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Starliner FINALLY made it to orbit with a crew 3

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WKTaylor

WKTaylor

Active member
Sep 24, 2001
4,028
Mission well underway... and in-orbit checkouts on-going[ul]

Live streaming is enabled... but a bit boring. should dock with the ISS tomorrow.

Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation, Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", HBA forum]
o Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything." -Anton Chekhov
 
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Starting to be fodder for cartoons. Eight day visit being compared to a three hour tour.
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Good reddit post on the thruster/doghouse setup. The photo of a test firing of a single isolated thruster with unrepresentative surroundings and plumbing and at a guess atmosphere doesn't look very representative, but it may of course have been an early test just to check the basics.


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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"a 3 hour tour" anyone ?

"Hoffen wir mal, dass alles gut geht !"
General Paulus, Nov 1942, outside Stalingrad after the launch of Operation Uranus.
 
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Gilligan's Space Station.....

Lol

Kirby Wilkerson

Remember, first define the problem, then solve it.
 
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We might eventually find out that it took a little bit of good luck for this crew to successfully make it to the space station.

Brad Waybright

It takes competence to recognize incompetence.
 
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Now, about those pay bonuses for "test flight hours" that are owed to the two test pilots.

And the OT pay for every hour up in space after the original planned return.

8<)
 
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From ARS Technica- 'Although Boeing deserves much of the blame for Starliner's troubles, there are other considerations. NASA's Commercial Crew program, for example, allowed this launch to occur after similar thruster problems occurred on the spacecraft's previous uncrewed test flight in 2022. Why did it allow this? And there is also Aerojet Rocketdyne. Boeing paid this propulsion firm a lot of money to develop what is, at least in terms of spaceflight, a relatively simple thruster.'
NASA, Boeing and Aerojet apparently did a poor job of investigating the thruster issues that occurred on that flight. I guess it's just like Columbia again, when managers figured foam shedding never killed anyone before, so why worry about it now?

Brad Waybright

It takes competence to recognize incompetence.
 
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NASA decision is to return Starliner un-crewed/autonomous... very soon... and then return The [2] pilots early next year on SpaceX Dragon.

NASA is defaulting for 'crew safety'.
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Meanwhile... NASA and Boeing are going to work on bringing the Starliner capsule back to Earth, crewless, to land in White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, sometime in September.
...
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Meanwhile...
How 2 fatal shuttle disasters weighed on NASA's decision to bring Boeing Starliner astronauts home on SpaceX Dragon

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Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation, Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", HBA forum]
o Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything." -Anton Chekhov
 
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Boeing Starliner Set For Uncrewed Return To Earth Friday
Boeing’s Starliner will return to earth on Friday, Sept. 6**, without astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.
** Undock on the 6th... Landing on the 7th

Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation, Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", HBA forum]
o Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything." -Anton Chekhov
 
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I expect to see-
1- Starliner depart the ISS and perform maneuvers without issue.
2- De-orbit burn and re-entry on nominal trajectory
3- Parachute deployment and surface landing to proceed normally.
4- Boeing to herald their accomplishment and blame NASA for faulty decision making
5- Starliner never to perform another crewed test.

-or-

1- Starliner to depart ISS briefly before crashing back into it
2- De-orbit burn and re-entry causing starliner to bounce off the atmosphere or burn up
3- Parachutes fail to deploy
4- Boeing to blame everything on AeroJet and NASA
5- Starliner never to perform another crewed test.

None of those scenarios would cause me much surprise. The peril doesn't end until starliner is far, far away from the ISS, and is on the ground in an unpopulated area.

Brad Waybright

It takes competence to recognize incompetence.
 
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Certainly lessons have been learned with the Starliner mission. And a lot of the doom and gloom stories about the flight control software having complete modules removed were either misinterpretations or misunderstandings. Apparently just an update to the Mission Data Load (MDL) was required and extra time was taken to run an extensive verification prior to performing the parameter update. This successful undocking and landing looks to me to be an indication of some level of engineering expertise by the Boeing team and prudent decision making by the Boeing and NASA teams:
the astronauts are safely on the ISS (safety prevailed over corporate pride), the capsule has returned to earth, no damage occurred to the ISS docking port. The Boeing team has a ton of data to sift through and decide corrective actions. Recovery from an error(s) provides great learning ops, right? When Starliner launches again corrections will have been done and a high degree of confidence for success can be expected. What would be the typical sequence? Another unmanned flight to verify/validate proper operation then a follow-up crewed flight?
 
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/NOTE/ About the Starliner crew 'safely on the ISS'... there is one element that is an 'issue'.

The Starliner crew-pressure-suits are incompatible with the SpaceX Crew-Dragon. So, until the Starliner crew gets SpaceX Crew-Dragon compatible crew-pressure-suits... even though they have dedicated emergency-evacuation seats available on one of the Crew-Dragons right now... they would have to undock/land in their ISS-NASA fabric cabin-flight-suits. I seriously doubt that they would [be-allowed-to] wear non-functioning pressure suits... NO hook-ups of any kind... NO comm, NO life-support, NO-cooling, electrical, etc... for a host of physiological factors. And they would just to 'take their chances' on the safe/routine return of the Crew Dragon. Crew-Dragon depressurization would be a death sentence.

Perhaps this is ultimately a ANOTHER major lesson-learned: All launch/re-entry crew-pressure-suits must have common/compatible interconnections with all crew-transport capsules/vehicles. Hmmmm that seems a bit intuitive, doesn't it? IF I recall correctly... Apollo 13 capsule and LM had incompatible air purifiers-filters that had to be emergency-adapted to keep the crew alive/breathing...

Perhaps NASA-Boeing-SpaceX could rapidly devise/test/validate interconnects for Starliner crew-pressure suits to the SpaceX Crew-Dragon??? Naaaaa I suspect that they will 'play the odds'... and just launch the Starliner crew-return-mission Crew-Dragon spacecraft with SpaceX pressure suits strapped-into the vacant seats... plus cargo.

Hmmmm... If done correctly this spacecraft-interconnect could also be adapted to 'go the-other-way' too, fairly easily... Crew-Dragon pressure-suit to Starliner might also make sense.

Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation, Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", HBA forum]
o Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything." -Anton Chekhov
 
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Spacesuit compatibility should become a non-compromisable requirement with the open commercialization of space journeys and multiple providers. Or at least an adapter kit! 😀
 
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Hard lessons learned reminded me of this quote from Bill Gates...

"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." --Bill Gates

The implicit warning in this 'quote'... is why I expect great pains at SpaceX getting the massive-revolutionary SpaceX Starship... launch vehicle and spacecraft... to take a lot-longer to evolve as a certified launch system... unmanned and manned... than the Falcon 9 and Dragon/Crew Dragon...

Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation, Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", HBA forum]
o Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything." -Anton Chekhov
 
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That's assuming they even learned[pre][/pre] from others' mistakes; their launch pad suffered massive damage because they didn't bother to look at prior art.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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Agreed, IR. SpaceX's launch pad (and surrounding equipment) still takes damage with every launch...though the design keeps coming closer to the NASA-standard flame trench with each iteration. Brian, I agree that they need a common standard, or stock adapters as Wil suggests.
 
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I viewed a ytube video explaining that be fore the merger with MAC, being was an
Engineering firm. With safety first.
And profits second. That some of the management that got MAC in financial and safety issues. We're now running the show
At Boeing. Making profits first and all other requirements second. And this why
Boeing is in this predicament.
 
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mfge... from my files... circa the late-1990 just prior to the Boeing/MAC/DAC merger... from a Boeing acquaintance...

Boeing_Transition_Team_for_MAC-DAC_ybxsur.jpg




Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation, Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", HBA forum]
o Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything." -Anton Chekhov
 
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