I am more interested what this does to a programme mired in cost overruns, delays and failure. In an election year. Mechanically, you would think this problem with helium leaks is fixable. Politically, this may be the straw which breaks the camels back.
Boeing should bail and NASA will grumble at the sunk cost of their failed pursuit of redundancy but everyone will be better off.
When the ISS had at least 10 years left, paying the increasing costs for Boeing's failures might have been worth it. With only about 5 years left now for crew transport, SpaceX can build one or two more Crew Dragons and cover the load with a vehicle that's well-proved and far less costly than Starliner.
If Boeing is forced to re-do this test, if NASA calls CFT a failure and Boeing has to eat the cost of re-doing it, I think Boeing bails. The 5 flights they might still get paid for wouldn't be worth it after the cost of another test.
If NASA has the astronauts return on Dragon, Starliner is cooked regardless of what Boeing wants and Boeing wears that black eye for NASA and even some of its DOD supporters.
I think Boeing wants out and NASA's trying to hold onto them. This test isn't about Starliner so much as it is about how NASA and Boeing wind down this program.
Apparently, the root cause is thermal overheating due to a design flaw in the thruster enclosure ("doghouse"), where the design provides insufficient cooling. [0] The problematic thrusters are all in the same area, which is likely the worst affected by the overheating. Boeing can't explain exactly why this particular thruster within that area failed permanently and the other four only failed intermittently, but when you are pushing a system to its thermal limits, it is expected that the outcome will be less than completely deterministic. And of course, Boeing wouldn't be eager to give the root cause as "our design is flawed and we didn't do adequate pre-flight testing to pick up on it, and our thermal analysis was flawed too". Much better to say "we still don't know".
> Boeing should bail and NASA will grumble at the sunk cost of their failed pursuit of redundancy but everyone will be better off.
Boeing can't bail. If they break the contract, it will be a black mark on their federal contracting record, which will harm their ability to win new contracts – not just with NASA, but more importantly with the Pentagon, which is where the real money is for Boeing.
That said, if Boeing really wants out, they will likely lobby to have NASA terminate the contract "for the convenience of the government" – so officially it is NASA who is cancelling it, with the result that Boeing's federal contracting record remains clean on paper.
[0] https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-iss-hot-fire-reentry-...
I think it depends on what you consider "long term". Starliner is being certified to fly on the Atlas V. But ULA has discontinued that rocket because the first stage engines are manufactured in Russia.
Boeing has 6 more rockets - one for each of the operational flights that NASA has contracted to service the ISS, but once those are used up, Boeing would have to recertify the capsule on a different rocket (presumably ULA's new Vulcan rocket). Presumably this recertification effort would be much easier since both the rocket and (presumably by that point) Starliner would be operating successfully, so it'd largely be a matter of analysis and other paperwork. But it would still take considerable time and expense.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/nasa-may-return-starliner-as...
The Crew-9 mission is supposed to launch on the 18th. IMO, that'll be the easiest way for the two Starliner astronauts to return on Crew Dragon; if only 2 astronauts are launched, that means NASA is reserving the other seats for the "rescue mission". If all 4 seats are filled, that'll be a strong vote of confidence by NASA that the astronauts will return on Starliner.
Of course, it'd be possible for SpaceX do to an emergency mission and launch an off-cycle Crew Dragon specifically for the two Starliner astronauts. But there are limits to how quickly that can happen.
The cool thing is that you can get genuine investigative journalism if you know where to look.
For example, here is Covert Cabal who has bought several satellite photos of Russian tank storage bases and just counted up the tanks there. And has done this several times over the course of the Ukraine war.
I believe that I have made a similar comment on HN before.
If we lived in a full trust environment, then the page would contain something like <link rel="canonical-source" ...
Since we don't live in a full trust environment, this seems like a really good use case of an LLM-based search engine.
Given context understanding + standard search index meta data, a GPTSearch type of product should be really good at finding the original source, shouldn't it?
I do think that it will be quite expensive if they have to re-do the crew flight test - there'll be a substantial delay while they address the failures and Boeing will have to eat the cost of a full Starliner cycle (including a new service module) along with an Atlas V. I can't tell if the potential profit of the other operational missions is worth it or not in that case.
2. From what I understand, Boeing and NASA believe that the cause of the thrusters malfunctioning and the helium leaks is a combination of exposure to corrosive propellant (NTO/MMH) and the heating effect of the "doghouse" which is an insulated structure on the side of the service module that houses many thrusters and is insulated to protect the systems from low temperatures by being exposed to the vacuum of space.
3. IMO, most of Starliner's failures have stemmed from a reluctance from Boeing to embrace integrated hardware-in-the-loop testing. Instead they seem to rely on component level testing and analysis. The problem with that approach, of course, is that it's pretty bad at catching unknown unknowns.
If Boeing had opted for a in-flight abort test (like SpaceX) instead of doing a pad abort test, they would probably have caught the timer issue that plagued OFT-1.
Likewise, if they had fueled up Starliner and let it sit for an amount of time that is likely to occur pre-launch, they would have caught the valve corrosion issues that delayed OFT-2.
You can see some of the details about the doghouse here[1]. As you can see, it appears like all of the testing was done with the insulation off and many of the systems stripped out of the doghouse. It seems likely that this overheating issue would have been caught much earlier if they had conducted more integrated testing.
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1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starliner/comments/1eiggns/boeing_c...
From what I understand, most of the hypergolic propellant is carried onboard the service module, which was designed and manufactured by L3 Harris (nee Aerojet Rocketdyne). Of course, the responsibility for the entire system still rests with Boeing.
SpaceX just had a second stage issue, for example; it was fairly minor, but if it had grounded Falcon 9 for six months it would be a problem.
No one expected Boeing to fuck it up this badly.
We don't reward this behavior on purpose: participants who use the strategy are cheating!
Boeing happened
Or am I conflating in the moment transparency with the postmortem reports that followed the Apollo (13) era?
And for the same reason: political and business pressure.
How do you all not understand this now? Fix your shit, then launch.
But, as you said... Just as with Challenger, business and political pressure.
I often find it fascinating to ponder that most all atoms on earth have been here a very long time and will stay around for a very long time. (I think).
When I drink a glass of water, I figure atoms making up this specific water has probably been through the cycle of digestive systems and plant millions of times. and yet it is wet, tasty and safe.
IIS is a closed system. In theory all the atoms remain. Currently they do recycle urine.
What would be involved in breaking down fecal matter far enough that something nutritious could be recovered and reused after a proper and safe process.
There has to be a lot of useful atoms available in it.
Presumably, the energy required to do anything like this would make it entirely impossible.
It is also worth noting that the two extra people are eating and breathing (hopefully) and using other resources that were not budgeted for.
It is not a problem short term. ISS is supposed to have supplies for 3 or 6 months (I cant remember which).
But this will mean that the next supply shipment needs to be heavier than budgeted for.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41134620
