←back to thread

NASA freezes Starliner missions

(gizmodo.com)
269 points rntn | 6 comments | 17 Oct 24 19:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.019s | source | bottom
Show context
dotnet00 ◴[19 Oct 24 14:37 UTC] No.41888001[source]▶
Would be clearer to say that its return to flight has been delayed to at least around a year from now.

For the fall/winter 2025 rotation they're going to plan with it being a Crew Dragon flight for now, subject to change depending on how Starliner's fixes go.

They also somewhat misleadingly say that NASA will also rely on Soyuz because of Starliner's unavailability, but that's just about the seat swap arrangement which helps to ensure that both the US and Russia can maintain a continuous presence if either side's vehicles have trouble. IIRC the agreement is expiring and NASA's interested in extending it, but Roscosmos hasn't agreed yet. I say misleading because I think they intended to extend that agreement regardless of Starliner's status.

replies(3): >>41889755 #>>41889872 #>>41899803 #
JumpCrisscross ◴[19 Oct 24 19:06 UTC] No.41889872[source]▶
> Would be clearer to say that its return to flight has been delayed to at least around a year from now

No. The ISS is decommissioned in 2030 and Boeing is losing money on the programme. It makes sense for nobody to continue this charade.

replies(4): >>41890013 #>>41890240 #>>41892015 #>>41894080 #
dchichkov ◴[19 Oct 24 19:50 UTC] No.41890240[source]▶
It is unhealthy to not have competition to SpaceX.
replies(7): >>41890276 #>>41891464 #>>41892428 #>>41893073 #>>41893881 #>>41894305 #>>41895244 #
JumpCrisscross ◴[19 Oct 24 19:54 UTC] No.41890276[source]▶
> unhealthy to not have competition to SpaceX

Agree. That’s why Starliner should be killed. To open those resources to someone who actually intends to compete with SpaceX.

replies(5): >>41890413 #>>41890845 #>>41891368 #>>41893157 #>>41894950 #
gamblor956 ◴[19 Oct 24 22:45 UTC] No.41891368[source]▶
Starliner works. It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious. It just happens to obscenely expensive.

There are no competitors that are even remotely close to competing with SpaceX and Boeing without first spending tens of billions of dollars like SpaceX and Boeing have done.

Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures?

replies(7): >>41891608 #>>41891684 #>>41891729 #>>41892124 #>>41892128 #>>41892438 #>>41892752 #
1. krisoft ◴[19 Oct 24 23:37 UTC] No.41891684[source]▶
> It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious.

How do you know how serious the issue was?

replies(1): >>41892256 #
2. jerkstate ◴[20 Oct 24 01:45 UTC] No.41892256[source]▶
My guess is because it returned to earth (unmanned) without any problems
replies(2): >>41894016 #>>41902210 #
3. krisoft ◴[20 Oct 24 08:55 UTC] No.41894016[source]▶
I’m curious if they would use the same logic for russian roulette. If you spin the barrel with one bullet, pull the trigger against your head and survive does that mean that the danger wasn’t that serious?

NASA wasn’t saying that they know for certain that the Starliner will have a catastrophe on the way back. What they said is that they cannot be certain that the probability of it having a catastrophe is lower than some decision threshold.

Using the russian roulette as an analogy NASA has a revolver with a barel for a million bullets, and they decided they are fine to pull the trigger against the astronauts heads if there are less than 5 bullets in it. But due to nobody really understanding the mechanism of previous anomalies they don’t know how many bullets there are in the barrel. There might be six or more so they are not willing to pull the trigger. (The number of bullets, and the number of chambers is merelly illustrative. I don’t know what is the real number NASA uses.)

replies(1): >>41895867 #
4. dotnet00 ◴[20 Oct 24 15:19 UTC] No.41895867{3}[source]▶
IIRC NASA requires a 1/270 chance of failure in space.
replies(1): >>41898315 #
5. krisoft ◴[20 Oct 24 20:45 UTC] No.41898315{4}[source]▶
Thank you! It seems wikipedia confirms what you are saying. Sadly the article it references is no longer available, so i can’t dig into it. But it sounds 1/270 is for the requirement for overall mission while the ascent and descent phases have 1/500 apportioned to them each.

Was trying to put this 1/500 number into perspective for myself. It sounds like it is rougly similar to the mortality of having appendicites. [1]

1: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...

6. adrian_b ◴[21 Oct 24 09:24 UTC] No.41902210[source]▶
It still had problems during the return flight, i.e. additional unexpected component malfunctions, but not serious enough to prevent a successful return.

Therefore the decision to not use it until the causes for all such malfunctions are understood was completely justified.

Problem: "one of the Starliner’s reaction control system (RCS) thrusters did not function".

Why it was not serious: "there are plenty of backup RCS thrusters".

Even if the redundancy ensured a successful return, the causes must be understood, because otherwise at a future return more than one thruster could malfunction and the redundancy may be insufficient.