30 thoughts on “Starliner Woes Continue”

  1. It is fun to watch NASA flounder when they have options to save the lives of our astronauts. This new territory for them.

    1. If only they had maybe not sent live people on what they hoped would turn out to be the first successful test flight!

  2. I see no way politically that the astronauts return on Starliner at this point; how do NASA and Boeing drive the uncertainty down far enough to convince Ballast Bill and the Harris regime that it’s safe? The usurper-in-chief can’t take the political fallout of a less-than-perfect re-entry with the astronauts onboard; even if they return safely, any anomaly will be seen in hindsight as a near-catastrophe. And Willie’s side piece can’t take the risk that she’ll be blamed for “nearly” killing two astronauts.

    TL;DR – Unless the Russian cosmonauts stage an armed takeover of the ISS (I kid, I kid!), nobody is returning to Earth in the Boeing/NASA Starliner.

    1. And I forgot to say that new CEO Kelly Ortberg will almost certainly kill Starliner as soon as it touches down. Boeing’s defense and space business is drowning in fixed-price contract overruns, and unlike programs like KC-46 and T-7A, which will eventually make back their investments and then some, there’s no upside to throwing good money after bad on Starliner.

    2. There is no upside for SpaceX/Musk to bring them back.

      If anything happens, it will be Musk’s fault. If nothing happens, it will be poo-pooed as a trivial exercise, but NASA will increase it’s loathing of SpaceX asymptotically. If NASA flies them home on their original ride, it will be a huge risk: Maybe it will turn out successful, maybe not, but either way it shows how risky and irresponsible NASA is.

      Maybe the only safe course is to load them into the Soyuz…

      1. I seriously wonder what the upside is for Boeing to continue the Starliner program. Surely with all the fixed price sunk costs they’ll never make a dime on this. Why throw good money after bad?

        If Starliner lives it will only be because NASA wants it badly enough.

      2. The upside for Musk is that NASA will come to him begging, and he’ll be able to selflessly say “my country needs me”. If somehow things go bad, it will be written off as an unforeseen and unfortunate accident, because (a) Crew Dragon is much better understood than Starliner, and has several successful missions under its belt, and (b) they’ll send up the rescue Crew Dragon with only two crew so that they don’t have to get into the alternate five- or six-person setup, which would be seen as adding risk. And (c) he’ll get paid, unless he makes a magnanimous gesture (which he might, although NASA wouldn’t like it and might forbid it).

        But I think this will be the last voyage of Starliner, and it will be bereft of human occupants.

  3. A lot of people in the news and social media who have been defending Boeing and NASA should ask themselves tough questions if the astronauts come home on a dragon but wont.

    1. There are indeed a lot of questions that ought to be asked, including of NASA. One, in my opinion, is why, exactly, NASA thought it was okay for both spacecraft to have dissimilar suit umbilical connections.

      And, even more, someone please ask why, exactly, NASA paid Boeing hundreds of millions to speed up crew capability, and didn’t even ask Spacex for a proposal. Plus, why did they allow Boeing to keep that payment when Boeing manifestly failed to deliver?

  4. Seems to me that Boeing is trying to engage NASA in a public pressure campaign to use Starliner. My hunch is that that won’t end well for Boeing.

    As for Starliner itself, it’s a perfectly good vehicle for some kinds of missions, just not ones involving altitude, apparently. So, my modest proposal is to use Starliner in an unmanned mode for post-deorbit one way missions to ISS.

  5. The pooch is getting definitely fat, and the strays have all left town.

    Butch and Sunni are coming home courtesy of SpaceX and Starliner will likely successfully touch down, empty of crew.

    Boeing has a new CEO with no skin in this game and hopefully a lot of common sense.

    Dream Chaser / ULA up next.

  6. What I want is for somebody to explain to me how this process of deliberation differs from the ones that gave us Challenger and Columbia? The failure seems to be progressive, and unpredictable. After fiddling with them on the ground for weeks, they just managed to dock by the skin of their teeth, how could anyone have confidence that enough of them will work well enough to re-enter safely? The only thing that may have changed is that enough of the realists have been worn down that they’ll be able to declare a “consensus”.

    1. I’ll give it a go. First Challenger wasn’t so much a deliberation. The risk of O-Ring burn through was identified in the 1970s, well before Challenger rolled out to the pad. 8 of the previous 9 launches the year before had O-ring burn through. A related flight rule said you couldn’t launch below 40F making launch that morning a “no-go” and the NASA subsystem lead decided he wanted to get it waived. He called the McDonnell Douglas Engineer who wrote the rule, and that Engineer stood by the flight rule. So then the NASA lead called the Engineer’s manager and had two other Engineers join in. Then there was a poll with the 2 added engineers out voting the original Engineer. Despite that not being the criteria for waiving a flight rule, the NASA lead ran with it and gave a “Go for Flight”. That should have never occurred. I’ll accept that the NASA lead probably didn’t act alone without pressure from above to do what was done.

      For Columbia, the issue was different. A casual email sent while the DAT team was headed out for a quick break after launch set the tone that the impact seen was “in-family”. Once the DAT team came back and saw the engineering replays (multiple angles synched up and slowed to the moment of impact), they decided it wasn’t “in-family”. However, leadership stuck with the original assessment, because they were unaware of the costs associated with getting more data and thought there was nothing that could be done even if they did. (If you want to discuss flying at all with that sort of threat potential from debris, then fine, but Shuttle would have been grounded much earlier before and after Columbia. Still, that wasn’t the deliberation during the mission.)

      This time, I think good deliberations are occurring, which is why Starliner is still there. The problem is that NASA isn’t being candid with the American people. We should know by now what is intended without guessing. That said, Dragon Crew-9 is slated NET August 18th. It can carry extra gear and supplies that may be transferred to the Dragon currently at the station to bring the Starliner crew home. I guess that is the plan. Two things to work through to carry out that plan is making sure seats can be transferred through the ISS. Also, I think all the PMAs are full (1 Crew Dragon, 1 Supply Dragon, and 1 Starliner), so they need to figure out where to dock Crew-9. That answer is probably jettisoning Starliner after Crew-9 launch and before arrival to ISS. A third task is trying to figure out how much they can load onto Crew-9 to make up for the resources Starliner crew used over the longer stay.

      That’s my thoughts having once worked in the MER. I think Rand said it perfectly. I think good decisions are being made except for hiding the cards they intend to play. I’ll accept I’m completely wrong. It is entirely possible that Boeing wants all the way until Crew-9 launch to continue testing and intends to bring home Butch and Suni on Starliner only when they are forced to leave ISS to make way for Crew-9. If that’s the case, assuming they need that testing, if they don’t have clear evidence of sufficient reserves to bring the crew home on Starliner, I’d consider that criminal whether the crew survives or not.

      I concur that thrusters don’t “improve” over time. To me, you bring the crew home on the current Dragon. Starliner might not be able to do a safe return without a crew doing things internally, such as simply securing the hatch, but you can get it to a safe entry position to prove it would fly safe enough without endangering crew.

      1. ” 8 of the previous 9 launches the year before had O-ring burn through. ”

        Those 8 launches presumably occurred above 40°F? Without getting into the point of 40°F exactly where and when and how did they know, they had defined a full burn through as a loss of vehicle and crew event. So one little piece of viton between them and what actually happened, essentially: “it hasn’t blown up yet so it maybe won’t this time either”. “A rule is a rule unless it’s inconvenient, then we’ll anoint enough instant experts to outvote whoever made the rule.” This is what they call consensus decision making.

        Every time they try to use the thrusters, more of them don’t work. They managed to baby it into dock, they won’t have that luxury for re-entry. It’s got to be right and on schedule. What happens if a thruster won’t stop or activates un-commanded? Things that don’t work are unreliable, strange that. Anybody can make a guess on which will break and how, if they had a real idea what was wrong and how to insure some sort of minimum performance, they’d be home by now.

        They just postponed Crew 9 till 9/24, so they’ll have another month to try to convince themselves that “understand” the problem. Or dig up enough people they can browbeat into consensus.

        They’re at the cusp of admitting they threw $6billion? down a hole or taking a chance on losing two crew in a possibly long drawn out process where the whole world would be watching helplessly. That’s the decision they won’t make.

        1. I’m amazed that they said it would take up to 4 weeks to install the same software that autonomously flew the previous Starliner for docking and return. Did they archive the software onto a bunch of floppies that they have to read and upload one at a time to the crew, to type in by hand?

    1. “Will they ever return, no they’ll never return, and their fate is still unlearned”*

      *Apologies to the Kingston Trio

  9. Regardless of how they come home, wait until ULA launches Dream Chaser successfully. Then can Boeing’s contract for non delivery and claw back the payments and give the money to Sierra Space to develop crew version of Dream Chaser. It was originally designed that way IIRC.

    1. NASA is planning on deorbiting ISS in 6 years. Given how much trouble Sierra Nevada is having getting the cargo version of Dream Chaser launched, it probably would take several years to develop a crew version ready to fly. By that time, it would only be able to fly a small handful of flights before the ISS is deorbited.

      Given the many challenges of developing a crew version of Dream Chaser, it might be easier (although equally pointless) to develop an orbital version of Blue Origin’s New Sheppard capsule.

      2. There will be other, private, space stations. Dream Chaser was designed as a manned spacecraft and competed for the contract given to Boeing and SpaceX. They must have done preliminary design and the drop test prototype had a cockpit.

        1. There are several issues with a crewed version of Dream Chaser that are unique to it. The cargo version uses folding wings so it can fit into a payload fairing. They do this to avoid aerodynamic loads from the lifting body that would tend to destabilize the rocket. I don’t see them doing the same thing for a crewed version for several reasons.

          For the cargo version, there has to be some form on opening in the fairing to allow for loading last minute cargo. Somehow, I doubt that will be a suitable solution for a crewed version. The opening size to allow the crew to enter and be secured before launch would have to be pretty big. There’s also the issue of an emergency evacuation. That opening is one more thing to open so the crew can escape.

          If the crew version is under a payload fairing, that both complicates and delays the LES system, either on the pad or in flight. An escape sequence would involve blowing the fairing, firing the LES, unfolding the wings, and gliding to a landing, perhaps over water at high speed.

          OK, maybe they won’t use a fairing and have fixed wings. That eliminates two issues with the LES, but it would require a lot of wind tunnel testing to ensure it didn’t excessively destabilize the rocket.

          1. Original design was crewed. I’m sure the stability of the rocket was allowed for in the concept.
            Starship launches with Elonerons extended which would be destabilising.

          2. Starship was designed for that. Conventional rockets weren’t. It would require a significant amount of wind tunnel testing to ensure putting a Dream Chaser on the end of a rocket without payload fairings.

  10. I can cure all the guesswork. Have everyone at Boeing Space who says it is safe to fly draw straws. Short straw rides Dragon up on the 18th, and Starliner down on the 19th. It will give them what addicts call ‘a moment of clarity.’ Then we will know too.

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