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NASA freezes Starliner missions

(gizmodo.com)
269 points rntn | 4 comments | 17 Oct 24 19:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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.

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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.

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dchichkov ◴[19 Oct 24 19:50 UTC] No.41890240[source]▶
It is unhealthy to not have competition to SpaceX.
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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.

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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?

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1. ordu ◴[20 Oct 24 03:59 UTC] No.41892752[source]▶
> It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious.

We don't know if it was serious or not. If Starliner managed to land this time, will it be able to do it repeatedly, or it was just luck this time?

If we are trying to deduce seriousness of the issue from data, then one point of data is too low. Boeing needs to launch a few dozens more of test flights to gather the data needed for this kind of reasoning. But if we are relying on causal reasoning, then we have no clear understanding of causes, Boeing engineers are still unable to explain how their thrusters fail exactly, and what they could do to make them robust.

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2. Dalewyn ◴[20 Oct 24 05:22 UTC] No.41893074[source]▶
>Boeing needs to launch a few dozens more of test flights to gather the data needed for this kind of reasoning.

This in fact is a shining vindication of Musk's "Waste metal, not time." philosophy.

Boeing is operating in the old school "Spend lots of time planning, go for a hole in one." philosophy, so if they proceed to fail they need to spend lots of more time planning and going for more hole in ones to demonstrate sufficient statistics.

SpaceX? They wasted metal instead of time and got statistics out with sheer numbers before Boeing even got a number, because the only way you get numbers is by getting numbers.

Boeing should be fired and ideally bankrupted, and everyone else needs to get with the times so they don't become the next Boeing.

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3. tliltocatl ◴[21 Oct 24 11:02 UTC] No.41902834[source]▶
On the other hand, "waste metal" philosophy was what killed Soviet moon program. Guess sensors and telemetry are a bit more advanced today.
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4. Dalewyn ◴[21 Oct 24 13:15 UTC] No.41903840{3}[source]▶
No, the Soviets lost simply because we wasted more metal than they did.

Consider that just the Apollo programme had twenty one (21) launches in a span of about just 8 years before Apollo 11 landed the first men on the Moon.

Gemini had twelve (12) launches in a span of just 2 years, and Mercury had twenty six (26) launches in a span of just 4 years.

Contrast 4 launches of N1, 6 launches of Voskhod, and 13 launches of Vostok from records we know of.

If anything, Musk should waste more metal.