Is this the first time a spaceship disembarked from a space station and landed back on the ground, all while unpiloted?
Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
21–30 of 79 posts
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? I think SpaceX has been doing a great job of that, with Crew Dragon. > Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Yes, but also fewer options. This is the first time NASA has ever had a choice between two completely different American spacecraft to return crew on. It is like if you own two cars, an…
> Boeing has really struggled in making the cultural transition from old style cost-plus government contracting. How is this old style? At least in software development / IT-consulting in Europe cost plus is done all the time now, since there were too many legal battles about fixed price not being finished according to spec.
The history of IT-consulting in Europe does not really inform us of the history of aerospace development in the US.
The fact is, space development used to be done on a cost-plus basis (old style) and is now moving strongly to a fixed cost basis (the current facts of life).
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? I think SpaceX has been doing a great job of that, with Crew Dragon. > Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Yes, but also fewer options. This is the first time NASA has ever had a choice between two completely different American spacecraft to return crew on. It is like if you own two cars, an…
Not too wrong as it made it back to Earth. > Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? NASA lost enough people during their "higher risk tolerance" epoch that they don't want to go through it again. Challenger and Columbia were such huge traumas each time...
> Not too wrong as it made it back to Earth.
The contractual requirement was for max 1-in-1000 probability of loss of crew on re-entry.
Let's suppose, for the sake of the argument, that due to these thruster issues, the actual probability had increased to 1-in-100.
In that scenario, it is totally expected that Starliner made it back to earth in one piece – there was a 99% chance it would happen. Yet simultaneously, 1% is 10 times riskier than 0.1%, and NASA absolutely made the right call in not putting astronauts on it when they had the choice.
The real issue, apparently, is NASA wasn't even confident in calculating that probability, since there were aspects of how the thrusters were behaving which nobody could explain. Although ground-based testing replicated some similar issues, the issues reproduced on the ground had some key differences from those occurring in space, and nobody had a convincing explanation for the differences.
Due to the flawed design, Boeing was pushing components past their certified thermal limits. And how they behave when you do that isn't well understood, because the industry standard approach is to not do that. Due to safety margins, you can get away with it to an extent – but exactly how far you can get away with it, and how exactly they will fail when they eventually do – those aren't questions people have a lot of experience in answering.
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#24Saw the reentry fireball in the sky from AZ, which was pretty. Glad it made it down in one piece, hopefully they'll be able to troubleshoot the problems better because of that.
Problematic parts burned down with services module, so no, not going to able to troubleshoot thrusters problems better.
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#25I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad? Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?
It’s not like the HW folks had been building capsules for four decades.
Look at the last 5 decades of SW. Why aren’t we in an iterative utopia already?
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
We also had the Challenger disaster, which killed seven. And two astronauts died in a flash fire in 1967. Columbia too, another seven. This is not the first time something has not gone according to plan. Thankfully nobody died. Let's not look at the past through rose-colored glasses, and assume that things have gotten worse. Spaceflight has been full of mistakes from the start.
Yep. And Apollo 11 was extremely close to being a crash.
13, not 11.
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#27I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad? Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?
Our IQ is literally dropping, I don’t think you need more than that. Going to outer space is hard. It requires intelligent people at every level and they need to be focused on what they are doing. Our era is an era of massive distraction and less intelligent people.
>Flynn attributed this increase to better nutrition. Flynn continued his work and other scientists followed suit until they all noticed that children born in 1975 reached 'peak IQ' and average intelligence had been dropping ever since. This is called the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'.
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. And Apollo 11 was extremely close to being a crash.
13, not 11. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13
No, Apollo 11:
> During the 12.6-minute-long powered descent, there were a total of five unexpected computer alarms. These alarms all indicated that Eagle’s computer system was overloaded, but in each case, Mission Control concluded that it was safe to continue the landing. The last of these alarms occurred less than three minutes before landing, when the crew was less than 500 meters above the surface. Because of the navigation error, the computer was guiding the spacecraft towards an unsafe touchdown point in the rugged, boulder-filled ejecta field surrounding West Crater. Armstrong took manual control and flew to a safe landing spot beyond the crater. At 3:17 PM CDT, he announced their safe landing, “Houston, Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed.” At the time of landing, Mission Control thought that the spacecraft had just 17 seconds of fuel left in the descent stage. However, post mission analysis showed that sloshing in the fuel tank during Armstrong’s search for a safe landing site caused the fuel gauge to give an inaccurate reading. Eagle actually had about 45 seconds of fuel left when it touched down.
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11
Apollo 13 had some very serious life-threatening problems, but almost crashing into the Moon was not one of them.
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#29I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad? Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?
We also had the Challenger disaster, which killed seven. And two astronauts died in a flash fire in 1967. Columbia too, another seven. This is not the first time something has not gone according to plan. Thankfully nobody died. Let's not look at the past through rose-colored glasses, and assume that things have gotten worse. Spaceflight has been full of mistakes from the start.
Three astronauts died in 1967: Gus Grissom, Edward White II, Roger Chaffee.
Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. And Apollo 11 was extremely close to being a crash.
13, not 11. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13
Apollo 11 was close to running out of fuel during landing, as it turned out the planned landing site was full of large boulders which couldn't be seen until the astronauts were actually there.