This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The crew should come back on the Dragon and Boeing be required to solve the problems and carry out another test flight. It is unacceptable that Boeing wants to bring the astronauts back without understanding some of the failures on the Starliner.
I’m sure they understand the problems, and they understand that solving them would eat into their profits
Another test flight will be a bit of a problem. There are no spare Atlas V rockets. They will either have to convince Amazon to give up one of theirs or they will have to launch one of the missions on Vulcan Centaur, which is not currently crew rated.
or they will have to launch one of the missions on Vulcan Centaur, which is not currently crew rated.
That's okay; the next Starliner test flight clearly shouldn't be crew rated either!
This is exactly it for me. A problem is one thing, a problem can be addressed. But a problem whose core cause is not understood can't be quantified or addressed.
So you have a thruster pack that's overheating and they don't even know why, you have helium that's leaking and they don't even know why, so I ask why is it even a question what to do?
I am among other things a private pilot, I fly little propeller airplanes around for fun. Lots of private pilots do stupid stuff, and some get killed as a result. I'm talking for example pilots who want to get back to their home airport, so they fly over five airports that all sell fuel without landing but then run out of gas and crash half a mile from their home airport. So there is a saying, before you do anything risky, consider how stupid you will look in the NTSB report if it doesn't work out. And the pilot who intentionally flew below fuel minimums looks pretty damn stupid, destroyed a $100,000 airplane and lost his life so he could save 20 bucks on cheaper gas.
Point is, the same principle applies to all of the recent space disasters. Challenger was obviously not the right decision to launch. Columbia obviously a serious risk that was ignored. And that brings us to Starliner, we have serious fundamental problems that could definitely lead to a loss of ship and crew situation and we don't even understand what is causing those problems. Now imagine Starliner fails. How stupid will that decision look? Probably even dumber than Columbia or Challenger, because unlike those two disasters we know ahead of time that something is very wrong.
Shitty Boeing aside, how are they eating up there? I don't know anything about space station food logistics, but if a planned week has turned into ten weeks, surely there must be a resource strain.
Edit: Google search says they can regularly send up unmanned supply ships.
Can’t wait to see this project too in Google’s graveyard.
Ah, the old lemmy switcharoo
They eat whichever astronaut dies first.
Just don't question the cause of death, because it will be blunt force trauma
Don't they have their own version of MREs they use for situations like this?
They just send up more food.
Imagine that Uber Eats bill.
Fr. Imagine the expected tip.
Instructions: please ring door bell
Please leave anywhere near the airlock. Pls don't ring or knock, dogs bark.
they must have a significant food bank supply, including some kind of reserve replacement nutrients in the event shit goes wrong. That or an incredibly redundant delivery network.
I was curious about this same thing.
I though I read they're currently housed in the ISS so they should have reserves. I initially thought they were stuck in their launch vehicle.
In this particular situation, if Boeing says it's safe, I would be inclined to trust them, because if they make the return happen, and it fails, Boeing is done fore. As a crew member though, I would pass for sure and wait for a Dragon
How many people died because boeing made shitty planes and didn’t train their crew properly?
Is boeing done for?
They get one last chance! If they kill these astronauts this time, we'll be really, really mad like for real!
Don't worry, we have enough tax payer's money to bail them out if anything goes wrong.
/s
I think messing up on NASA projects will hurt a company way more. Of course aviation is supposed to be safe, but even the 737 Max has flown thousands of hours. Comparing how many people that have flown on them, versus how many that have been hurt/killed, is still a small number, which is still is supposed to be zero of course.
Traversing space, a pinnacle of engineering, is quite another level of danger, and if you insist on your product being functional and safe, and then kills two astronauts, would cause a whole different level of backlash
How many deaths per 1000h does the max have?
347 apparently, across 7 years of operation
They already couldn't afford this situation, and look where they are.
What's an improbable "acceptable risk" to them may not be good enough for NASA, especially if they don't really understand what's wrong.
True. Didn't think of it that way
I am not sure that businesses like Boeing make risk decisions like that. You would think that they would only take a risk that they know they can win, but many times they take a risk and hope that the dice land their way. This would be lives at risk, with calculations assessed by people with very poor records with such assessments.
They could feel like there's nothing more to lose if it doesn't make it back but they might be able to claw their way back if it succeeds. "They" being the individuals making the recommendation, not the individuals more concerned about the company overall. If Boeing decides the spaceflight industry isn't worth the risks, a downsize or complete closing of that part of the company could cost the jobs of those who are the experts in this situation.
So it might not be a case of "we think it's safe to return". It might be "returning safely is the only scenario where we aren't fucked, so let's roll the dice".
That's a very valid point
The question facing NASA's leadership today? Should the two astronauts return to Earth from the International Space Station in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, with its history of thruster failures and helium leaks, or should they come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule?
The question facing NASA’s leadership today? Should the two astronauts return to Earth...
"Alright, just hear me out..." -Boeing
The lives of two government employees are in the balance, and taxpayers paid Boeing for most of the Starliner spacecraft's development costs.
Money money money...
Three Starliner mission managers had key roles on Columbia's ill-fated final flight.
I was gonna take issue with that statement until i read this. Causality does seem more probable.
Will those Astronauts get overtime pay?
Unfortunately they’ve been moving backwards across the time zones, resulting in them owing NASA money
This is an excellent article. I’m glad they took time to go into the history of these folks.
