NASA is about to make its most important safety decision in nearly a generation
NASA is about to make its most important safety decision in nearly a generation
Three Starliner mission managers had key roles on Columbia's ill-fated final flight.
Shitty Boeing aside, how are they eating up there? I don't know anything about space station food logistics, but if a planned week has turned into ten weeks, surely there must be a resource strain.
Edit: Google search says they can regularly send up unmanned supply ships.
Cygnus, last mission launched on 4 August 2024.
Russia is doing a resupply run this week.
https://spaceexplored.com/2024/08/12/this-week-in-launch-russia-to-launch-next-iss-supply-mission/
they must have a significant food bank supply, including some kind of reserve replacement nutrients in the event shit goes wrong. That or an incredibly redundant delivery network.
I though I read they're currently housed in the ISS so they should have reserves. I initially thought they were stuck in their launch vehicle.
They eat whichever astronaut dies first.
Just don't question the cause of death, because it will be blunt force trauma
I was curious about this same thing.
Step 1. Fire Boeing.
Step 2. Fucking FUND NASA.
Step 3. NASA builds space stuff that works.
We need to support and upgrade sls
I’ve worked for several aerospace companies including Boeing. I have nothing but contempt and hatred for Boeing and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Management is garbage, safety comes second to schedule, people are treated like disposable cogs, but I would trust Boeing over NASA. I work with a lot of NASA and ex-NASA people right now on a couple major projects. Dear god NASA upper management makes me want to put my head through a wall! The insufferable sense of superiority trying to tell us “how things are done”. Bro, how is SLS coming? That’s what I thought, shut your mouth and stop pretending like you are the Apple of space systems. Luckily, most of the ground level people at NASA are more down to earth (pardon the puns) and easier to work with.
They tried being more actively involved with the Aries I and Aries V rockets, but they got really bogged down to the point where Obama started commercial crew. Aries V eventually evolved into SLS, but with low capability and a very long schedule. And for better or for worse, SLS is getting lots of funding.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_I https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Program
NASA contracting stuff to space X has probably be the most amazing and sound financial decision they have made.
People on this website are so biased because Elon runs it but he genuinely built one of the most amazing companies in the world. Government including the US are miles behind them and struggling to play catch up and they are only trying because Space X has become so much better than them they have to.
No it was the engineers not Elon who built Space X up.
People on this website are so biased because Elon runs it but he genuinely built one of the most amazing companies in the world
Elon didn't build it. They literally have a manager whose entire job is to make sure Elon doesn't get too close to the technical stuff because he'll break it with some random order to change it for no reason
It’s not just blind hate for Elon, they’re genuinely terrible stewards of the environment in south Texas. They constantly lie about their intentions and impact to avoid having to take responsibility for anything. Say what you will about how independently they operate from his input, this is definitely a company culture that he cultivates and promotes.
s/Fire/Nationalize/
To be fair, some work has always been outsourced.
Like the o rings…
I like my humor like I like my NASA space vehicles - outsourced to the lowest bidder.
Dark 😮
Damn man... Fuckin'... oof...
Step 4. NASA builds planes that work (on the side).
If BASA build aircraft they would have to throw it all away at the end of the flight.
Need better funding but they absolutely shouldn't be building spacecraft, they are too scared of getting yelled at to innovate, and innovation is required.
Well... except for those times it didn't.
Id argue that nasa is responsible for more deaths than the privately owned companies attempting the same thing.
Three Starliner mission managers had key roles on Columbia's ill-fated final flight.
I was gonna take issue with that statement until i read this. Causality does seem more probable.
The crew should come back on the Dragon and Boeing be required to solve the problems and carry out another test flight. It is unacceptable that Boeing wants to bring the astronauts back without understanding some of the failures on the Starliner.
This is exactly it for me. A problem is one thing, a problem can be addressed. But a problem whose core cause is not understood can't be quantified or addressed.
So you have a thruster pack that's overheating and they don't even know why, you have helium that's leaking and they don't even know why, so I ask why is it even a question what to do?
I am among other things a private pilot, I fly little propeller airplanes around for fun. Lots of private pilots do stupid stuff, and some get killed as a result. I'm talking for example pilots who want to get back to their home airport, so they fly over five airports that all sell fuel without landing but then run out of gas and crash half a mile from their home airport. So there is a saying, before you do anything risky, consider how stupid you will look in the NTSB report if it doesn't work out. And the pilot who intentionally flew below fuel minimums looks pretty damn stupid, destroyed a $100,000 airplane and lost his life so he could save 20 bucks on cheaper gas.
Point is, the same principle applies to all of the recent space disasters. Challenger was obviously not the right decision to launch. Columbia obviously a serious risk that was ignored. And that brings us to Starliner, we have serious fundamental problems that could definitely lead to a loss of ship and crew situation and we don't even understand what is causing those problems. Now imagine Starliner fails. How stupid will that decision look? Probably even dumber than Columbia or Challenger, because unlike those two disasters we know ahead of time that something is very wrong.
Another test flight will be a bit of a problem. There are no spare Atlas V rockets. They will either have to convince Amazon to give up one of theirs or they will have to launch one of the missions on Vulcan Centaur, which is not currently crew rated.
I’m sure they understand the problems, and they understand that solving them would eat into their profits
In this particular situation, if Boeing says it's safe, I would be inclined to trust them, because if they make the return happen, and it fails, Boeing is done fore. As a crew member though, I would pass for sure and wait for a Dragon
They already couldn't afford this situation, and look where they are.
What's an improbable "acceptable risk" to them may not be good enough for NASA, especially if they don't really understand what's wrong.
True. Didn't think of it that way
I am not sure that businesses like Boeing make risk decisions like that. You would think that they would only take a risk that they know they can win, but many times they take a risk and hope that the dice land their way. This would be lives at risk, with calculations assessed by people with very poor records with such assessments.
How many people died because boeing made shitty planes and didn’t train their crew properly?
Is boeing done for?
I think messing up on NASA projects will hurt a company way more. Of course aviation is supposed to be safe, but even the 737 Max has flown thousands of hours. Comparing how many people that have flown on them, versus how many that have been hurt/killed, is still a small number, which is still is supposed to be zero of course.
Traversing space, a pinnacle of engineering, is quite another level of danger, and if you insist on your product being functional and safe, and then kills two astronauts, would cause a whole different level of backlash
The question facing NASA's leadership today? Should the two astronauts return to Earth from the International Space Station in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, with its history of thruster failures and helium leaks, or should they come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule?
The question facing NASA’s leadership today? Should the two astronauts return to Earth...
"Alright, just hear me out..." -Boeing
The lives of two government employees are in the balance, and taxpayers paid Boeing for most of the Starliner spacecraft's development costs.
Money money money...
This is an excellent article. I’m glad they took time to go into the history of these folks.
Ok Huston, we're listening!
Huston: okay you two probably gonna die. But we got two options for you. You wanna boing boing boing your way down here? Or do you wanna have space sex bring, I mean make you come? Everyone dies, we just don't know when or where. Ok most hospice palliative care old people know where, but not when.
Well, you tried.