Boeing Starliner capsule lands back on Earth, without astronauts, to end troubled test flight (video)

[Admin]

Boeing's Starliner capsule returned to Earth early this morning (Sept. 7), wrapping up its first-ever crewed mission. But it came home without any astronauts on board.

Boeing Starliner capsule lands back on Earth, without astronauts, to end troubled test flight (video) : Read more

 

[trailrider]

Boeing's Starliner capsule returned to Earth early this morning (Sept. 7), wrapping up its first-ever crewed mission. But it came home without any astronauts on board.

Boeing Starliner capsule lands back on Earth, without astronauts, to end troubled test flight (video) : Read more

Well, it worked as intended. So, let the second guessing begin. Should Butch and Suni have ridden it home? IMHO, NO! There was too much uncertainty about the thrusters' performances to risk it. The thing for Boeing to do now, is do some extensive/intensive investigative work, including testing the thrusters they have on the ground to see what changes to make, either in the spacing of the thrusters inside the doghouses, or the sequencing of firing, or whatever. I certainly don't see how NASA can certify the Starliner without more and better data and perhaps a reflight of an unmanned capsule with better instrumentation of the thrusters.
Unfortunately, Butch and Suni will have an extended stay, but as military officers they certainly know about extended deployments. (The crews on board some of our ships in the Middle East have been out there a lot longer than they anticipated.)
Best of luck up there!

 

[Totally_Lost]

Well, it worked as intended. So, let the second guessing begin. Should Butch and Suni have ridden it home? IMHO, NO! There was too much uncertainty about the thrusters' performances to risk it. The thing for Boeing to do now, is do some extensive/intensive investigative work, including testing the thrusters they have on the ground to see what changes to make, either in the spacing of the thrusters inside the doghouses, or the sequencing of firing, or whatever. I certainly don't see how NASA can certify the Starliner without more and better data and perhaps a reflight of an unmanned capsule with better instrumentation of the thrusters.
Unfortunately, Butch and Suni will have an extended stay, but as military officers they certainly know about extended deployments. (The crews on board some of our ships in the Middle East have been out there a lot longer than they anticipated.)
Best of luck up there!

I agree ... it comes down to probability ... was a successful Starliner return only projected as a 25% chance of success and they got lucky, or was a successful Starliner return projected with 90% chance of success and they still got lucky to miss the real 10% chance of crew loss?

 

[Mars Tafts]

So a HUGE part of the problem was NASA all along as usual.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

So a HUGE part of the problem was NASA all along as usual.

I am going to disagree with that!

That is the same type of logic as a drunk driver telling the police officer that he has always gotten home alive in the past, even if he had some new scratched on the car in the morning.

The issue is what level of certainty can you get that the craft is going to work sufficiently well to provide a safe trip.

"Modeling" risk is not a prefect science. The models "fail" as well as the hardware and the human operators, in that there are problems that are not modeled correctly or completely and others that are just not known so are not in the models at all.

So, at best, the results of a risk model need to be considered in the context of saying that the risk is at least as bad as the results. If there is a lot of uncertainty in how to model something, sometimes all you can really do is look at the "importance" of the system failing, to see what the conditional probability is for unacceptable results.

In this case, with so many thrusters needing to fire in so many directions so many times, the logic model for what can go wrong enough to cause a fatal situation is quite complicated. And, with a "common cause" for failure affecting of all of the thrusters, the model has to consider if one thruster failure will create higher demand on other thrusters and cause them to fail too , in a cascading process. So the end result of the calculation becomes extremely sensitive to the input probability that a thruster will fail, which is not even a single number. For a single thruster, the probability is going to be a function of the firing sequence - involving the time between firings, their duration and total times fired - for each possible scenario of multiple thruster failures at various times.

I doubt anybody on this forum, including myself, is in a position to realistically second-guess NASA on this decision.

I fully support their decision.

 

[Totally_Lost]

I am going to disagree with that!

That is the same type of logic as a drunk driver telling the police officer that he has always gotten home alive in the past, even if he had some new scratched on the car in the morning.

[...]

I doubt anybody on this forum, including myself, is in a position to realistically second-guess NASA on this decision.

I fully support their decision.

I think that NASA learned their lessons with the loss of crews and Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger. 14 deaths that shut the program down. It really doesn't matter how many times you get lucky, it really matters how many times you are likely to fail and have crew losses. The real answer should be very close to zero.

 

[Viking]

So a HUGE part of the problem was NASA all along as usual.

OK Captain Dunsel.

 

[Classical Motion]

It was great to watch. I was hypnotized with the parachute oscillation on the way down.

 

[doseas]

"Everything went well." Um, no. In the post-landing briefing (the one that Boeing personnel skipped), Stich indicated that a different thruster failed during re-entry. Fortunately, a redundant thruster was able to be used. Also, the capsule experienced an abnormal, temporary failure of guidance system during descent.

 

[Rob77]

While I'm happy they didn't risk the astronauts to bring them back, the whole situation is sad and a set back for any future missions in general. We all know Boeings record in the flight industry is not as strong as it was, but the Starliner issues also will mean future missions keep getting pushed back as it seems NASA don't want to solely rely on SpaceX. Just my 2 c.

 

[billslugg]

SpaceX capability is proven. A second type is no longer needed. What is needed is the proven design be available from multiple manufacturing facilities, in widely separated areas of the country, and at least one of which is non-union.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Here is a link to an account of how SpaceX was able to get a contract at all, instead of Boeing getting a sole source contract. https://arstechnica.com/features/20...nasa-nearly-gave-boeing-all-the-crew-funding/

There is a lesson in there about the need for competition.

Even China, one of the most centralized decision making nations in the world, is pushing a rather large number of government and "private" groups to develop multiple launch vehicles in some sort of competitive fashion.

Past success is no guarantee of future performance.

And, that applies to SpaceX as much as any other company.

Reliability requires options.

The U.S. space program got burned with its Space Shuttle Program failures and "early retirement".

My vote is to increase support for Sierra Space's " DreamChaser" craft.

And give the FAA enough funding and a hard enough kick in the seat of its pants to prevent the launch license delays that are holding up the development of SpaceX StarShip and SuperHeavy. The Artemis SLS program is not looking like a safe "basket" for all of our lunar exploration eggs.