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Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

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191–200 of 228 posts

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the effects of the invasion was that the Antares rocket stopped being viable. Antares used a pair of Russian RD-181 engines. The first stage was built in Ukraine (Dnipro). This sort of cooperation is basically dead.

I've been wondering, with the rocket science knowledge the Ukraine has, are they not capable of designing and building mid-rage missiles for their military, or is that just a much longer process?

Ukrainian missile "Neptune" hit Russian "Moscow" flagship, so they are capable, but drones are much much cheaper.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixed price contracts can be quite a problem in high risk projects. The issue is that incentives absolutely aren't aligned. The moment Boeing thinks it has achieved a certain part of the contract but NASA does not you have a huge problem on your hand where one side will try to get work done for free and the other has absolutely zero interest as they are not getting paid. If cost overruns are too great Boeing might al…

As much as I like the idea of having multiple independent vehicles (and knowing the impact of having your only crew-capable launch system grounded when it happened in the shuttle era), Starliner has been in systems integration hell for years now, always just a couple short months away. Boeing withdrawing and NASA restarting the bidding process for that contract might benefit everyone.

> Boeing withdrawing and NASA restarting the bidding process for that contract might benefit everyone.

Who besides Spacex or ULA can reasonably bid for it? Or are you also looking at foreign options?

It might not be Starliner but it seems like it'd be good to keep ULA in the game, just to make sure that Spacex is not the only option.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> completely neglects to mention any delay whatsoever when talking about the Crew-1 launch The Crew-1 delay was three years ago. Why would he mention it in this article? > spins a lack of a confirmed updated launch date less than three weeks after discovery of issues into a delay that will approach 2025 Reasonable, given how it's gone so far. They've yet another parachute issue, and accidentally used "hundreds of fee…

> The Crew-1 delay was three years ago. Why would he mention it in this article? The Crew-1 delays were not mentioned once in the article where Crew-1 actually launched - he just spent the article patting SpaceX on the back for saving NASA. Now we have this delay but it's Boeing, and it's all about the delays. And speculating that Starliner may not even launch until after Crew-9, when Crew-8 isn't even announced, but…

> The Crew-1 delays were not mentioned once in the article where Crew-1 actually launched - he just spent the article patting SpaceX on the back for saving NASA.

The article about Boeing finally getting their crewed test done is in the future, so it's a little odd to be mad at a slight that hasn't yet happened.

> Now we have this delay but it's Boeing, and it's all about the delays.

Yes, the article about the delays is about the delays. Why is this surprising?

> that's before you realize that Crew-7 is delayed, yes by a few days

If you're going to point out two-day delays, Berger's pointing out two year delays seems eminently reasonable. When they eventually do fly crew, a "after years of delays and additional test flights at Boeing's expense" is probably warranted in the article.

> There's no way you can reasonably turn "we're going to talk to Boeing and announce an updated launch date" in July of 2023 and credibly say "it's entirely possible that Crew-9 will launch before it!"

The last Starliner delay was nine months long. Crew-9 beating the Boe CFT is entirely possible. SpaceX and Boeing both had their first orbital tests in 2019, but SpaceX has flown eight NASA crewed flights (and three commercial) since then to Boeing's zero.

One of these programs is currently troubled, the other has hit its goals and won extra contracted flights. You really can't wish these facts away, and a journalist would be goofy to ignore the difference.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were paid 2x more than what NASA paid SpaceX. It's worth a case study - why didn't they try to pay Gwynne Shotwell 10x more + CEO role + (M\B)illions worth of stocks? Even if they did, why didn't she accept? She would certainly have turned their fortunes around.

Hasn't Gwen's main role at SpaceX been sales? Is she also the main force behind spaceX executing at engineering?

She takes care of everything except the Mars program. Falcon is well established at this point and very few engineering iterations remain. It’s a “done” product and the cash cow of the company. Elon runs the Mars program out of Boca Chica but the day to day operations, (ie the boring stuff), including Falcon, is all Gwynne.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#195
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SpaceX’s dragon had test failures There's a major difference between internal tests intended to discover problems and "we think everything's good, NASA, can we send it to the ISS?" tests intended to show everything's working. > Funding represents significantly more than 4 years of delays Sure. Add on additional years worth of failed tests on the actual production vehicle and you get the $1.1B in the article. Boe-OF…

They were only different in how expensive they were to conduct. NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing all expected these tests to have a significant risks, which is why they where unmanned. The entire point of spending that much money was to discover problems. As to your “sure” if admit Boeings delays are less than half of total delays, that sounds like you agree with me. Anyway, Dragon 2 as an iteration of an existing platform w…

Dragon 2 is _not_ an iteration on Dragon 1. It’s a completely different vehicle and it was risky for SpaceX to go the route of developing a completely new vehicle. Yet they got it done, cheaper and faster.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#196
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Crew-1 Happened in 2020, Staliner-1 has been delayed until probably late 2023, 2024. Demo-1 Happened before OFT-1. They both started at similar times and also their delayed missions were delayed by similar amounts initially. By all accounts, Starliner is behind is every possible way with much greater funding than SpaceX. SpaceX is at Crew 7, Starliner isn't even close to Starliner-1

> By all accounts, Starliner is behind is every possible way with much greater funding than SpaceX. That's only true if you assume SpaceX strictly allocated budgets per program and that no revenue from their other missions have gone to the crewed flight programs. I'm not saying Spaceliner is a success, or that there are arguments to be made about each company's approach (you could argue that while Boeing's approach s…

So disingenuous. SpaceX’s “craters”, whatever that means, are not from mission failures but from working on booster landing and reusability, _after_ successfully delivering their mission payloads.

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#197
post #86
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they've had 3 so far and have at least 4 more planned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_2#Crew_Dragon_fl...

Right, billionaire space tourism is a thing.

So there is indeed a market for private flights? Saudi Arabia and Turkey also purchased seats on Dragon for their space programs. The market exists alright

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#198
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ULA is half Boeing

Yeah but Boeing brought the Delta into the marriage and LM brought Atlas. Pretty clear who brought to good stuff.

Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy have had a pretty good track record. Only one more will fly though, and ULA's replacement (Vulcan) is still vaporware (thanks in large part to Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin having numerous delays in producing the engines for Vulcan... )

Re: Boeing has now lost $1.1B on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight

#199

"...and the second problem came with hundreds of feet of P-213 glass cloth tape inside the spacecraft found to be flammable." How does the craft get built and you just discover this now?

Probably somebody believed an overly optimistic spec sheet without verifying it first.
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