6 ms·

Starliner works. It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious. It just happens to obscenely expensive. There are no competitors that are even remo

Starliner works. It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious. It just happens to obscenely expensive. There are no competitors that are even remotely close to competing with SpaceX and Boeing without first spending tens of billions of dollars like SpaceX and Boeing have done. Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures?

boxed 2y ago
The shuttle worked. It had many successful flights. Then it killed 7 astronauts. Then it worked again they said. Then 7 more died. > Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures? Well that's just a straight up lie.
- akira2501 2y ago
  People forget that on Apollo 13s return there was a legitimate concern that the explosion had damaged the heat shield and the fear was it would fail and the craft would melt and break up entirely during deorbit. Due to their nature they're sensitive and easy to compromise. Which is also why NASA knew from day 1 that icing was going to be a huge issue on the shuttle. They were retrofitting the vehicle, the launch platform and even the software to reduce heat shield risks very early on. Some of their earliest flights included EVA experiments where the astronauts translated themselves to the thermal tiles, did inspections, and even did mock repairs to test the feasibility of the idea and of the quality of the adhesives in near total vacuum. After the final accident they started doing something they could have and should have been doing since the beginning. That was simply taking up a camera that could be attached to the Canadarm, swung "underneath" the shuttle, and used to take a comprehensive survey of the thermal management system immediately on orbit. In any case, point is, human rated space flight will always require this level of attention to detail and ongoing effort to derisk every possible aspect of every mission performed. NASA management did an outright terrible job at this. From incentivizing the wrong behavior, falling in love with paper targets, and completely failing to audit their own internal risk estimations for errors.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > they started doing something they could have and should have been doing since the beginning. That was simply taking up a camera that could be attached to the Canadarm, First shuttle launch, Columbia STS-1 12 April 1981.[0] The Canadarm was first tested in orbit in 1981, on Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-2 mission [1] (12 November 1981) So, not exactly since the beginning [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm
    - akira2501 2y ago
      It was always intended to be on the shuttle. It's not as if they conceived, designed, and then created it between STS-1 and STS-2. It was baked into the software and into the rear flight deck controls. It was late. They didn't call it "flying the arm" for nothing: https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-sts077-307-017-19-29-may-1996-astronaut-marc-garneau-mission-specialist-169277932.html https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-sts077-307-017-19-29-may-1... In any case, STS-1 was an insane test flight, and had it's own share of thermal tile problems.
- Aaron2222 2y ago
  >> Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures? > Well that's just a straight up lie. I'm guessing they're confusing the expected, catastrophic explosive "failures" on experimental Starship prototypes with payload-carrying F9/FH flights.
  - gamblor956 2y ago
    Yes, when you redefine failure to mean success, everything can be a success. That kid who got 1% on his test? He passed, if you redefine the threshold for passing to mean something that everyone else would consider a failure.
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      Well that's one way to tell the world you've never built anything new.
    - Aaron2222 2y ago
      Launching a prototype rocket with the expectation that it will probably blow up and then having it blow up isn't a failure, especially when the goal is to see what happens.
      - gridspy 2y ago
        Especially when each rocket successfully makes it further into the test, beyond the point where the previous iteration failed.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      I want to short anything you’re involved in
    - boxed 2y ago
      You said "unexpected catastrophic explosive failures". But 1. They were not unexpected. They very very clearly communicated months ahead. 2. "Catastrophic" is a bit much too, as they were indeed expected and planned for. In fact, the biggest failure in the Starship development was that the rocket did NOT explode fast enough once. 3. "Failures". Well.. no. These are prototypes intended to learn from. Experiments if you will. A scientist that never has a negative result is a fraud. Same here.
- blankx32 2y ago
  The shuttle worked within its constraints, bad management killed the astronauts
krisoft 2y ago
> It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious. How do you know how serious the issue was?
- jerkstate 2y ago
  My guess is because it returned to earth (unmanned) without any problems
  - krisoft 2y ago
    I’m curious if they would use the same logic for russian roulette. If you spin the barrel with one bullet, pull the trigger against your head and survive does that mean that the danger wasn’t that serious? NASA wasn’t saying that they know for certain that the Starliner will have a catastrophe on the way back. What they said is that they cannot be certain that the probability of it having a catastrophe is lower than some decision threshold. Using the russian roulette as an analogy NASA has a revolver with a barel for a million bullets, and they decided they are fine to pull the trigger against the astronauts heads if there are less than 5 bullets in it. But due to nobody really understanding the mechanism of previous anomalies they don’t know how many bullets there are in the barrel. There might be six or more so they are not willing to pull the trigger. (The number of bullets, and the number of chambers is merelly illustrative. I don’t know what is the real number NASA uses.)
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      IIRC NASA requires a 1/270 chance of failure in space.
      - krisoft 2y ago
        Thank you! It seems wikipedia confirms what you are saying. Sadly the article it references is no longer available, so i can’t dig into it. But it sounds 1/270 is for the requirement for overall mission while the ascent and descent phases have 1/500 apportioned to them each. Was trying to put this 1/500 number into perspective for myself. It sounds like it is rougly similar to the mortality of having appendicites. [1] 1: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/587111 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...
dotnet00 2y ago
>multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures There has been one, a second stage that failed to relight the engine due to a sensor issue that was quickly fixed. Since then they have had more successful launches than most companies fly in entire years. The other failures were: - A booster that failed to land after the most flights any booster in the fleet has had, a problem only SpaceX is capable of having right now - A second stage where the engine shutdown during a deorbit burn was a few milliseconds later than expected. On the other hand, the "minor issue" on Starliner had Boeing burning hundreds of millions of dollars trying to replicate the issue on the ground, after so many years of waterfall-style development.
globalnode 2y ago
what about that bezos company, blue origin, wouldnt they be a viable competitor? they seem to know what theyre doing and dont share the incompetence of boeing or the comedy of spacex.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > the comedy of spacex What?
- globalnode 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - globalnode 2y ago
    theres only four of you?
    - globalnode 2y ago
      think i will start combining it into "Rustex"
      - globalnode 2y ago
        1 sweaty rustlol or xlol zealot out there that wants to play. this will be my last post here, its getting boring, so make it count.
kiba 2y ago
Boeing also deleted a lot of software code they deemed not necessary despite being a hard requirement. They also shouldn't had an issue to the point that NASA lost confidence in Boeing. We all make mistakes, but some mistakes are being made due to shoddy work. It was thankfully not a capsule destroying mistake, but on something high stake such as a human rated capsule, shoddy works shouldn't be tolerated, especially with corner cutting such as removing entire capability in software.
moralestapia 2y ago
Tell me you own Boeing stock without telling me you own Boeing stock.
ordu 2y ago
> It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious. We don't know if it was serious or not. If Starliner managed to land this time, will it be able to do it repeatedly, or it was just luck this time? If we are trying to deduce seriousness of the issue from data, then one point of data is too low. Boeing needs to launch a few dozens more of test flights to gather the data needed for this kind of reasoning. But if we are relying on causal reasoning, then we have no clear understanding of causes, Boeing engineers are still unable to explain how their thrusters fail exactly, and what they could do to make them robust.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Boeing needs to launch a few dozens more of test flights to gather the data needed for this kind of reasoning. This in fact is a shining vindication of Musk's "Waste metal, not time." philosophy. Boeing is operating in the old school "Spend lots of time planning, go for a hole in one." philosophy, so if they proceed to fail they need to spend lots of more time planning and going for more hole in ones to demonstrate sufficient statistics. SpaceX? They wasted metal instead of time and got statistics out with sheer numbers before Boeing even got a number, because the only way you get numbers is by getting numbers. Boeing should be fired and ideally bankrupted, and everyone else needs to get with the times so they don't become the next Boeing.
  - tliltocatl 2y ago
    On the other hand, "waste metal" philosophy was what killed Soviet moon program. Guess sensors and telemetry are a bit more advanced today.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      No, the Soviets lost simply because we wasted more metal than they did. Consider that just the Apollo programme had twenty one (21) launches in a span of about just 8 years before Apollo 11 landed the first men on the Moon. Gemini had twelve (12) launches in a span of just 2 years, and Mercury had twenty six (26) launches in a span of just 4 years. Contrast 4 launches of N1, 6 launches of Voskhod, and 13 launches of Vostok from records we know of. If anything, Musk should waste more metal.

boxed 2y ago

The shuttle worked. It had many successful flights. Then it killed 7 astronauts. Then it worked again they said. Then 7 more died. > Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures? Well that's just a straight up lie.

akira2501 2y ago
People forget that on Apollo 13s return there was a legitimate concern that the explosion had damaged the heat shield and the fear was it would fail and the craft would melt and break up entirely during deorbit. Due to their nature they're sensitive and easy to compromise. Which is also why NASA knew from day 1 that icing was going to be a huge issue on the shuttle. They were retrofitting the vehicle, the launch platform and even the software to reduce heat shield risks very early on. Some of their earliest flights included EVA experiments where the astronauts translated themselves to the thermal tiles, did inspections, and even did mock repairs to test the feasibility of the idea and of the quality of the adhesives in near total vacuum. After the final accident they started doing something they could have and should have been doing since the beginning. That was simply taking up a camera that could be attached to the Canadarm, swung "underneath" the shuttle, and used to take a comprehensive survey of the thermal management system immediately on orbit. In any case, point is, human rated space flight will always require this level of attention to detail and ongoing effort to derisk every possible aspect of every mission performed. NASA management did an outright terrible job at this. From incentivizing the wrong behavior, falling in love with paper targets, and completely failing to audit their own internal risk estimations for errors.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > they started doing something they could have and should have been doing since the beginning. That was simply taking up a camera that could be attached to the Canadarm, First shuttle launch, Columbia STS-1 12 April 1981.[0] The Canadarm was first tested in orbit in 1981, on Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-2 mission [1] (12 November 1981) So, not exactly since the beginning [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm
  - akira2501 2y ago
    It was always intended to be on the shuttle. It's not as if they conceived, designed, and then created it between STS-1 and STS-2. It was baked into the software and into the rear flight deck controls. It was late. They didn't call it "flying the arm" for nothing: https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-sts077-307-017-19-29-may-1996-astronaut-marc-garneau-mission-specialist-169277932.html https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-sts077-307-017-19-29-may-1... In any case, STS-1 was an insane test flight, and had it's own share of thermal tile problems.
Aaron2222 2y ago
>> Also, are we all forgetting that within the past year SpaceX launches have had multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures? > Well that's just a straight up lie. I'm guessing they're confusing the expected, catastrophic explosive "failures" on experimental Starship prototypes with payload-carrying F9/FH flights.
- gamblor956 2y ago
  Yes, when you redefine failure to mean success, everything can be a success. That kid who got 1% on his test? He passed, if you redefine the threshold for passing to mean something that everyone else would consider a failure.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    Well that's one way to tell the world you've never built anything new.
  - Aaron2222 2y ago
    Launching a prototype rocket with the expectation that it will probably blow up and then having it blow up isn't a failure, especially when the goal is to see what happens.
    - gridspy 2y ago
      Especially when each rocket successfully makes it further into the test, beyond the point where the previous iteration failed.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    I want to short anything you’re involved in
  - boxed 2y ago
    You said "unexpected catastrophic explosive failures". But 1. They were not unexpected. They very very clearly communicated months ahead. 2. "Catastrophic" is a bit much too, as they were indeed expected and planned for. In fact, the biggest failure in the Starship development was that the rocket did NOT explode fast enough once. 3. "Failures". Well.. no. These are prototypes intended to learn from. Experiments if you will. A scientist that never has a negative result is a fraud. Same here.
blankx32 2y ago
The shuttle worked within its constraints, bad management killed the astronauts

krisoft 2y ago

> It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious. How do you know how serious the issue was?

jerkstate 2y ago
My guess is because it returned to earth (unmanned) without any problems
- krisoft 2y ago
  I’m curious if they would use the same logic for russian roulette. If you spin the barrel with one bullet, pull the trigger against your head and survive does that mean that the danger wasn’t that serious? NASA wasn’t saying that they know for certain that the Starliner will have a catastrophe on the way back. What they said is that they cannot be certain that the probability of it having a catastrophe is lower than some decision threshold. Using the russian roulette as an analogy NASA has a revolver with a barel for a million bullets, and they decided they are fine to pull the trigger against the astronauts heads if there are less than 5 bullets in it. But due to nobody really understanding the mechanism of previous anomalies they don’t know how many bullets there are in the barrel. There might be six or more so they are not willing to pull the trigger. (The number of bullets, and the number of chambers is merelly illustrative. I don’t know what is the real number NASA uses.)
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    IIRC NASA requires a 1/270 chance of failure in space.
    - krisoft 2y ago
      Thank you! It seems wikipedia confirms what you are saying. Sadly the article it references is no longer available, so i can’t dig into it. But it sounds 1/270 is for the requirement for overall mission while the ascent and descent phases have 1/500 apportioned to them each. Was trying to put this 1/500 number into perspective for myself. It sounds like it is rougly similar to the mortality of having appendicites. [1] 1: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/587111 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...

dotnet00 2y ago

>multiple unexpected catastrophic explosive failures There has been one, a second stage that failed to relight the engine due to a sensor issue that was quickly fixed. Since then they have had more successful launches than most companies fly in entire years. The other failures were: - A booster that failed to land after the most flights any booster in the fleet has had, a problem only SpaceX is capable of having right now - A second stage where the engine shutdown during a deorbit burn was a few milliseconds later than expected. On the other hand, the "minor issue" on Starliner had Boeing burning hundreds of millions of dollars trying to replicate the issue on the ground, after so many years of waterfall-style development.

globalnode 2y ago

what about that bezos company, blue origin, wouldnt they be a viable competitor? they seem to know what theyre doing and dont share the incompetence of boeing or the comedy of spacex.

WalterBright 2y ago
> the comedy of spacex What?
globalnode 2y ago
[flagged]
- globalnode 2y ago
  theres only four of you?
  - globalnode 2y ago
    think i will start combining it into "Rustex"
    - globalnode 2y ago
      1 sweaty rustlol or xlol zealot out there that wants to play. this will be my last post here, its getting boring, so make it count.

kiba 2y ago

Boeing also deleted a lot of software code they deemed not necessary despite being a hard requirement. They also shouldn't had an issue to the point that NASA lost confidence in Boeing. We all make mistakes, but some mistakes are being made due to shoddy work. It was thankfully not a capsule destroying mistake, but on something high stake such as a human rated capsule, shoddy works shouldn't be tolerated, especially with corner cutting such as removing entire capability in software.

moralestapia 2y ago

Tell me you own Boeing stock without telling me you own Boeing stock.

ordu 2y ago

> It had a minor issue that turned out not to be so serious. We don't know if it was serious or not. If Starliner managed to land this time, will it be able to do it repeatedly, or it was just luck this time? If we are trying to deduce seriousness of the issue from data, then one point of data is too low. Boeing needs to launch a few dozens more of test flights to gather the data needed for this kind of reasoning. But if we are relying on causal reasoning, then we have no clear understanding of causes, Boeing engineers are still unable to explain how their thrusters fail exactly, and what they could do to make them robust.

Dalewyn 2y ago
>Boeing needs to launch a few dozens more of test flights to gather the data needed for this kind of reasoning. This in fact is a shining vindication of Musk's "Waste metal, not time." philosophy. Boeing is operating in the old school "Spend lots of time planning, go for a hole in one." philosophy, so if they proceed to fail they need to spend lots of more time planning and going for more hole in ones to demonstrate sufficient statistics. SpaceX? They wasted metal instead of time and got statistics out with sheer numbers before Boeing even got a number, because the only way you get numbers is by getting numbers. Boeing should be fired and ideally bankrupted, and everyone else needs to get with the times so they don't become the next Boeing.
- tliltocatl 2y ago
  On the other hand, "waste metal" philosophy was what killed Soviet moon program. Guess sensors and telemetry are a bit more advanced today.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    No, the Soviets lost simply because we wasted more metal than they did. Consider that just the Apollo programme had twenty one (21) launches in a span of about just 8 years before Apollo 11 landed the first men on the Moon. Gemini had twelve (12) launches in a span of just 2 years, and Mercury had twenty six (26) launches in a span of just 4 years. Contrast 4 launches of N1, 6 launches of Voskhod, and 13 launches of Vostok from records we know of. If anything, Musk should waste more metal.