Boeing Starliner's 1st astronaut mission delayed, no new launch date announced

[Admin]

The 1st astronaut mission aboard Boeing's Starliner will not lift off May 25 as planned. NASA has not yet revealed the cause, but a helium leak has been ongoing in the spacecraft.

Boeing Starliner's 1st astronaut mission delayed, no new launch date announced : Read more

 

[JoeWingNut]

Ground it permanently. Drag it over to the static display park. Let's stop wasting money on this lemon!
Start over on Boeing's dime.

 

[Ryan F. Mercer]

lemon!

Or just throw money at Starship. Who needs Boeing?

 

[fj.torres]

At the current rate, Dream Chaser will be human rated before Starliner.

 

[Mergatroid]

Just scrap the damn thing and go back to the drawing board.
The thing is obviously not reliable, and considering who made it, I would never want to trust my life to it.
In my eyes, Boeing has lost most of the credibility it had built up over previous decades before all these problems started becoming apparent.
Didn't SpaceX and Boeing start the design and build at approximately the same time? Yet the Dragon capsule has successfully has how many human flights?
From Wikki:
"On September 16, 2014, NASA chose Boeing (Starliner) and SpaceX (Crew Dragon) as the two companies to be funded to develop systems to transport U.S. government crews to and from the International Space Station."

Maybe they should have had something that works by now?

 

[HumboldtRick]

Why do these rich idiots make their rockets look like penises??? Shows where their heads are at.

 

[Classical Motion]

I was thinking of spearhead, a stick with a blade. See, it's either sex or killing.

 

[Rob77]

I would start investigation whether Starliner was actually launch ready or just a publicity stunt to give them selves more time to fix issues. If they gave the appearance that they are "launch ready" it might get key investors / government off their back for a while .... hmmm

 

[Eskalab]

Maybe they need to go to a hobby store and buy some Estes rockets

 

[ultimatewizz]

Considering that the people launching it if they ever do, do not recover the booster and cannot come close to SpaceX in cost. So why is NASA throwing money down the toilet, they can't get their samples back from Mars, not sure they can repair Hubble. Put the money to use somewhere else.

 

[Dale H]

Ground it permanently. Drag it over to the static display park. Let's stop wasting money on this lemon!
Start over on Boeing's dime.

I agree. Boeing had a contract for $4.2 billion vs $2.6 billion for SpaceX. SpaceX has been flying to the ISS for several years now and Boeing seems to have no idea what they are doing. Time to end it and apply the remaining funds to SpaceX.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

NASA's goal is to avoid the situation where SpaceX has a "mishap" and it's fleet is grounded, putting the U.S. in the position of needing to contract with Russia, or maybe even China, to launch U.S, astronauts, or maybe even retrieve some left stranded on the ISS. That is why it is funding 2 contracts instead of 1.

That said, if Dream Chaser catches up to Boeing in operational readiness, then I think Boeing's Starliner is going to be dropped.

Dream Chaser, especially on a reusable launch vehicle, basically checks all of the boxes for an easy to use, cost effective system for ferrying astronauts and small cargo loads to low earth orbit. But, even on an expendable launch vehicle, it would provide better redundancy if SpaceX somehow stumbles badly.

Unless Dream Chaser ultimately fails to reach its program goals, I think it has the future that Starliner was intended for.

 

[Goryar]

Just scrap the damn thing and go back to the drawing board.
The thing is obviously not reliable, and considering who made it, I would never want to trust my life to it.
In my eyes, Boeing has lost most of the credibility it had built up over previous decades before all these problems started becoming apparent.
Didn't SpaceX and Boeing start the design and build at approximately the same time? Yet the Dragon capsule has successfully has how many human flights?
From Wikki:
"On September 16, 2014, NASA chose Boeing (Starliner) and SpaceX (Crew Dragon) as the two companies to be funded to develop systems to transport U.S. government crews to and from the International Space Station."

Maybe they should have had something that works by now?

It is clear that at this moment Boeing is focusing all its attention on the serious problems it faces in the central part of its operation, with quality control on the 737 Max production line. In addition, there is the probable success in the launch of the Dream Chaser "tenacity" and its service module "shootingstar" from Sierra Nevada aboard the new (entirely American) Vulcan Centaur rocket... yes, they urgently need a drastic solution ; I can't think of a solution.