341–350 of 372 posts
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Heh I’d hate to be their families too. Sometimes I travel for work, if a week turned into 8 months it would be mayhem.
The return flight will be in February too— they'll be missing thanksgiving, and all the winter holidays oof
So is this a reflection on Boeing engineering culture? Seems it would be, I remember comments from previous articles saying it is.
Bigger than that, legacy US defense contractors ARE the US Military / Space Force / etc. So IMO the golem whose values are being reflected in this failure / recovery from it is a US Government Commercial organism. And indirectly the United State's civilian population since the Government is formed (over centuries) to be a care-taker reflection of the civilian pop.
But mostly the issue is employing it as a long term strategy, because it worked a few times in the last as a short term boost to newly ascendant orgs (ala NASA+space industry in the 1960s) before the Iron Rule of bureaucracy kicks in at all organizations involved, be they private or public.
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A fellow Star Trek fan?
I am, but I’m missing the reference?
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> Is this how things are done around here? Yes. Often I add a comment ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ), but this time I didn't. When a single word starts sucking most of the thread's attention and leading to acrimonious nitpickery, it's an easy call to take that word out of the title. Striving for accurate and neutral titles is one of the best established principles of HN moderation…
Thank you for explaining that! Seems a tough call doing that versus flagging the root comment of the acrimony, but maybe that alternate approach would have a bigger (too big) cost in disruption once there is such a small continent of comments built out under the top comment.
Is there a good link for the unexpected science these two have been doing and will do?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Crew_Flight_Test#ISS_st...
> On 10 June, with all their initial Starliner testing completed, the CFT crew started working on general ISS maintenance and research activities. They started their day by measuring their temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate. Later, Wilmore worked on the maintenance of a computer connected to the Microgravity Science Glovebox, while Williams installed hardware to support a space fire investigation. On 11 June, the astronauts spent their time on biomedical activities, with Wilmore organizing the inventory of the Human Research Facility, and Williams working on procedures to collect microbe samples and sequence their genes. On 12 June, Wilmore checked cargo in the Harmony module and worked on maintenance of the station's bathroom, while Williams continued her gene sequencing work from the day before.[65]
> On 17 June, Williams worked on maintenance tasks and prepared the Advanced Plant Habitat for future experiments, and on 18 June she continued working on the gene sequencing study from the prior week. Meanwhile, Wilmore spent the two days working on a study of the behavior of flowing liquids in space.[69][70]
> NASA said that since their arrival on 6 June, Wilmore and Williams have been tasked with completing half of all hands-on research time conducted aboard the ISS, giving their crewmates more time to prepare for the departure of Northrop Grumman's Cygnus NG-20 spacecraft.[71]
(As you probably know, it's a bit misleading to say that Astronauts are doing science on the ISS. For the most part they are brilliant, expensive, and highly trained lab technicians who prep and repair equipment and then hit the "go" button for experiments that were designed by, and will be analyzed by, scientists on Earth.)
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No. Definitely no. I've tested this many times by up-voting predictably stable comments, noting the karma number before and hours later. No effect. No exceptions. Additionally, there was a time where this limitation didn't exist. I am pretty sure I triggered a flag for my tendency to up-vote controversial and underdog content. I don't think dang is right about everything, but I get the impression that he's honest and…
I don't think dang is right about everything, but I get the impression that he's honest and expect he'd confirm this limitation on my username. Ask. But I'm not grovelling for equal rights on HN and will make no inquiries to insiders. I once had this limitation on my own account. It was because I had upvoted certain grayed out comments that were flamewar fodder. I did that because there were equally bad counter-comme…
I think some folks see the apparent simplicity of HN and assume it's primitive and clean, with nothing too sophisticated running in the background.
Is there a good link for the unexpected science these two have been doing and will do?
Yea NASA does not do a great job explaining what science is happening on the ISS You could maybe start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Crew_Flight_Test#ISS_st... > On 10 June, with all their initial Starliner testing completed, the CFT crew started working on general ISS maintenance and research activities. They started their day by measuring their temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate.…
True. I was just curious if having two extra pairs of hands was letting new experiments be done, or existing ones be done more thoroughly.
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> there’s no emergency situation at the moment It’s space. The ground state is emergency. I am training to be a pilot. Anything going off flight plan is an emergency. If ground control gives me corrective instructions, in the course of a mistake, I hope I will have the humility to not refuse its designation as a rescue. Like, if you want an Exhibit A for why Boeing doesn’t deserve forward trust, it’s this response.
When the ground state is emergency the definition of emergency changes because emergency cannot be the same as ground state... If we go by technical definition of "emergency" then anything not by the plan is an emergency, but it's not used that way normally and it's not a technical publication. If you are stuck in space with no lifeboat back then I agree it is an emergency, but they apparently have Starliner and it w…
One, had. Starliner went home. Two, they didn’t. Starliner was broken. Its manoeuvring thrusters, a critical reëntry system, were misbehaving. If you’re on a plane and the oxygen system fails, that’s an emergency. You don’t have to wait for cabin pressure to fail for it to qualify, and oxygen systems aren’t even a critical system; this is closer to the flaps or landing gear behaving erratically.
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> if you’re not in danger, you’re not being rescued. You’re just being transported The ISS isn’t Treasure Island. There is always an elevated degree of peril. Particularly in an emergency condition.
These individuals are professionals who signed up for this and are paid to do the job. This isn’t a rescue; the media is simply sensationalizing the entire story.
Is the thesis only leisure travellers can be rescued? Astronauts do not sign up to fly on faulty ships. They accept the risk of it happening. But that acceptance doesn’t diminish the tragedy of a ship breaking up on reëntry nor, by extension, the emergency status of a reëntry vehicle with misbehaving manoeuvring thrusters.
This discussion reminds me of the reaction among some to the FAA grounding Falcon 9 “after the first stage used in the [August] launch crash-landed and toppled into the Atlantic Ocean while attempting to touch down on a SpaceX droneship” [1]. It doesn’t matter that everyone else tosses their spent stages into the sea. There was a plan and it went abnormally. That calls for a review. If that review can’t be concluded satisfactorily, as it wasn’t in the case of Starliner, you have an emergency. Relieving someone from an emergency is a rescue.
By some of the standards raised in this thread, a test pilot ejected from their plane and stranded in the tundra wouldn’t qualify for rescue because they were paid or weren’t in immediate and obvious mortal peril or because the ejection seat worked.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-grounded-faa-cr...
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Or perhaps blame Boeing and NASA, rather than the single competent organisation that's managing to hold the whole damned thing together.
Why not both? I think it's both the incompetence of the incumbents, and the impressive work of SpaceX that got us to where we are. With the vast majority of companies, especially tech companies, I think the leadership gets far too much credit. In most organizations I have been a part of, they succeed in spite of the leadership, not because of it. In the case of SpaceX though, I am less sure. Reading the Walter Isaacs…
No-one would've believed it possible, no-one even conceived of the notion that it was worth while to try.
And there's not another billionaire around who'd've been willing to bet the house on it.
I don't know how much of a roll he had in the designs (other than "make it pointy") but the fact remains that he's the man who built the team that somehow managed to achieve the hitherto impossible.
My biggest concern with him is that he's pushing a pace that in some cases will go beyond the point of diminishing returns, and even beyond that into the territory that invites burnout.
When you're building teams of the best minds on earth, you probably don't want to be burning through them like candles.