The debacle of Starliner’s record, IMHO, is not helpful to the notion of selling it.
The other huge fly in the ointment is that, contra what NASA specified, Starliner is not launch vehicle agnostic (It’d take some work to put it on another LV), plus, it’d requite a man-rated LV. Right now, that Atlas 5, of which there are, what, 5 left?
So, to me, the real question is, could anyone make a profit from buying Starliner and using it for the four or five possible ISS missions? If ISS is decommissioned as planned (and it looks like it will be), that’s all there will be. Without a sure replacement for ISS in LEO, that’s the ballgame, because Starliner would be rather useless for the proposed Gateway lunar station (That I doubt will ever exist).
When I first heard that Boeing was considering selling Starliner, the old saying “Buying a pig in a poke” came to mind. It still does.
If a rocket has a capsule with an abort system on it, it is “human rated.” I can’t imagine what ULA could do to Vulcan to make it more reliable, given that it’s meant to carry billion-dollar satellites.
It’s not so much reliability as compatibility. For example, if Starliner initiates an abort you would want Vulcan to stop thrusting to reduce the chances of recontact. I doubt that capability is wired into Vulcan at present.
I would assume that it has failure-onset detection and everything else they did to Atlas to carry Starliner, because Vulcan was supposed to be the Atlas replacement.
Sorry, but I disagree; I wasn’t talking about (and should have made clear) sane or rational definitions, I was talking about NASA human rating. (the same NASA that never human-rated Shuttle, for example, and now pretends SLS meets the human-rating standards they apply to others).
There are all sorts of NASA “human rating” requirements (except for their own projects), even for a vehicle designed to get that rating. (Look at all the absurd hoops they made SpaceX jump through to human-rate the F9, and for that matter, why FH still isn’t human rated.) Also, though Vulcan is indeed designed to human rate, I think ULA said they don’t currently plan to do so, as it’s a long and expensive process (and would include having to human-rate the BE4 engines, etc).
While Starliner was designed to notionally launcher agnostic, it isn’t as simple as putting it on a different rocket and lighting the fuse. There has to be wind tunnel testing to ensure the configuration will be stable. Look at the interface between the Starliner and the Atlas V. They had to leave that gap as a result of wind tunnel testing results. There’s also vibration and other testing that must be performed. Going with a Falcon 9 would be easier because it’s already human rated. It still would need other tests before being accepted. Vulcan would be a likely choice but getting everything approved through NASA’s safety requirements. It’s a different argument as to whether all of these requirements are reasonable.
The issues with Starliner appear to me to be fundamental, supply-chain driven and aren’t really Boeing’s problem to fix.
Any buyer would have to be aware that righting this ship is going to involve expensive mods made largely by third party suppliers (*cough* Rocketdyne *cough*) and at a price THEY will charge any potential buyer even after its been purchased from Boeing.
And that’s not even addressing the launcher problem.
The debacle of Starliner’s record, IMHO, is not helpful to the notion of selling it.
The other huge fly in the ointment is that, contra what NASA specified, Starliner is not launch vehicle agnostic (It’d take some work to put it on another LV), plus, it’d requite a man-rated LV. Right now, that Atlas 5, of which there are, what, 5 left?
So, to me, the real question is, could anyone make a profit from buying Starliner and using it for the four or five possible ISS missions? If ISS is decommissioned as planned (and it looks like it will be), that’s all there will be. Without a sure replacement for ISS in LEO, that’s the ballgame, because Starliner would be rather useless for the proposed Gateway lunar station (That I doubt will ever exist).
When I first heard that Boeing was considering selling Starliner, the old saying “Buying a pig in a poke” came to mind. It still does.
If a rocket has a capsule with an abort system on it, it is “human rated.” I can’t imagine what ULA could do to Vulcan to make it more reliable, given that it’s meant to carry billion-dollar satellites.
It’s not so much reliability as compatibility. For example, if Starliner initiates an abort you would want Vulcan to stop thrusting to reduce the chances of recontact. I doubt that capability is wired into Vulcan at present.
I would assume that it has failure-onset detection and everything else they did to Atlas to carry Starliner, because Vulcan was supposed to be the Atlas replacement.
Sorry, but I disagree; I wasn’t talking about (and should have made clear) sane or rational definitions, I was talking about NASA human rating. (the same NASA that never human-rated Shuttle, for example, and now pretends SLS meets the human-rating standards they apply to others).
There are all sorts of NASA “human rating” requirements (except for their own projects), even for a vehicle designed to get that rating. (Look at all the absurd hoops they made SpaceX jump through to human-rate the F9, and for that matter, why FH still isn’t human rated.) Also, though Vulcan is indeed designed to human rate, I think ULA said they don’t currently plan to do so, as it’s a long and expensive process (and would include having to human-rate the BE4 engines, etc).
In a sane world, you’d be right. 🙂
While Starliner was designed to notionally launcher agnostic, it isn’t as simple as putting it on a different rocket and lighting the fuse. There has to be wind tunnel testing to ensure the configuration will be stable. Look at the interface between the Starliner and the Atlas V. They had to leave that gap as a result of wind tunnel testing results. There’s also vibration and other testing that must be performed. Going with a Falcon 9 would be easier because it’s already human rated. It still would need other tests before being accepted. Vulcan would be a likely choice but getting everything approved through NASA’s safety requirements. It’s a different argument as to whether all of these requirements are reasonable.
If Ortberg thinks he can solve Boeing’s problems by selling the losers off, there won’t be a boeing left.
The only viable response.
The only viable response.
The issues with Starliner appear to me to be fundamental, supply-chain driven and aren’t really Boeing’s problem to fix.
Any buyer would have to be aware that righting this ship is going to involve expensive mods made largely by third party suppliers (*cough* Rocketdyne *cough*) and at a price THEY will charge any potential buyer even after its been purchased from Boeing.
And that’s not even addressing the launcher problem.
“Pig in a poke” sounds about right.