NASA says Boeing Starliner astronauts may fly home on SpaceX in 2025
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
1. NASA manager Steve Stich said there's a relatively wide "band of uncertainty" in how risky a Starliner return is. Some (many?) NASA engineers are at the high end of the band and are advocating a return on Dragon instead. Boeing is obviously at the low end of the band and thinks it is a low risk.
The problem is, the data doesn't rule out either side of the band. So they are trying to get more data to narrow the uncertainty (in either or both directions). [Interestingly enough, the data from the White Sands testing made them more worried because it revealed the Teflon seal deformation.]
But my sense is that if they don't narrow the uncertainty (i.e., convince the NASA engineers) then they will very likely choose a Dragon return. That is, it sounds like if nothing changes, the astronauts are coming down on Dragon.
2. Stich said they need to decide by mid-August, in order to have time to prepare the Crew-9 launch for Sept 24th. So we'll know by then.
3. They emphasized that (a) the thruster problems are all fixable (given time), and (b) that even if Starliner returns without a crew, they will have learned enough from the test to potentially certify the capsule for regular service. This is probably the only way they'll be able to keep Boeing as a provider. A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a billion dollars, easy. And since the contract is fixed-price, this would just add to Boeing's losses. So I expect they will certify Starliner even if it comes down without a crew.
4. In some ways, Starliner is being held to a higher standard than Dragon Crew-2. If Starliner were the only vehicle available, NASA and the astronauts would absolutely take the small risk and come down with a crew. But since Dragon is available, I think NASA is thinking, "why take the risk?"
5. There's a huge difference between how NASA engineers and lay people look at this issue. Many people (particularly on Twitter) have a binary safe/not-safe view of the situation. Either Starliner is safe or it is not. Either the astronauts are stranded or they are not. But the engineering perspective is all about dealing with uncertainty. What is the probability of a bad result? Is the risk worth the reward? Even worse, everything is a trade-off. Sometimes trying to mitigate a risk causes an unintended effect that increases risk (e.g., a bug fix that causes a bug).
I don't envy the engineers, either at NASA or at Boeing.
If SpaceX or another company had remotely similar results, they would never have been greenlit. For instance in spite of a flawless pad abort test, NASA required SpaceX also carry out an in-flight abort. And that's completely reasonable - you don't simply skip tests, even with optimal performance. Skipping tests following suboptimal performance is simply unjustifiable. And so I think we're largely looking at another Challenger type disaster caused by a disconnect between management (and likely political appointees) versus engineering staff, rather than inherent risk. But this is not a vessel that should have ever had a single human anywhere near it, and so their official comments (and even actions) on the situation are going to be heavily biased due to their own behaviors.
Who approved the design, and are the Engineers still employed by Boeing? Curious minds would like to know. Any way to trace this from public documentation?
/s
The companies could themselves propose certification and NASA only said if it is ok, if you didnt test you had do more certification work. NASA didnt require an abort test for either company. SpaceX just decided to have one, Boeing didnt.
The parachute test had nothing to do with abort tests.
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In 2014, NASA awarded separate fixed-price contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to develop their respective systems and to fly astronauts to the ISS. Each contract required four successful demonstrations to achieve human rating for the system: pad abort, uncrewed orbital test, launch abort, and crewed orbital test.
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Parachutes are an integral part of the abort tests. If those parachutes fail, which is a somewhat common problem with these designs, then even if the capsule escapes a failing rocket, they're going to head the ground like a rock.
This is probably the least bad effect of this.
"The high temperature emptied the tank, but also resulted in serious damage to the teflon insulation on the electrical wires to the power fans within the tank. The exposed fan wires shorted and the teflon insulation caught fire in the pure oxygen environment."
It would seem that Dragon is being held up to the same standard that was set for Soyuz...Boeing is the only one failing....
We are looking at a testing and engineering failure combined of Boeing.
The problem is that they have managers that don’t understand basic engineering and manufacturing practices, and that focus entirely on short-term financial engineering.
Case studies for those sorts of mistakes have already been written. For example, look at the US automotive bailout and collapse of Detroit, or read up on IBM and GE’s performance over the last decade.
I don't follow spaceflight news in any great depth - but doesn't SpaceX also have a rocket thingy that keeps exploding?
Isn't "just launch over and over until it stops exploding" the way rockets are made these days?
Starliner was not developed that way at all. It was supposed to be developed with much more up-front work to make sure that it would work correctly out of the gate. All of the mentioned Starliner tests were certification tests, whereas all of the Starship tests so far have been 100% expected to fail in some way, but with a more ambitious goal about how far it gets.
The first time you build a physical rocket and test sending it up, it's almost certain to fail. Seeing how and why it explodes is pretty much the purpose of launching it!
If the cargo was a bunch of rocks and Boeing paid for the launch, you would have been right.
But this was a manned mission ordered by the US government. At this phase of development, nothing should be left to chance.
In fact even the rocket that Dragon launches on has a long history of explosions. First in the launches, then in the landings that resulted in some very spectacular booms. One time it landed perfectly upright, engines shut off, and one of the landing feet collapsed, causing it to fall over and BOOM. That was so funny :)
But now it has had a huge run of successful launches. I think it's a better approach because material science does not always behave exactly like the mathematical models. And space is one area where the margins of failure are extremely low.
To me this gives a strong impression of history rhyming with itself. Back in the early 1980ies NASA engineers "close to the hardware" were raising warning, above warning about reliability issues of the shuttles, ultimately being overruled by management, leading to the Challenger disaster.
Then in 2003 again engineers were raising warnings about heat shield integrity being compromised from impacts with external tank insulation material. Again, management overruled them on the same bad reasoning, that if it did not cause problems in the past, it will not in the future. So instead of addressing the issue in a preventative action, the Columbia was lost on reentry.
Fool me once …, fool me twice …; I really hope the engineers will put their foot down on this and clearly and decisively overrule any mandate directed from management.
Afterwards one might come out as a whistleblower. But the fact that the last two whistleblowers wound up conveniently dead (no really, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/boeing-whistleblower-di...) is likely to have a chilling effect on people's willingness to volunteer as whistleblowers.
I have no idea who is right in this case. And even if the crew comes down on Starliner successfully, it doesn't mean that it was the right call. Maybe they just got lucky.
My sense from the call is that, if NASA engineers insist on a Dragon return, NASA management will support them.
Flying safely with a 10% failure risk when your acceptable risk is only 2% just means you got lucky, not that you're good.
NASA has learnt from the bad days of blind Mission Management teams.
When I worked at Boeing, I talked with my lead engineer about this. He said there were indeed some excellent engineers who could not live with the possiblity of making a mistake. Boeing would find jobs for them that were not safety critical, like design studies of new aircraft. There they could be productive without the stress.
Personally, I found the stress to be motivating. It meant I was doing something that mattered.
Right now, I’m sure Starliner engineers are under a lot of stress. But I really believe that the program will get through this and end up being successful.
> This is probably the only way they'll be able to keep Boeing as a provider. A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a billion dollars, easy. And since the contract is fixed-price, this would just add to Boeing's losses.
It's not NASA's job to keep Boeing in the running. It's completely up to Boeing to produce a vehicle that can safely and reliably get crews to and from orbit, and to do the appropriate amount of testing beforehand. If they can't be bothered to do that with the understanding the cost of failure, that's on them.
Companies invest in their supply chain and invest in not being beholden to a single supplier (unless they control that supplier) all the time.
In theory it is not. The reality is that a lot of NASA's budgeting and decisions are made based on the pork-barrel politics of the ones who hold the purse strings -- congress.
Sure, it is cheap, but when, not if, it results in deaths, it will be really hard to justify why someone thought it was a reasonable choice.
Apollo 6 was an uncrewed test flight of the Saturn V. It was almost a disaster. Pogo oscillations almost tore the vehicle apart. And after staging, two engines shut down early and the rocket had to go into a lower orbit than planned.
But that flight was enough to certify the Saturn V for human use and they launched 3 astronauts to the moon on the next Saturn V flight, Apollo 8.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/science/boeing-starliner-...
As it turns out, the official that admitted this was the same Steve Stich.
Dragon was held to a higher standard, they were the newcomers and the corrupt snakes in Congress were looking for any excuse to justify canceling commercial crew and just giving Boeing a blank check again.
But I meant a higher standard for how much risk NASA is willing to take in this instance. If something had gone wrong with Dragon Demo-2, there was no other way to bring down the astronauts. They would have accepted relatively high risk because they had no choice.
But with Starliner, because they have Dragon, they don't need to accept that risk. The risk NASA will tolerate is lower now, because they have an alternative. That's what I meant by a higher standard.
I imagine so indeed, not in the least because all Atlas V launch vehicles are already assigned to missions. The booster for another non-operational flight would thus have to come from either their operational missions, or they'd have to pay someone else to give up their scheduled Atlas V payload. If they fail to buy someone else's Atlas V, they'd have to integrate Starliner onto a new (i.e. non-Atlas V) human-rated launch vehicle, or they would fail to deliver the contracted 6 operational missions.
Amazon’s Project Kuiper comsat constellation which is
targeting our first full-scale Kuiper mission for Q4 aboard an Atlas V rocket from ULA.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/inside...
Maybe. I don't believe that's true, but let's assume it is.
They SHOULD be held to a higher standard. Of the 16 US astronauts that have died in the space program, 14 died on the shuttle which was Boeing. That, coupled with Boeings recent deterioration and demonstrated disregard for human life, makes it clear that Boeing needs to be kept on a short leash.
Edit: To clarify, this applies to the certification process, not current performance.
Wat? Have any Dragon missions encountered the number and severity of issues experienced by Starliner?
Maybe they have and are not public knowledge because NASA is less than transparency about its safety predictions and findings. But until the same confidence sapping mission performance is established it is not honest to say that Starliner is held to a higher standard.
I also picked up on the potential to at least payout Boeing if starliner comes down in good order (which seemed likely). I think that solves Boeings issue and would make them relax on forcing crew.
The problem here is they have a seemingly somewhat safer option going up and down regularly. That is making taking risk MUCH much harder because the downside risk (2 crew trapped in space potentially for a long and slow death) is pretty disastrous especially if a safer option was sitting right there and it turns out the decision to send them down was contract driven.
Given the history of thruster issues that go way back (and keep on repeating despite "fixes") I feel like they'll collect about as much data sending starliner back uncrewed, and then they'll need to be doing fixes for things like the helium issues etc that are compounding the risks. Be great if they could do ONE uncrewed flight more trouble free before putting astro's back on, but their solution is a more expensive with longer lead times than crew dragon (the entire service module is dumped on every launch I think, the rocket is also totally dumped etc)
Considering the 'optics' of this, I imagine they will/should certify Starliner not with or without a crew, and at least not after 'enough' time has passed for any audit to be meaningful and for Boeing to prove that they are getting things right. Imagine 'ok-ing' the Starliner, and on the very next mission, the same (or different) critical error happens. Then I bid the NASA folks who ok-ed the Starliner a good start on their next jobs.
If there is one profession with zero tolerance for errors it's the 'space-stuff' because 1) good luck repairing things in space, 2) "in space no one can hear you scream" (profanities because you ended up staying x10 or x100 the time planned)(and I do understand that capacity planning, food, toilets, etc. etc. have been calculated to ensure that they won't be running out of food, toilet paper, etc.)
It would be fun to have a Season 3 of Space Force, and this time instead of Malkovich yelling at Microsoft, to be yelling at Boeing!
That's pretty contrived. Dragon has a 'standard' of multiple successful flights.
> A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a billion dollars, easy. And since the contract is fixed-price, this would just add to Boeing's losses. So I expect they will certify Starliner even if it comes down without a crew.
This is the problem with old space. SpaceX blows stuff up on the regular just to see what went boom. And they absorb the cost themselves. They don't fly something that has proven itself fully before. It's clear this approach works. If they can do it while not wasting billions, why can't Boeing?
And "it will cost the vendor money" should really not factor into safety decisions.
So many weeks of anti-Musk cope on Twitter about this issue. People really can't think clearly even about factual issues anymore.
Yet another Boeing vehicle to avoid ...
IMHO summarising it like the title is a little unfair; yes they're making provision for use of Dragon; but they haven't made any decision yet. The thing that seems to have confused them is that all the Starliner thrusters are working in their tests - given their idea of some teflon deformation somewhere, I think they thought they'd still be problematic, which is making them wonder if the teflon thing is the full story?
The complete 180 here is great to see. For the crewed demo flight of Crew Dragon, they used a brand new booster. It seems NASA didn't like the idea of flying on reused boosters, thinking they had an increased risk. Now they're liking the idea of a booster being flown an extra time.
"Flight proven"
As a result you really want to be in a proper seat.
We know that everything doesn’t get written down (hence the reverse engineering of the Apollo systems). And the stuff that does get written down doesn’t have the experience that created the document. Remembering a failed vacuum experiment with some adhesive which led to “You must use <some different adhesive>” isn’t going to prevent some bean counter in the future saying, “Why don’t you use <failed adhesive>? It’s cheaper and seems to have the same specs.” Or, for avionics harnesses, “There’s enough room. Just make it fit!”
All of that to say, Boeing ain’t what it used to be. And I know people who have worked there in recent years and they say the same.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-confirms-slip-of-...
There's a hard rule for ISS that no astronaut may be on board the ISS without a corresponding return vehicle being docked at all times. This rule is effectively being violated for the two Starliner astronauts because they can't return on Starliner. And now no new Crew Dragons may berth without the current crew returning on the currently berthed Crew Dragon.
What a mess.
"Well-placed sources said the current flight software on board Starliner, as configured, cannot perform an automated undocking from the space station and entry into Earth’s atmosphere. It will take about four weeks to update and validate the software for an autonomous return, should NASA decide it would be safer to bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-confirms-slip-of-...
ISS operations have very strict requirements about safety and especially about avoiding collisions with the station under any circumstance. There are also differences in requirements for crewed and uncrewed flights. For these reasons it makes sense that the configurations are different and would need to be updated if they switch to fully automated.
NASA has been pretty clear that Starliner could be used as an emergency escape if necessary. That leads me to think the concern is more about collision with the ISS that with the ability to re-enter safely.
I'd like to think NASA would consider all contingencies, but the Challenger O-ring disaster showed they can be as incompetent as Boeing themselves.
“The capsule needs the crew!”
Some pressure to nasa to fly the crew back on this and also some ass covering if the really embarrassing occurs: the unmanned capsule does fail - “hey everyone it just failed because it had no crew! Nothing to worry about!”
I get that there are things that you can only test in space, and so they are testing. But if these astronauts get back, does Boeing then get certified to carry astronauts into space regularly from a successful test?
I should listen to the conference but how would they define the whole mission successful?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Krikalev
He later became the 1st cosmonaut to fly on the US Space Shuttle:
https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/p...
Part of the reason NASA selected him is because he worked on the Soviet Buran project for a while.
Bear in mind that your statement is very "Hold my beer..." and we're talking about Boeing here. ;)
So it's possible, though unlikely, some chain of events could occur so the Starliner astronauts beat Sergei Krikalev's record.
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2024/0...
The schedule is always fluid with rocket launches. Awaiting confirmation.
To be completely honest, the news cycle this summer has been so wild; I kind of forgot they were up there until today. That is something that it seems like they might not have trained the astronauts for, and that's really scary. That and there might be some sort of business politics involved in the plan to get home.
We're all sort of engineers here, given the choice, suppose Boeing thought they could land you next week or you would wait until 2025 and ride a Dragon down. Which would you pick?
This gets said a lot, so I'll bite. Are they really? Many are just people able to go through the years of soul crushing things like being in the military. There are some straight up scientists on board, sure, I'll give that to them. But a lot are science people that are also fine doing things like flying bombing missions over the middle east. Killing tons of people isn't really a thing I respect.
I don't agree with the fetishizing of the service that goes on in some circles, but taking the opposite extreme is not any better. People should be judged on their individual actions.
About 3% of American astronauts have died in space, and about 4.5% have died during missions (which includes takeoffs).
"Only" 15% of smokers get lung cancer.
These numbers don't work for me. Yet plenty of smart people are willing to take those odds. I can only conclude that if people smarter than I am are good to go with those stats, then it means they have some kind of built-in optimism that I lack.
Your notion of the military being "soul crushing" is not shared by all people in the military. Starting around the sergeant level there are tons of very interesting problems to solve. Some find it super fulfilling, and certainly many dudes who have been in combat felt it was the only time in their experience to feel really alive.
So for different reasons I come to the same conclusion as you. They aren't really heroes, just people doing something they find compelling. And they measure risk and reward very differently from me.
> Killing tons of people isn't really a thing I respect.
Well, context matters, doesn't it? Sometimes violence is required to solve problems. The US had to kill 700,000 of its own to eliminate slavery. And while Europe lost tens of millions, the US sacrificed over 400,000 helping them out in WWII. Once the Germans attacked Poland and the Japanese attacked us, how would you have solve these problems without violence? Ask Neville Chamberlain how that worked out.
This said, yeah, I wouldn’t want to come back on Boeing hardware with Dragon available.
The B-17 aircrews in WW2 knew they had only a 20% chance of surviving their mission count intact. (not killed, crippled, or POW'd)
Neil Armstrong figured he only had a 50% chance of surviving Apollo 11. Personally, I think he was optimistic.
Sucks for their families though.
Eight months is well within studied ranges for astronauts.
...a three hour tour...
No. Remember, these are fixed-price contracts. NASA will force Boeing to fix the problem on its own dime.
Which is fitting, as Starliner is the stupidest space programme in present existence.
You’re spitballing. Starliner was pushed by NASA, not electeds. Boeing is currently in the shitter with the public and thus the Congress.
Even if you’re cynical beyond evidence, the hypothesis doesn’t hold: Boeing’s competitors are deep pocketed and connected too.
They still haven’t figured out a root cause for the thruster failures, and they won’t be getting the faulty flight hardware back to examine it. Is Boeing willing to put substantial engineering time into fixing/re-designing the thrusters, and then flying another 2-person test flight? I guess we’ll find out soon…
I get people don't like Musk, fine. But pretending that he has a history of making bad business decisions is ludicrous. He is by far the most successful business man alive (and maybe in history). This is just a fact. You can point out plenty of his faults, but his business acumen is clearly not one of them.
Just as an example: I'm old enough to remember when everyone said Twitter was going to completely break in a week after he fired >50% of the engineers to cut costs. How long ago was that? Also, whether you like the changes or not, there seems to be far more productivity and new features since Musk bought Twitter than the previous years with the old management and far larger headcount.
Twitter also triggered race riots in the UK and instead of being halfway apologetic about this, he has been spreading conspiracy theories on his personal account. This is likely to lead to a significantly more hostile legal environment in the future.
He is also being sued by the EU for changing blue checkmarks from a badge of verification to a paid feature, confusing users.
and that’s just this week!
How wouldn't that be a part of a perfectly rational risk analysis though?
It's like saying (of course on a very different scale) that NASA should be buying rockets from Russian/Chinese/etc. companies/government as long as they offer a good price/quality ratio etc. Which would be an immensely stupid thing to do regardless of how good the actual rockets were.
> Twitter and saying inappropriate shit out loud
Or possibly more importantly doing inappropriate shit both publicly and not.
In general companies that are purely driven by their management's desire to maximize profits/shareholder value/their bonuses are fairly predictable and can be expected to behave rationally under most circumstances. However you might not want to rely too much on company owned by someone (hard to tell which ones are correct so pick any):
- willing to burn billions to either to prove some bizarre point - makes impulsive decisions worth billions under the influence of drugs - is willing to spend large amounts of money to manipulate public opinion (and/or undermine democracy and the rule of law)
(at least long-term anyway...)
How so? Surely you're not claiming that shitposting on Twitter/X is some kind of objective assessment of a person's mentality?
if the CEO of a business whose primary revenue source is money from advertisers
tells advertisers to fuck off
and when they do instead of apologising or rolling anything back, sues them over it
and if this is part of a pattern of unpredictable behaviour
covering everything from calling a cave rescue diver a paedophile
to accidentally buying a $44 billion company while trying to prank the SEC to make a point
some would say that is not the level of boring, levelheaded rationality you want
from the man who can decide whether your astronauts get home or not
I'd feel pretty upset. A few days in space is no big deal. Months in space is hard on the body, plus you're missing out on months of life on Earth -- maybe you're going to miss the birth of a child or grandchild, or a loved one's death and funeral, or some other big event. And are you getting paid while up there? Are there enough supplies? What if NASA and Boeing finally decide it's OK to return on Starliner, and as you know you basically must then, so now you're risking your life on a vehicle that you have much reason to think is not safe.
It'd be hard not to be hopping mad in private. I'd make the best of it, since there's no other choice, but I would not be happy about it.
These are people who are driven by a passion to do the thing that they're (involuntarily) having to do more of than originally planned. I don't know if "how would you feel" is a good yardstick here; I would probably get sick of it pretty quick, but I'm not the kind of person who would make a good astronaut.
>I'd feel pretty upset.
Agreed.
Yes, flying in space is cool. No, most people don't want to do this indefinitely. Astronauts retire all the time even when they are 100% guaranteed more flight time if they didn't retire; a whole bunch did that in the 1960s and 1970s (some, like Frank Borman, 100% guaranteed to walk on the moon), and more during the shuttle era.
It's one thing to have a mission extended by a day, as happened to the shuttle routinely because of bad weather at the landing site. Skylab 4's mission I believe got extended by 28 days, but that was a known possibility before launch. To have an eight-day mission be possibly extended to eight months is in no way shape or form OK.
But it's likely overshadowed by the concerns and fears building from the possible return trip.
After the first month they should’ve had SpaceX go and get them. Elon would’ve probably done it for free to publicly humiliate Boeing for fun.
SpaceX’s craft is far cheaper and does the same thing except it actually works and has worked fine and time again.
I would gladly have done it for $100k.
I honestly can't imagine the conversations happening privately with the Astronauts. You know the problems this thing is happening but apparently you may still fly on it.
Like I get that space travel is still risky, even if SpaceX seems to make it look trivial at times, but it seems like an unecessary risk.
Assuming the Starliner can be on autopilot and bring itself home, let it do that to confirm if things are indeed working. Worst case you loose a vehical, but 2 people were not killed in the process.
The only thing that really surprised me is the 2025 timeline. I figured they would prefer to move some things around than wait that long?
Apparently it can't. Idk if it's missing software, or missing hardware, though I'm gleaning from other comments here that it's software (thus presumably fixable).
<https://www.space.com/8541-6-private-companies-launch-humans...>
That lists SpaceX, Orbital Sciences (since merged into Northrup Grumman), Blue Origin (which remains suborbital, though the orbital New Glenn is due for launch this year and Blue Moon is in development), Bigelow Aerospace (defunct), SpaceDev/Sierra Nevada Corporation (active, but struggling?), and Virgin Galactic (suborbital space tourism).
Wikipedia has a maintained list of current private spaceflight ventures, principally SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab*, Virgin Galactic, Axiom Space*, and Sierra Space. (Starred are additions to the space.com article's list).
It's not really clear (to me) how likely either of those outcomes is right now.
IF they drop it, then I would expect NASA to run a new commercial crew program. They need redundancy, and they don't want to be running the development process themselves.
Dream Chaser Space System (their crewed variant) is almost certainly the best-placed candidate to win an award from that program: they have an almost-flying cargo variant that was originally designed to be human rated, and existing plans to complete the crewed variant.
SpaceX might get some money for Starship, although I would expect NASA to try to write the rules such that they're not eligible. While having two options from a single company is better than just one, a fully-independent option would be better.
Blue Origin has some experience with the New Shepard capsule, and is working on their Blue Moon lander: I expect that they would cobble together a proposal, and perhaps between their previous experience in losing bids due to over-pricing, and NASA's experience with Starliner's fixed-price failure, the price might end up somewhere in the middle?
Maybe Northrop-Grumman would propose a Cygnus-derived vehicle? It'd need a human-rated launcher -- Dream Chaser would likely be using Vulcan, and Falcon9 is a dependency on SpaceX. NG would probably like to use its own Antares 330 booster, but then they'd be running both a crew vehicle and a booster program which is a lot of money and risk.
It's not entirely implausible that someone buys Starliner from Boeing, and attempts to complete the development (if Boeing gives up). Blue Origin is possibly the most likely candidate? They have Jeff's cash mountain, and a kinda compatible "old space" culture -- if Boeing is willing to sell it at a reasonable price, it's possibly a cheap way to get 80% of the way there?
Given the results from this commercial crew round (a likely 50% success), funding two programs with the expectation of one success seems reasonable. Whether they are able to get commercial interest in a fixed-price award like last time is an open question, as is who might apply.
Interesting times.
They can't cut the program. They are contracted to NASA. If they try to bail out, they'll be breaching a major federal government contract, which could have serious negative consequences for their ability to win future federal contracts – not just NASA, but more importantly the Pentagon too.
If Boeing really wants out, the only plausible way is they convince NASA management to cancel the contract. That way Boeing can officially claim that they performed adequately, and the cancellation was due to NASA's own decision, not their own failures.
(yes it will be years before Starship is human-certified... but Starliner has already had MORE years)
Starliner is launching on ULA rockets (Atlas today, Vulcan likely in the future) anyway, and BE is rumored to be purchasing them too.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070025134/downloads/20...
Note that the Crew version still seems to be aspirational. And the base-model Cargo version isn't exactly flying in the fast lane, either - "[first] demonstration mission is planned for launch no earlier than 2025."
And note that it took SpaceX almost 10 years to go from Demo-1 of their Cargo Dragon to Demo-1 of their Crew Dragon.
The crew version of Dream Chaser is kinda on hold as they try to get the cargo version flying (they say they're still working on it, but I guess the cargo version is first priority): it'll take a bunch of work to get it completed and certified, but it should be less than starting from scratch.
Once flying, they've got a NASA contract to run 6 resupply missions to the ISS (assuming they can get it flying in time before ISS is deorbited), plus a single flight contract with the UN (!)
Both Dream Chaser and Starliner are proposed as crew transports for Blue Origin's Orbital Reef station.
I would hate to be in the latter camp and I imagine the kinds of people who take that kind of job would be like that too.
The only way they will risk astronaut lives and various reputations allowing them to return on the Boeing capsule is if they are 100% certain of a positive outcome. There are no rescue vessels in space right now, so even a minor problem can be deadly.
It seems unlikely at this point 100% certainty will be reached. And I'm sure NASA is very annoyed that the capsule isn't configured to do an unmanned return. Boeing needs to upload and test software for unmanned return, otherwise it is stuck there until they have those issues worked out (1 of only 2 docking ports perhaps?).
If nothing happens then great rather than killing off the entire program with fatalities.
I know the flight control software is not designed for this but surely somebody must have thought of this scenario ???.
NASA is worried about the thruster issue meaning that they lose control of the vehicle as it undocks and moves away from the ISS, leading to a collision. I guess that's independent of crew being on board.
But also ... the current Starliner software doesn't support an automated (uncrewed) undock. The previous one did, but some code and/or configuration changes are required to enable this on the current vehicle. NASA has said that making the changes to enable this will take about a month (including QA).
> After 87 launches, in August 2021 ULA announced that Atlas V would be retired, and all 29 remaining launches had been sold. As of July 2024, 15 launches remain. Production ceased in 2024.
IIRC they only have enough reserved Atlas V to fulfill all the manned missions they promised to NASA, so there is no room unmanned for test. (And that's a huge problem!)
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/a-new-report-finds-boe...
I mean it's an option for sure and in case of emergency it won't really matter whose return pods they use, but it seems they prefer not to.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_2#Crew_Dragon_fl...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/why-was-russia-banned...
A quick search turns up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-Earth_Orbit_Flight_Test_of...
In fact, the first people to say that the extension in space was indicative of a serious problem and that Boeing's PR was BS were right, yet they were attacked.
...when you look at the zero-to-one of standing up Tesla and SpaceX from nothing, he's achieved something quite amazing - twice. Boeing has over a century of engineering experience and it has experienced more problems and more delays getting Starliner into operation than SpaceX did with Dragon.
Both Tesla and SpaceX have demonstrated fresh thinking, new ideas and new approaches to tired and incumbent thinking in both the automotive and aeronautical industries. While also getting the basics right. People bitch about panel gaps in Model 3's but Model 3s and Ys are actually the safest cars the EPA has ever tested in their class.
I think Boring Company is a bit silly and I'm not sure Elon can apply his thinking to X, but I wonder if we'll see similar performance to Tesla and SapceX from Neuralink.
I hold $TSLA and I would hold SpaceX if I could obtain some, I don't have any interest in holding $BA
(Yes, there are still outstanding contracts, carriers don't like mixed fleets, etc, but... in terms of quality I can't see anybody saying "Yeah, Boeing, we're going there, that's the best you can buy")
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/science/boeing-starliner-...
The reason sounds like a combination of cost cutting and perhaps face saving - combining the "rescue" return with a half-crew next scheduled Dragon trip.
I've got to assume there's a faster contingency plan for a real emergency - that SpaceX could scramble a Dragon launch almost immediately if they had to?
I sometimes wonder what goes through their heads when they read stories such as this one. What exactly is in it for Boeing, NASA and Space-X to fake all of this?