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Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

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Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#21

Post by lmm »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #11

> If all goes to plan, Boeing will be able to finally certify its Starliner for human transportation and begin fulfilling the terms of its $4.2 billion NASA astronaut taxi contract. That contract, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, was awarded in 2014. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was also granted a contract under that program, for its Crew Dragon capsule, and has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since…

> with all the aerospace engineering talent that Boeing must already have had ... Did SpaceX poach all of Boeing/Airbus' best people?

Boeing were reverse-acquired by Douglas Aircraft (after they'd reverse-acquired McDonnell) and their terrible quarterly-numbers management has destroyed a lot of Boeing's engineering. But the stock price kept going up which is the important thing, right?

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#22

Post by tw04 »

renewiltord wrote: post #12

The funny thing is that Elon Musk promised us Mars and gave us orbit for cheaper than ever before. Boeing in its various incarnations has promised us orbit and given us nothing for just as expensive as before. Some people like to optimize for delta between promise and delivery. I think I like it when just delivery is optimized. There's really only one space company in the US today, and perhaps if there were other peo…

I don’t think that’s really a fair assessment. Yes Space-X has had the most launches and gets the most press, but the US has a very healthy launch industry.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/top-us-launch-compan...

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#23

Post by dotnet00 »

irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

The diversity argument does ring slightly hollow when iirc Boeing has only made two Starliners and it only has enough rockets for the 6 missions in the contract.

Basically they're set up to have one capsule in refurb while the other is at the station, and once the 6 Atlas V's are spent, someone has to cough up the money to do the stack of paperwork for crew rating the combo of Starliner and Vulcan.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#24

Post by Dalewyn »

pfdietz wrote: post #10
Dalewyn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely accurate to the facts, but twisted to try and paint a certain narrative given the current trends. Technically correct, the best kind of correct. The headline could be an infinite number of ways more descriptive instead of riding on the coattails of the Boeing bash bandwagon: "ULA scrubs launch of first crewed Boeing Starliner due to faulty valve in Atlas V." "Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission sc…

I call bullshit on you. It was a perfectly fine headline. That they've tied Starliner to Atlas 5 is not something that was forced on them, so Boeing and Starliner gets to own the consequences.

[flagged]

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#25

Post by dotnet00 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #11

> If all goes to plan, Boeing will be able to finally certify its Starliner for human transportation and begin fulfilling the terms of its $4.2 billion NASA astronaut taxi contract. That contract, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, was awarded in 2014. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was also granted a contract under that program, for its Crew Dragon capsule, and has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since…

SpaceX was able to accomplish it because they were actually trying. They quickly became the company to go to if you entered aerospace primarily to work yourself hard doing R&D, so they got all the best young aerospace engineers who just wanted to get things done rather than have their soul crushed by the bureacracy at the old space giants.

Meanwhile Boeing and the other old guard were full of jaded "it isn't that easy" types. It's difficult to innovate when your instinctual response to attempts at innovation is to look for excuses on how it won't be that straightforward, that it won't be economical, or that it won't make sense.

Eg, if we look at Falcon 9, first the arguments from old space companies were that launching to orbit is too difficult for an inexperienced company to do reliably ("they don't have spaceflight heritage"), then that they must be cutting corners to bring prices that low, then in the early days of F9 booster reuse, the argument shifted to saying that there wasn't enough stuff to launch to justify the expense (there was the ULA CEO's argument that, for them it'd take 10 flights per booster to break even or ArianeSpace's saying that they'd have to shut down the factories and lose expertise becuase they'd only need a handful of reusable boosters to fully meet demand).

In a way, SpaceX's success is just an engineering version of Planck's principle (https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Planck%27s_principle?&useskin...)

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#26

Post by redserk »

pfdietz wrote: post #10
Dalewyn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely accurate to the facts, but twisted to try and paint a certain narrative given the current trends. Technically correct, the best kind of correct. The headline could be an infinite number of ways more descriptive instead of riding on the coattails of the Boeing bash bandwagon: "ULA scrubs launch of first crewed Boeing Starliner due to faulty valve in Atlas V." "Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission sc…

I call bullshit on you. It was a perfectly fine headline. That they've tied Starliner to Atlas 5 is not something that was forced on them, so Boeing and Starliner gets to own the consequences.

In case it hasn’t been obvious, Boeing has been in the news over the last few months for various airplane defects.

I fail to see how it’s unreasonable to believe a journalist wouldn’t want to utilize the negative undertones of the Boeing name here, considering this would not an unusual pattern to utilize for headline writing.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#27

Post by walkabilitee »

dotnet00 wrote: post #23
irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

The diversity argument does ring slightly hollow when iirc Boeing has only made two Starliners and it only has enough rockets for the 6 missions in the contract. Basically they're set up to have one capsule in refurb while the other is at the station, and once the 6 Atlas V's are spent, someone has to cough up the money to do the stack of paperwork for crew rating the combo of Starliner and Vulcan.

In case anyone asks, "why don't they just build more Atlas V rockets," it's because they rely on Russian engines which have been phased out due to politics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#28

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

tw04 wrote: post #22
renewiltord wrote: post #12

The funny thing is that Elon Musk promised us Mars and gave us orbit for cheaper than ever before. Boeing in its various incarnations has promised us orbit and given us nothing for just as expensive as before. Some people like to optimize for delta between promise and delivery. I think I like it when just delivery is optimized. There's really only one space company in the US today, and perhaps if there were other peo…

I don’t think that’s really a fair assessment. Yes Space-X has had the most launches and gets the most press, but the US has a very healthy launch industry. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/top-us-launch-compan...

The thing is, it's not even remotely close.

SpaceX had 98 launches in 2023.

ULA, the closest competitor, had 3.

For all of these others, considering that this article is from 2022, how many of them even still exist?

Don't get me wrong, I hope SpaceX gets some stiff competition because I believe that competition breeds innovation. At the moment, however, I have no idea where that is going to come from or when it might reasonably come.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#29

Post by dotnet00 »

walkabilitee wrote: post #27
dotnet00 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The diversity argument does ring slightly hollow when iirc Boeing has only made two Starliners and it only has enough rockets for the 6 missions in the contract. Basically they're set up to have one capsule in refurb while the other is at the station, and once the 6 Atlas V's are spent, someone has to cough up the money to do the stack of paperwork for crew rating the combo of Starliner and Vulcan.

In case anyone asks, "why don't they just build more Atlas V rockets," it's because they rely on Russian engines which have been phased out due to politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180

Plus, the production lines for Atlas V have already been retooled with those for Vulcan, so even if they did have the engines, they couldn't make the rockets.

IIRC ULA did have a license to manufacture their own domestic RD-180s (or was considering getting it), but the factory for those would've been very expensive and not worth it with Vulcan in its early design stages.

Re: Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission scrubbed

#30

Post by YeBanKo »

irjustin wrote: post #14

Glad this is happening. ULA is a good launch provider even if they are insanely expensive vs SpaceX. Yes, Elon is right, SpaceX did it cheaper, faster everything that you'd dream of. But, from a policy making standpoint, you always need to diversify at the expense of upfront money because the downsides risks are too high if you put all your eggs in one basket. That said - I do wish Boeing+ULA would get it's act toget…

Without SpaceX DoD would locked into a single maker, but also into a Russian made engine. 5 years behind the schedule and only after congress mandated it n
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