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NASA freezes Starliner missions

(gizmodo.com)
269 points rntn | 1 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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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?

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jerkstate ◴[20 Oct 24 01:45 UTC] No.41892256[source]▶
My guess is because it returned to earth (unmanned) without any problems
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1. 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.