards. NASA has created its COTS program specifically to attract private companies into the market and this has succeeded very well. Boeing have built them a capsule for ISS duty - I don't know if they've got plans to use this for any other jobs. SpaceX have used the money/guaranteed contracts to help fund first the Falcon 9 (with cargo Dragon) and then the Crew Dragon programs. Obviously they've also got other sources of income from Falcon - which is doing very well in private space launches too.
But SpaceX have been very innovative - and are currently top of the technology tree - given they can do reusability which nobody else in the world can. OK it's private, but not sure it would have happened without NASA contracts.
There's also Cygnus, but I got the impression they were rather less sustainable, as they were using a stock of old Soviet engines - with only the rights to manufacture their own, which they hadn't taken up. I've lost track of where they're up to.
Then you've got the ULA who used to do all the horribly over-priced stuff and had little incentive to improve. They're contracted to use Blue Origin's new shiny engines - and once those are perfected you'll also have Blue Origin kicking around with re-usable technology.
Obviously SLS isn't an exciting technical development, as it's using re-usable shuttle engines, then throwing them away. But NASA has never been the monolithic enterprise that built all its own stuff anyway.
The nice thing this gives you is the option to just buy in what you need. And only develop new technologies if the capabilities you want don't already exist. And even then, you can pay someone else some of the development costs in order to get access to something they want to develop anyway, but may not have the funds for. I'd say US space tech is in rude health. Just a few of the old dinosaurs like ULA look like they're in trouble if they don't up their game. Hopefully meaning better and/or cheaper stuff for NASA to use.
In perspective, the 50 years from 1919 to 1969 saw commercial aircraft development go from wooden bi-planes to the 747.
Correction; it went from wooden bypanes, to supersonic passenger aircraft, Concorde's first flight was 2nd March 1969. We've certainly gone backwards since Concorde and the Shuttle flew for the last time.
I thought there would have been a written procedure for installing this pin in the correct way with pictures. At a minimum it should have been installed and checked off as complete by one person and then checked by another and signed off again.
Shouldn't they be doing this for every part anyway considering it is rocket science? The fact that they had a picture of the fault before it was launched suggests a certain amount of (half) arse(d) covering going on.
Rocket science is "easy" - it's the rocket engineering that is hard
- I've read this somewhere. - it's all very well knowing the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, but then you have to successfully put it into practice, including all the little things like what two things need to be attached to each other, and you need to do it correctly, consistently.
So I would say that this is a failure in the rocket engineering :P
"I thought there would have been a written procedure for installing this pin in the correct way with pictures. At a minimum it should have been installed and checked off as complete by one person and then checked by another and signed off again."
Maybe the sub-contracted the instruction manual to IKEA.
UK government is additionally spanking £31.5m on vertical launch services at spaceport in Sutherland, Scotland
Boris and chums are obviously thinking ahead to the time when most of England is flooded on a regular basis so they'll need to escape to a place of safety.
have you seen the site in sutherland, it doesnt even have a road on it at the minute and its closest one has one lane in either direction in some places, and just one in most.
but to be fair there's plenty wind power about, but I think the average wind speed in the area might make virticle launch an issue.
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