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Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

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Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

#71

Post by bumby »

anonzzzies wrote: post #48
cbanek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I worked at SpaceX) Two words: flight heritage. Successful concepts are very often reused. For example, heat shields, parachute landings, sea landings, air bags for landings on hard land, etc. Now, let me try to explain this in something similar: cars. Cars are all pretty much the same. They have a steering wheel, 4 tires, transmission, engine, etc. The parts all do the same thing in different cars, but we don't alw…

> But if you're starting from scratch, you've lost all the "little fixes" that go into making a car good. This is also the reason massive software rewrites often fail; you rebuild the general gist quite fast, nice code, lovely interfaces etc but it will have a trillion bugs which come from decades of adding an exception here, adding one there etc. So now you have a beautiful albeit worthless product. And often these…

The VA has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars trying to rewrite their antiquated software.

Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

#72

Post by [deleted] »

Bluestein wrote: post #54
cbanek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I worked at SpaceX) Two words: flight heritage. Successful concepts are very often reused. For example, heat shields, parachute landings, sea landings, air bags for landings on hard land, etc. Now, let me try to explain this in something similar: cars. Cars are all pretty much the same. They have a steering wheel, 4 tires, transmission, engine, etc. The parts all do the same thing in different cars, but we don't alw…

> For the question as why can't we make Apollo ships or Saturn V's anymore, a lot of plans and drawings were lost. Key people making decisions, testing, or even building parts on an assembly line weren't there. "Know-how rot" is a thing. Actual people involved are literally dying off, and knowledge is being lost. It could have been a peak, the Apollo program.-

[deleted]

Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

#74

Post by rendall »

cbanek wrote: post #18
dghlsakjg wrote: post #3

I'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?

(I worked at SpaceX) Two words: flight heritage. Successful concepts are very often reused. For example, heat shields, parachute landings, sea landings, air bags for landings on hard land, etc. Now, let me try to explain this in something similar: cars. Cars are all pretty much the same. They have a steering wheel, 4 tires, transmission, engine, etc. The parts all do the same thing in different cars, but we don't alw…

I read your comment before I read the article, and it gave me context for this passage:

> After extensive tests and analyses, Boeing engineers concluded the helium leaks were the result of slightly degraded seals exposed to toxic propellants over an extended period....

> The thruster problem, testing indicated, was caused by high temperatures that, in turn, caused internal Teflon seals to deform in poppet valves, restricting the flow of fuel.

> The high temperatures, the engineers concluded, were largely the result of manual flight control tests that caused the jets to fire hundreds of times in rapid-fire fashion while the craft was oriented so those same jets were in direct sunlight for an extended period.

Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

#75

Post by skissane »

tim333 wrote: post #66
tiahura wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually read the link you posted? It discusses a failure in involving designing and communicating specifications, not trying to save a buck.

Ah right you are. I got my links muddled. I was kind of thinking of this one that had the "Boeing didn't want to pay vendors for design changes" idea. I'm not sure that's proven though. https://x.com/theJordanNoone/status/1823421499686183220

See this from Eric Berger:

> "Boeing and Rocketdyne more or less hated one another," one person involved in the test told Ars. "Everyone was in super-defensive mode even before this happened. It had been classified as a risk, but the two sides weren’t talking openly and honestly about it."

> What was the source of the animosity? After Boeing selected Rocketdyne, according to sources, it asked for changes to some system specifications. This prompted Rocketdyne to ask for a change order fee, as is customary in government contracts. That infuriated Boeing, which thought it had a partnership with Rocketdyne, but the latter company saw itself as a contractor. As a result, the Boeing and Rocketdyne teams were effectively walled off from one another and did not iterate together toward a more effective propulsion system.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-th...

Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

#76

Post by fasa99 »

Bluestein wrote: post #54
cbanek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I worked at SpaceX) Two words: flight heritage. Successful concepts are very often reused. For example, heat shields, parachute landings, sea landings, air bags for landings on hard land, etc. Now, let me try to explain this in something similar: cars. Cars are all pretty much the same. They have a steering wheel, 4 tires, transmission, engine, etc. The parts all do the same thing in different cars, but we don't alw…

> For the question as why can't we make Apollo ships or Saturn V's anymore, a lot of plans and drawings were lost. Key people making decisions, testing, or even building parts on an assembly line weren't there. "Know-how rot" is a thing. Actual people involved are literally dying off, and knowledge is being lost. It could have been a peak, the Apollo program.-

Welp it was a peak, the Apollo program. Actually we'd want it to not be a peak, but a stepping stone to something greater. Alas.

Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

#77

Post by Mistletoe »

orwin wrote: post #49
Mistletoe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bor…

I really don't believe your source, so I looked into the original material : Flynn 1984, Flynn 1987, Flynn 2012,and I was right: the first study reporting a reverse-Flynn effect is pretty recent, and is from my country France, it's the Dutton&Lynn from 2015. Also, it's way more complicated than this. Basically an IQ test, if you're lucky to never have been subjected to one, is in fact multiple different tests (for me…

More reading for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_p...

Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

#78

Post by foobarbecue »

crazygringo wrote: post #14
dghlsakjg wrote: post #3

I'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.

Also, I just learned about this: https://youtu.be/qiJMdfj9NmI?si=gWawucu2U3WwIEbH

Re: Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

#79

Post by ReptileMan »

aredox wrote: post #13
skissane wrote: post #7

Earlier 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...

I think it was the other way around. In the higher risk tolerance era they only had the Apollo 1 fire. The shuttle clusterfucks happened when they no longer knew how to evaluate risks because of organizational culture.
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