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The trade-off here is: When does it become more embarrassing to bring them home in the competitor's vehicle than to extend the mission further. When in 1974 th
by weinzierl 2y ago
The trade-off here is: When does it become more embarrassing to bring them home in the competitor's vehicle than to extend the mission further.
When in 1974 the 56 day planned mission on Skylab 4 was delayed by 24 days it was a major event.
With the current debacle we are past 65 days of a planned 8 day mission. In a past world this would have been seen as a the shame with the fact in which vessel the crew returned, being a just a minor sidenote.
- steve1977 2y agoToday everything is noncommittal trial and error it seems… oh sorry, I think I’ve spelled “agile” wrong…
- loudmax 2y agoA surplus of agility is the last of Boeing's problems.
- steve1977 2y agoIn my experience, agile methodologies do not have a a strong correlation to agility.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoBoeing (especially Boeing ITDA) did indeed have a run-in with Agile SAFE. It went predictably.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoBoeing's bean counter management seem more concerned about cost saving than quality. https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/boeings-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/b...
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoOh yes. I worked at Boeing until recently.
- steve1977 2y ago“a waterfall pig with agile lipstick”
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoWas not an optimistic introduction to the industry... But there were still some good people, and good teams. But yea there were times where the importance of agile methodology in being preached by an executive agile coach before an emergency task force meeting while planes are falling out the sky.
- lucianbr 2y agoWhat does this have to do with anything? Are NASA or Boeing using Agile for any project related to this mission?
- cabbageicefruit 2y agoNo. Not at all. SpaceX is much closer to “agile” than Boeing or NASA, and I don’t think their success is a strike against agile. GP just seems to have beef with agile and seems to be trying to loop any random failure, whether or not agile was involved, into the discussion. Here is a past HN thread discussing exactly this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23856590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23856590
- steve1977 2y agoMy beef is with selling incompetence to plan as agile… not with agile done properly (which is rare).
- rbanffy 2y agoQuite the opposite. Agile is about testing ALL THE TIME and building incrementally. They have flown humans right after a single successful cargo mission. Did they have no further anomalies in the second mission? I seriously doubt it. Now they have a bunch of issues on the RCS and reentry rockets that can't possibly be entirely new (unless someone changed something and people have flown an untested critical component). Worse for Boeing, those components are procured from a third party which now they must be questioning how much QA went into them.
- boredpudding 2y agoBased on previous articles[1], it's either return them on Starliner or bring them home as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission[2]. So the timeline is irrelevant to embarrassment. The Crew-9 mission has been rescheduled to 24 September, a decision needs to be done way beforehand. If the decision is bring them down using SpaceX, the Starliner crew will then stay until the end of the Crew-9 mission in March. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-boeing-starliner-decision/ https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-boeing-starliner-decision/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9
- YarickR2 2y agoOr using Russian Soyuz craft. Not politically viable, but a choice nonetheless
- fernandopj 2y agoI thought the 24 September date was for them to return using that Dragon capsule within days, was it not? They would have to send two less people on Crew 9 mission, then wait the entire mission duration to return? That's so odd. I'd imagine they would just change the mission to send an empty Dragon in March to get them, but use the launched September Dragon to return those Starliner astronauts right away.
- gangstead 2y agoThat is the date they will send up a half full Dragon for Crew 9 Mission, which will return home in February. They aren't changing its return date, just how many people it launches with. Crew 9 can't take off until there is a free docking port so Starliner needs to be gone (crewed or not) before Dragon can launch (with 2 or 4 people depending on how Starliner leaves).
- markus_zhang 2y agoDoes that mean SpaceX needs to wait for Starliner to be gone before trying anything? What happens if Starliner somehow messes up more? God I can't fathom...
- nimbius 2y agowhats wild is this problem never happened to the Soviet Union, and it doesnt happen to China, but its happened twice to the US now. Why is the US giving Boeing a free pass for this? it frankly makes the US look pathetic. News stations quit covering it once the cat was out of the bag that this isnt a "routine evaluation" and the crew is actually just stranded. 23 Taikonauts in China made it to and from the Tiangong space station in the Shenzhou xx series of rockets with no issues or delays. Maybe we should ask the China Manned Space Agency for a hand?
- practicemaths 2y agoMaybe China and Russia are less risk averse? Americans hate dead astronauts.
- somenameforme 2y agoThe US has far more deaths per flight than any other nation. There have been 19 astronauts that have died during spaceflight. [1] 14 of them have been American, with the US and USSR/Russia having a comparable number of total launches. The USSR/Russia's most recent fatality was in 1971. NASA is paradoxical, because in terms of how they are perceived they're seen as this ultra risk averse safety-first organization, but in terms of actual behavior - they keep doing the exact same thing which has left 14 astronauts dead, and now these astronauts stranded. There just seems to be a extreme disconnect between the actual engineering staff and the managerial layer, probably exasperated by the fact that political appointees head the organization. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...
- practicemaths 2y agoWhen is the last time that China or Russia tried testing an entirely new launch vehicle? It is my understanding, aside from upgrades, they have not really built anything new. Edit: also looking at your list of accidents, China has one with 6-100 deaths. And USSR has 120 deaths in 1960. I think you need to look at deaths beyond just Astronauts here.
- dave78 2y agoAt this point, now that the SpaceX alternative has been officially acknowledged, I really don't see how anyone at NASA would be comfortable risking the return on Starliner. If they do and it fails and the astronauts die, everyone will be (rightly) outraged that a viable rescue plan was available and not used. It could become an existential crisis for NASA. My belief is that the fact that they're publicly "considering" the SpaceX plan means that they've probably already decided to do that and what we're seeing in the media right now is NASA just letting everyone get used to the idea before they formally commit to it.
- lupusreal 2y agoI hope you're right, but at the same time it would be quite sad if this is all theatrics to preserve the feelings of Boeing fanboys (how do those still exist?)
- Hinermad 2y ago> Boeing fanboys (how do those still exist?) There are still fans of Boeing's ability to make money, no matter how bad they are at making aerospace products.
- hotstickyballs 2y agoThey exist because Boeing gives their voters jobs.
- adamsb6 2y agoI doubt Boeing fanboys are part of the equation. NASA is an executive agency, the President doesn’t like the head of SpaceX, and it’s an election year.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> NASA is an executive agency, the President doesn’t like the head of SpaceX NASA is a huge fan of SpaceX. Look at the Artemis programme and the amount of technology risk concentrated with them. They’d similarly defer to SpaceX if Crew Dragon had an issue.
- throwawayffffas 2y agoThere is no tradeoff. NASA has no horse in the race. Starliner is made by Boeing. Both Boeing and SpaceX are NASA contractors.
- trentnix 2y agoI'm guessing Boeing, even if it's just by virtue of having been around so much longer than SpaceX, has greased a lot more pockets than SpaceX. Consequently, while NASA has no horse in the race, I'm guessing plenty of well connected people in and around NASA have a horse in the race.
- stainablesteel 2y agothe horse they have in the race are their 2 stranded astronauts and to be honest, if spacex had made the shuttle that was assigned to boeing they would probably have made it work. no plan survives contact with the enemy and no engineering design survives its own prototype. the people working at these companies and managing the teams is what made the difference, not nasa's original design
- rbanffy 2y ago> In a past world this would have been seen as a the shame with the fact in which vessel the crew returned, being a just a minor sidenote. I find it odd to shame NASA for what is a Boeing failure. They hired Boeing to ferry people to the ISS and back. Boeing built a spacecraft that broke down and is considered too dangerous to carry people on the return leg. Why are we blaming NASA here?
- imglorp 2y agoNASA is to blame for their part as responsible steward of public funds. The agency has bent over backwards, to a fault, to hand a contractor a cherry deal, papered over quality issues, performed dubious acceptance testing, made them look good for PR spinning all the failures, all while paying double vs the other (successful) vendor. All government procurement is fraught with industry and political pressure which looks like it happened here, yet again. Lest it looks like a one time thing, have a look at the OIG report about the SLS program perforance from Boeing, in a disastrous condition.
- SoftTalker 2y agoThe thing about reality is that it always exposes PR spin, cheating, and fraud, eventually. Often disastrously. A lesson that seems difficult to learn, for some reason.
- Analemma_ 2y agoAll this is true, but NASA at least deserves some credit for finally moving to fixed-price contracts instead of just shoveling endless dollars at their contractors for nothing to get done. The fact that Boeing is so dysfunctional that they can't deliver anything on fixed-price contracts is their fault, not NASA's, and they will have to either shape up or exit the sector.
- gamblor956 2y agoThe agency has bent over backwards, to a fault, to hand a contractor a cherry deal, papered over quality issues, performed dubious acceptance testing, made them look good for PR spinning all the failures, all while paying double vs the other (successful) vendor. Yes, we know NASA has been propping up SpaceX, but how does that relate to Boeing? Oh wait, NASA has been doing the same thing with Boeing that is has been doing with SpaceX? Giving both companies the opportunity to redeem themselves from (sometimes explosive) unexplained errors while paying them hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to do all of it? It's almost as if NASA is trying to create a launch industry instead of a launch monopoly controlled by an erratic individual who has no issues with just randomly blowing stuff up because he feels like it.
- zitterbewegung 2y agoThey also may have to consider for all of the issues that Starliner might have the only way to have competition in the space is to have more than one company that can create spacecraft. But, I agree that this debacle never made any sense and it started to be obvious to have to use another service .
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoIt's NASA's call, not Boeing's, and what'd make NASA look bad is getting the astronauts killed. NASA have dual launch providers for a reason, and now is the time to take advantage of it. I'd be amazed if these guys don't come back on Dragon. What's the benefit to NASA on having them coming back on Starliner if the risk level is seen as higher?!
- bunderbunder 2y agoAlthough, second order effects: if they use the 2nd launch provider option now, that might bring about an immediate and permanent end to the 2nd launch provider option.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoI don't see that. From NASA's POV, they'll want to keep the dual provider setup, and the government doesn't generally seem too happy on having to rely on Musk for more than it "has" to. I'd like to see the day where Blue Origin replaces Boeing as 2nd provider though.
- guhidalg 2y agoGovernment spending is just about jobs right? Don't you get more jobs if you give money to many different companies instead of one company?
- philwelch 2y agoIt’s not really that costly or inconvenient to extend their stay on ISS compared to Skylab though. With Skylab 4 you had to somehow figure out how to support food and water for half-again as many astronaut-days as planned but ISS has routine supply ships and a big enough permanent crew that adding two extra people isn’t a strain. From the perspective of ISS operations, having an extra two crew members more than you planned also means you can get more work done. And if you’re one of the astronauts, who has worked hard for the dream of going to space, getting a bunch of extra space days is not exactly an unwelcome surprise either. So not only is it not actually a big deal to keep them on the ISS for longer, but I bet a few people are happy to have an excuse to keep them there.
- causi 2y agoIn 1974 we were less used to the paradigm of giant companies receiving twice their proposed budget and accomplishing nothing with it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]