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Boeing and NASA call off Starliner crew launch minutes before liftoff
- belter 2y agoEvery day that passes the Apollo program looks more amazing. A truly golden generation....
- waihtis 2y ago[flagged]
- dylan604 2y agoThat's the positive spin, but every day that passes makes Boeing look worse and worse. Comically even at this point.
- SoftTalker 2y agoWell, if you ignore the crew that was burned alive on the launch pad....
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tadfisher 2y agoTo be fair, the Apollo program did lose three astronauts on the launch pad.
- leptons 2y agoStill less than the Space Shuttle program.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- librasteve 2y agoApollo had a much much higher tolerance of risk - Apollo 12 did not abort after a lightning strike and total systems reboot (except the engines), Armstrong and Aldrin basically decided they were going to be the first men to land on the moon dead or alive (they actually ignored the fuel out alarm during lunar module descent). Would never happen in todays elf and safety culture.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoThe idea was to make Boeing compete with SpaceX. SpaceX has already sent multiple crews to the ISS. Boeing is delayed and overbudget. Boeign has had a long series of problems including setting the system clock wrong. Clearly SpaceX already won, NASA should just pull the plug on Boeing.
- ethagknight 2y agoCompetition is good, unfortunate that NASA picked a know abuser of govt contracting for the competitor.
- dylan604 2y agoIt takes more than one to compete though. Right now, we have one and only one that actually works, and then some people floundering around taking government funding to do nothing really to justify anything.
- delfinom 2y agoNASA has no choice. Boeing is a political requirement.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoNorthrup would also have been a politically feasible choice.
- readams 2y ago53 people across 13 launches for SpaceX
- sandis 2y agoThe idea wasn't to have them compete. The idea is to have "dissimilar redundancy", so that the US still would have a human-rated launch system with the ability to go to the ISS in case one of them gets grounded for whatever reason.
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- notjustanymike 2y agoWell at least this was an issue with the Atlas V instead of Starliner. Progress?
- dylan604 2y agoIt's a good thing Boeing is part of the Atlas V...er, nevermind
- wannacboatmovie 2y agoWould they scrub a launch if e.g. one if the crew members had diarrhea, or is it limited to technical reasons and weather?
- Aaargh20318 2y agoAsking the important questions.
- dylan604 2y agoThat's a different type of valve
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y agoAren't they quarantined before going up? To limit the possible germs they might bring up with them?
- adastra22 2y agoNothing is guaranteed.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoThis makes me wonder if they engineer for diarrhea in space or puking all over the controls perhaps. It seems not all unlikely to happen.
- dmoy 2y agoThere's a quora answer over here from an astronaut who had diarrhea in space: https://www.quora.com/Has-an-astronaut-ever-had-diarrhea-while-on-the-ISS https://www.quora.com/Has-an-astronaut-ever-had-diarrhea-whi... Unfortunately it looks like most of the answer is behind a paywall, because it sounds like a good read lol.
- atommclain 2y agoHere ya go! =========== Why yes an astronaut has had diarrhea while on the ISS. And it was me! Getting diarrhea in outer space was certainly not on my bucket list. It was, however, a normal… and qualified “pain in the rear (see what I did there?!).” It was early in my 5-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Not sure what brought it on —guessing food— my symptoms began to occur as I was sleeping in the U. S. Lab module. Waking sometime around 2 a.m. Greenwich time (the time zone used for our daily schedules), I knew what was coming. And it was coming fast! I sailed down to the Russian Service Module —the only toilet on the station back in 2007— and entered the tiny enclosed area short of panic, but with very high anxiety. After quietly closing the sliding door, I fired up the Russian-designed toilet. I was actually grateful for the late hour, as I was hoping this would ensure that my two Russian crewmates (Oleg and Fyodor) would remain asleep… leaving me to my own devices. Ultimately, I would be successful in my crisis-laden endeavor. After using two of the toilet system’s plastic bags (for collecting the fecal matter), and only one rubber glove, my symptoms subsided for a time. This allowed me the opportunity to quietly clean everything up, power-down the system, and fly back to the U. S. segment. It was there that I quickly broke open the American medical kit. Concealed beneath the module’s floor, under a large “door” adorned with the easily recognizable red cross symbol, I used its table of contents to locate the medication I so desperately needed. Immodium AD was —thank God— available for my use, and I followed the dosage recommendation to the letter. I would never have diarrhea again… in space anyway! Keep lookin’ up!
- dylan604 2y ago"Starliner is reusable, with each capsule designed to fly as many as 10 missions." Now that's an optimistic statement. Do each of the aborted launch attempts count against the tally? If so, this first one is about done. <snicker> As I see it now, it doesn't look like it is designed to fly at all.
- throwup238 2y agoI think that’s 10 reentries for the capsule but the heat shield would have to be inspected and refurbished every time anyway. The rocket goes through a whole process every time a launch is scrubbed to make sure nothing goes wrong from thermal expansion after the cryogenic fuels are pumped back out.
- TrainedMonkey 2y agoIt's complicated (in a way that makes it worse). Capsules need 6 months happy path refurb - "reusable up to 10 times with a six-month turnaround time" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Starliner#Spacecraft_characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Starliner#Spacecraft_ch... ). This means that some components such as pressure section are qualified for 10 flights, but others are expected to be replaced sooner. The actual refurb will be a lot longer unless they have a lot of flights to dial that in. The real problem with Boeing is lack of testing / iteration. This is the company that perfected "paperwork milestones" - where they prove that they in theory can do something. This is supposed to be exhaustive, but theoretically validating things scales abysmally with complexity. Originally designed to speed up progress by claiming credit for work done previously this devolved into current state of affairs. I want to emphasize that from maximizing shareholder value which is the mode Boeing operated since the McDonnell Douglas merger I believe this to be a good short and maybe even medium term strategy. This is because of cost plus / a lot of programs get cancelled environment Boeing enjoyed and lower risk of milestone payment delays. AKA, if you test something and you find an issue you risk blowing up schedule now, but paperwork milestones guarantee payments and delay risk of finding out something is wrong. Boeing would have probably keep getting away with this, but new age / more agile aerospace companies showed up. Not only they sucked up all of the talent, but also the only way to survive was to iterate and iterate fast... so they did. Source: worked in the field for 10 years.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 2y agoIt's not clear why the hold was called, but the launch was scrubbed because the launch window to ISS is relatively narrow.