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Will the Starliner ever enter service?

When will the Starliner succeed with crewed test? (multiple selections allowed)

  • Before SpaceX Starship enters regular non-crewed service

    Votes: 1 4.5%
  • Sometime after SpaceX Spaceship enters regular uncrewed service

    Votes: 2 9.1%
  • After Starship begins crewed operations

    Votes: 1 4.5%
  • Soon, maybe in June or July of this year (2024)

    Votes: 3 13.6%
  • Not until fall of 2024

    Votes: 2 9.1%
  • Months and months away, maybe a year or more but they'll get there.

    Votes: 2 9.1%
  • Never. Boeing and NASA cut losses and drop the effort

    Votes: 10 45.5%
  • Stick it inside a Starship and pretend that counts.

    Votes: 2 9.1%
  • Option 7, but they revive the effort once Elon Musk's major mental malfunctions destroy SpaceX

    Votes: 5 22.7%

  • Total voters
    22
Starliner is now scheduled to undock on the evening of Friday September 6. Landing scheduled for just after midnight U.S. Eastern Time September 7.

Starliner lands on the ground, not a water splashdown. It will be at White Sands in New Mexico.

I am guessing that it will work pretty well, such that the astronauts would have been fine returning on it. But I also think that not sending them down on Starliner is the right thing to do. There are safer options to use until Boeing figures out the thruster issues.

NASA Sets Coverage for Starliner News Conference, Return to Earth
 
Starliner calls out

he Starliner spacecraft has started to emit strange noises

This weekend's sonar-like noises most likely have a benign cause, and Wilmore certainly did not sound frazzled. But the odd noises are worth noting given the challenges that Boeing and NASA have had with the debut crewed flight of Starliner, including substantial helium leaks in flight, and failing thrusters. NASA announced a week ago that, due to uncertainty about the flyability of Starliner, it would come home without its original crew of Wilmore and Suni Williams.

Pinging someone/something?

:scared:
 
Indeed, clearly the spaceship is haunted. Bringing it home now would contaminate the Earth with space poltergeists.
 
Almost sounds like something is about to fail, but keeps resetting, instead of going to the whole fail and then shutdown routine.
 
Bit of a mundane explanation for that odd noise:

NASA's Cheryl Warner said:
The feedback from the speaker was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner. The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback. The crew is asked to contact Mission Control when they hear sounds originating in the comm system.

https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-boein...-strange-noise-pulsing-sound-response-1947638
 
Does Boeing make anything other than planes and spaceships? They don't seem to be very good at this, maybe they should try something else?
 
Does Boeing make anything other than planes and spaceships? They don't seem to be very good at this, maybe they should try something else?

They also do Missiles, rockets, satellites

Most of the revenue in the space division is based on tried and true technology that attracts little attention. Ditto the military aviation and other military contracts. It's mostly manufacturing and delivery, not research and development.

I'm somewhat hamstrung by professional relationships in how I can speak, which is why I generally stay away from Boeing threads. But I can say there was a vast difference between when I worked on the 777 and when we completed our work on the 787. Simply put: it's Boeing management. They converted the company from engineering to profiteering from past successes. It's no longer any sort of pleasure to fulfill contracts with them. All the good engineers have left.

Starliner has de-orbited and landed, without incident it seems.

Falling with style.

All seriousness aside, there were some innovative elements in the Earth-landing system that worked well. That bodes well for the next qual mission.
 
Starliner has de-orbited and landed, without incident it seems.

I guess the crew could have been on it.

Maybe not entirely without issues, but it seems like the astronauts would have been fine, had they been on board.

https://fortune.com/2024/09/07/boeing-starliner-return-earth-nasa-new-glitches-spacex-elon-musk-iss/

NASA lavished praise on Boeing during a post-flight press conference where representatives from the company were conspicuously absent.

“It was a bullseye landing,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program. “The entry in particular has been darn near flawless.”

Still, he acknowledged that certain new issues had come to light, including the failure of a new thruster and the temporary loss of the guidance system.

He added it was too early to talk about whether Starliner’s next flight, scheduled for August next year, would be crewed, instead stressing NASA needed time to analyze the data they had gathered and assess what changes were required to both the design of the ship and the way it is flown.

Ahead of the return leg, Boeing carried out extensive ground testing to address the technical hitches encountered during Starliner’s ascent, then promised — both publicly and behind closed doors — that it could safely bring the astronauts home. In the end, NASA disagreed.

Well, hindsight is hindsight, and NASA judged that there was too much risk to put their astronauts' lives on the line. I wonder if the absence of representatives from Boeing means anything? They probably feel at least somewhat vindicated, although this is still a PR black eye for the company.
 
If Boeing hadn't had such long series of news about faulty planes, NASA might have let the Starliner return go ahead with passengers despite reservation.
 
<snip>
Well, hindsight is hindsight, and NASA judged that there was too much risk to put their astronauts' lives on the line. I wonder if the absence of representatives from Boeing means anything? They probably feel at least somewhat vindicated, although this is still a PR black eye for the company.

I would not read too much into it. NASA just wanted to express their POV. Boing should hold their own press conference. It would be a valid question to both parties.
 
I guess the crew could have been on it.



Maybe not entirely without issues, but it seems like the astronauts would have been fine, had they been on board.



https://fortune.com/2024/09/07/boeing-starliner-return-earth-nasa-new-glitches-spacex-elon-musk-iss/







Well, hindsight is hindsight, and NASA judged that there was too much risk to put their astronauts' lives on the line. I wonder if the absence of representatives from Boeing means anything? They probably feel at least somewhat vindicated, although this is still a PR black eye for the company.
I was listening to the "The Rest is History" podcast about the Apollo missions. Three astronauts died in Apollo One. They expected deaths could happen in any of the subsequent missions. Apollo 13 was within a hairs breadth of being fatal. Expectations have changed.

They gave the appearance of the Space Shuttle being like a super up air liner but it was always high risk as well.
 
I guess the crew could have been on it.

Maybe not entirely without issues, but it seems like the astronauts would have been fine, had they been on board.

Well, hindsight is hindsight, and NASA judged that there was too much risk to put their astronauts' lives on the line. I wonder if the absence of representatives from Boeing means anything? They probably feel at least somewhat vindicated, although this is still a PR black eye for the company.

It was the right call to make at the time. At the very least, landing safely suggests the vehicle is viable and the issues are with one or two systems or components rather than the whole kit and caboodle. It means development can continue.
 
It was the right call to make at the time. At the very least, landing safely suggests the vehicle is viable and the issues are with one or two systems or components rather than the whole kit and caboodle. It means development can continue.

If you ignore the fact that every flight had has had issues and this was not meant to be development flight, this was intended to be the final test before being accepted into service. Also when it departed it had a fresh set of problems unrelated to the ones that caused them to decide not to send the astronauts home on it.
There is also the question of whether Boeing will eat even more costs to make it work properly and at this point it may not enter service in time to make the six flights its been contracted for.
 
If you ignore the fact that every flight had has had issues and this was not meant to be development flight, this was intended to be the final test before being accepted into service.

It is the nature of any test flight that you might need to go back and fix some things, regardless of your hopes.
 
It is the nature of any test flight that you might need to go back and fix some things, regardless of your hopes.

That's not much of an excuse. The problem isn't that something went wrong. The problem is that Boeing thought it was ready for humans to travel in safely, and it wasn't. They were wrong about the current status of Starliner development. That's a problem that should not have happened.
 
It is the nature of any test flight that you might need to go back and fix some things, regardless of your hopes.

It was not a test flight! This was intended as acceptance in to service. From this point on it was supposed to be flying the six contracted operational flights delivering crew to the ISS. I cannot understand why people seem so determined to minimize another in a long line of dismal failures by Boeing. If Starliner was being built by a company without the lobbying power of Boeing the contract would have been cancelled already.
 
It was not a test flight! This was intended as acceptance in to service.

Correct. This was a qualifying flight. While you instrument a qualifying flight the same as you would for a test flight, the purpose of a qualifying flight is not to test and collect data. If you're competent, a qualifying flight should go off without a hitch. You're demonstrating that the article meets the acceptance criteria, not wondering whether it does. To fail this badly on a qualifying flight is shameful.
 
It is the nature of any test flight that you might need to go back and fix some things, regardless of your hopes.

Starliner launched on its first flight on December 20, 2019. This was a test flight
Result: Failed
After launch, it had a timing error resulting in its mission clock being 11 hours off. This resulted its computers commanding the RCS thrusters to fire for too long, consuming so much fuel that the spacecraft no longer had enough to dock with the ISS.
As the capsule was prepared for re-entry, a software error was discovered that could have caused a catastrophic collision between the service module and crew capsule.

Starliner launched on its second flight on May 19, 2022. This was also a test flight
Result: Failed
Two OMAC thrusters failed during the orbital insertion burn.
Two RCS thrusters failed during docking due to low chamber pressure.

As others have stated, flight three was a qualifying flight. Boeing were supposed to have had all these issues ironed out.

This spacecraft has been a disaster from the get-go. I am astonished that NASA allowed flight 3 to be crewed, and didn't ask for a third, uncrewed test flight.

I have to say, those two astronauts are braver than me. If I was offered a seat on Crew Dragon, I would accept before they finished making the offer. Offer me a seat on Starliner? .... err, no thanks!
 
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It was not a test flight!

I don't understand. The name of the mission was literally the Boeing Crew Flight Test. It shares similar nomenclature with the two previous test flights (Boe-CFT, compared with OFT). The vehicles first operational flight is PCM-1 which is supposed to happen late next year - delayed now, I presume. But...test is right there, in the name and designation. Of course it was a test flight. If it wasn't a test flight, why would it have the word "test" in the name?

Are there other examples of other vehicles with missions that were named explicitly "test flights" but which were not test flights?
 
I don't understand. The name of the mission was literally the Boeing Crew Flight Test. It shares similar nomenclature with the two previous test flights (Boe-CFT, compared with OFT). The vehicles first operational flight is PCM-1 which is supposed to happen late next year - delayed now, I presume. But...test is right there, in the name and designation. Of course it was a test flight. If it wasn't a test flight, why would it have the word "test" in the name?

Are there other examples of other vehicles with missions that were named explicitly "test flights" but which were not test flights?

Mercury-Redstone 3 (a.k.a. Freedom 7)

Gemini 3

Apollo 7

STS1

SpaceX Demo 2
 
Mercury-Redstone 3 (a.k.a. Freedom 7)

Gemini 3

Apollo 7

STS1

SpaceX Demo 2

Every single one of those appears to have been quite literally an acknowledged test flight, and none of them appear to have had the word "test" in their official name, making this list effectively 0/2, the exact opposite of what I was asking for.
 
Every single one of those appears to have been quite literally an acknowledged test flight, and none of them appear to have had the word "test" in their official name, making this list effectively 0/2, the exact opposite of what I was asking for.

Look at the bright side: Now you know there's no hard and fast nomenclature rule.

It's pretty clear from the description and expected outcome of this flight that it was intended as a qualification flight of a system that had previously been proven through testing, regardless of the label Boeing slapped on it.

For one thing, as I understand it, you don't test human-rated spacecraft systems with humans on board. Boeing and NASA must have been pretty confident they were done testing the human-rated components. Stranding your crew in LEO because your spacecraft is unexpectedly no longer human-rated doesn't say "test flight" to me. It says hubris and nemesis. Which seems to be Boeing's motto these days.

If it was really a test flight, why didn't it include a plan for bringing the crew home if the test failed?

Were the crew even test pilots making an informed choice to put their lives on the line in an unproven craft, for the glory of Boeing?
 
If it was really a test flight, why didn't it include a plan for bringing the crew home if the test failed?

Did it not? The final decision has been drawn out because Boeing wanted to see if the issue could be solved or mitigated, but it seems pretty obvious that "abort to the station and take the next bus home" was always the contingency plan. NASA TV commentators were already mentioning it even before the first decision to delay Starliner's departure was solidly made.
 
Every single one of those appears to have been quite literally an acknowledged test flight, and none of them appear to have had the word "test" in their official name, making this list effectively 0/2, the exact opposite of what I was asking for.

The entire point was to sign off on the Starliner for operational service, not identify yet another list of faults to be fixed, that they stuck the word 'test' in the name doesn't change that.

Starliner has been an unmitigated failure. Massively overbudget, late and frankly looking like a retread of a 1960s design by a company wanting to do the absolute minimum to fulfil the contract. It seems to me that from day one Boeing's entire strategy for Starliner was built on the assumption that SpaceX would fail to deliver a working crew Dragon or that Congress would mandate downselecting to a single provider, that being Boeing. At that point they could turn the screws on NASA for more money and turn Starliner into another SLS style money pit for the US taxpayer.
 
The entire point was to sign off on the Starliner for operational service, not identify yet another list of faults to be fixed, that they stuck the word 'test' in the name doesn't change that.

Correct.

It was a qualifying flight. So yeah, that is still a test flight of sorts, and sometimes, you get minor defects on such flights that you push through.

For example, Alan Shepard's sub-orbital flight (Freedom 7) in 1961 was a qualifying flight of sorts (although they didn't call them this back then) to make sure the Mercury capsule was go for John Glenn's fully orbital flight in Friendship 7 the next year. There was a moment of concern during Freedom 7's re-entry when Shepard didn't get the required indication light that the retro pack had been jettisoned. Turned out the be just an electrical glitch, the retro pack had indeed detached and the mission processed to a successful conclusion.

However, what is NOT supposed to happen during a qualifying mission is a total mission failure, such as happened with Starliner.

Starliner has been an unmitigated failure. Massively overbudget, late and frankly looking like a retread of a 1960s design by a company wanting to do the absolute minimum to fulfil the contract. It seems to me that from day one Boeing's entire strategy for Starliner was built on the assumption that SpaceX would fail to deliver a working crew Dragon or that Congress would mandate downselecting to a single provider, that being Boeing. At that point they could turn the screws on NASA for more money and turn Starliner into another SLS style money pit for the US taxpayer.


This, in spades!!!

Boeing has a history (well, since 1997 anyway) of spurning innovation by using old designs. Boeing should have developed completely a new aircraft in the 2000s and retired the 737, which was first introduced in the 1960s. Instead, they kept retreading that 1960s design, with all its flaws (including the short undercarriage legs) that led directly to the two Max 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019.
 
What do you all think of this assertion:


“The government wanted to send people back and forth to the International Space Station…So they gave two contracts — one to Boeing for $4.3B and a year later to SpaceX for $2.1B. SpaceX has since been back and forth 40 times. Boeing got there once and they couldn’t get their guys back. We had to go rescue them…Get rid of cost-plus contracts.”
Do contractors like Boeing have no incentive to control costs or stay within budget because they actually make more money when their project runs over budget and doesn't deliver what was promised?
 
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