Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 64 posts

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#11

Post by m4rtink »

""While this anomaly was corrected in flight, if it had gone uncorrected it would have led to erroneous thruster firing and uncontrolled motion during SM separation for deorbit, with the potential for catastrophic spacecraft failure," Hill said during the meeting."

I guess some things just never get old, citing from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_5 :

"The flight was also memorable for its dramatic re-entry. The craft's service module did not separate, so it entered the atmosphere nose-first, leaving cosmonaut Boris Volynov hanging by his restraining straps. As the craft aerobraked, the atmosphere burned through the module. But the craft righted itself before the escape hatch was burned through."

This actually happened three times so far with the Soyuz (in all cases without the loss of crew):

"An incomplete separation between the Service and Reentry Modules led to emergency situations during Soyuz 5, Soyuz TMA-10 and Soyuz TMA-11, which led to an incorrect reentry orientation (crew ingress hatch first)."

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)#Service_mod...)

One would kinda expect that past crewed vehicle emergencies would be studied in detail when designing a new one & that the developers would make extra sure they can't reasonably happen with their design.

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#12

Post by classicsnoot »

On a certain blog that is completely outside acceptable standards for wrongthink and political correctness, a very popular topic of late is why NASA seems to have it in for Elon Musk Personally and SpaceX generally. The commonly stated reasons, and I will be paraphrasing and transliterating freely, are: HR culture defining administration wide objectives and methods and reasoning, professional embarrassment over languishing reputation, gross incompetence, turf defense of budget and status, and a desire to stay firmly planted on Terra while being lauded for dreaming of the stars.

I am always skeptical of any argument that is unfamiliar, but more and more it does appear that NASA has lost its way. The shuttle was an obvious mistake in retrospect; there may even be some credibility to the obscure theory that NASA only did it to further separate themselves from DoD. I think NASA has become a political creature that is less concerned with science and more concerned with SCIENCE™. If this is the case, they will fight tooth and nail against any expansion of manned space exploration (because it will be both private and military in nature), the will fight against innovation that doesn't spring from their own workshop(s), and they will use Cape Canaveral (and their heritage facilities/infrastructure) as a way to bully "adversaries" into submission.

I hope this isn't the case, and if it is, I hope they can reverse whatever practices and policies that have led us to where we are. As it stands though, it appears NASA is more like OSHA then it is like its historical instance.

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#13

Post by mdocherty »

classicsnoot wrote: post #12

On a certain blog that is completely outside acceptable standards for wrongthink and political correctness, a very popular topic of late is why NASA seems to have it in for Elon Musk Personally and SpaceX generally. The commonly stated reasons, and I will be paraphrasing and transliterating freely, are: HR culture defining administration wide objectives and methods and reasoning, professional embarrassment over langu…

Which blog?

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#14

Post by jbay808 »

classicsnoot wrote: post #12

On a certain blog that is completely outside acceptable standards for wrongthink and political correctness, a very popular topic of late is why NASA seems to have it in for Elon Musk Personally and SpaceX generally. The commonly stated reasons, and I will be paraphrasing and transliterating freely, are: HR culture defining administration wide objectives and methods and reasoning, professional embarrassment over langu…

I'm confused by what you mean. NASA has provided SpaceX with lots of expertise and assistance. And you are aware that Starliner is a Boeing vehicle, not SpaceX?

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#15

Post by lisper »

classicsnoot wrote: post #12

On a certain blog that is completely outside acceptable standards for wrongthink and political correctness, a very popular topic of late is why NASA seems to have it in for Elon Musk Personally and SpaceX generally. The commonly stated reasons, and I will be paraphrasing and transliterating freely, are: HR culture defining administration wide objectives and methods and reasoning, professional embarrassment over langu…

> I think NASA has become a political creature

NASA has always been a political creature, but its mission has changed over the years. Its original mission was to beat the USSR into space. Its new mission is to funnel money to key congressional districts. But it has always been political. Science was always a facade.

Source: I worked for NASA for 15 years (1988-2000, 2001-2004).

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#16

Post by MiroF »

classicsnoot wrote: post #12

On a certain blog that is completely outside acceptable standards for wrongthink and political correctness, a very popular topic of late is why NASA seems to have it in for Elon Musk Personally and SpaceX generally. The commonly stated reasons, and I will be paraphrasing and transliterating freely, are: HR culture defining administration wide objectives and methods and reasoning, professional embarrassment over langu…

> On a certain blog that is completely outside acceptable standards for wrongthink and political correctness

What does this statement really add besides political signaling?

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#17

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ceejayoz wrote: post #6
moftz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on if the crew would have been able to control those thrusters themselves. Obviously you want the entire system to be autonomous enough that no crew interaction is required but things do happen and the crew needs to be able to act and fix the problem if capsule can't do it nor the ground. When the Starliner started a burn at the wrong time, a crew would have been able to stop it and prevent the loss of fue…

> You can't always simulate every possible failure mode. Things fail on the ground that wouldn't be possible during normal operation and vice versa. This should be concerning, then: https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/11/04/boeing-starliner-pad-a... > “Boeing is not going to do an in-flight abort test,” said Jon Cowart, deputy manager of the mission management office for NASA’s commercial crew program, before the pad abo…

You'd think that after two air plane disasters, they'd tread carefully

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#18

Post by trhway »

smoyer wrote: post #7

So we know there were catastrophic bugs in the 737 Max, they've found additional bugs that haven't been catastrophic yet and now we hear that the Starliner also has software bugs. I'm going to order a copy of "The Mythical Man-Month" for Boeing ... they need to get way back to the basics. (Where's Margaret Hamilton when you need here?

> I'm going to order a copy of "The Mythical Man-Month" for Boeing

too late. Boeing is already deep in Agile, a methodology which promises that a child can be delivered by the way of 9 incremental monthly deliveries.

https://www.infosysconsultinginsights.com/2019/06/12/the-ris...

"Boeing was an early Agile adopter in 2008 surpassing its rival, Airbus, in 2012 by deploying a newly renovated 737 Max 8 faster to market.

[...]

The 2008 article Boeing Frontiers- Goin’ Agile by Doug Cantwell from Boeing describes how Boeing, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, created an Agile lab to move changes to the aircraft to market it faster, cutting down flight test times from months to days. "

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#19

Post by tracerbulletx »

trhway wrote: post #18
smoyer wrote: post #7

So we know there were catastrophic bugs in the 737 Max, they've found additional bugs that haven't been catastrophic yet and now we hear that the Starliner also has software bugs. I'm going to order a copy of "The Mythical Man-Month" for Boeing ... they need to get way back to the basics. (Where's Margaret Hamilton when you need here?

> I'm going to order a copy of "The Mythical Man-Month" for Boeing too late. Boeing is already deep in Agile, a methodology which promises that a child can be delivered by the way of 9 incremental monthly deliveries. https://www.infosysconsultinginsights.com/2019/06/12/the-ris... "Boeing was an early Agile adopter in 2008 surpassing its rival, Airbus, in 2012 by deploying a newly renovated 737 Max 8 faster to market.…

Agile is great when the maximum cost of system failure is momentary decreased sales.

Re: Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

#20

Post by worik »

m4rtink wrote: post #11

""While this anomaly was corrected in flight, if it had gone uncorrected it would have led to erroneous thruster firing and uncontrolled motion during SM separation for deorbit, with the potential for catastrophic spacecraft failure," Hill said during the meeting." I guess some things just never get old, citing from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_5 : "The flight was also memorable for its dramatic re-entry. The…

Given commercial pressures would a Boeing reentry vehicle be over designed to such a extent that on such a failure (failure to separate, entering with the wrong attitude ?correct term?) result in "...the craft righted itself before the escape hatch was burned through"?
Post reply on HN