NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as “Type A” mishap, says agency made mistakes

"The most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware."

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I got a little bit more respect for Isaacman. It is a nearly impossible job but heads need to roll at NASA. This isn't a one off. Look at SLS and Orion. Yeah yeah it was stuck to NASA by the Senate and they get plenty of deserved scorn. However NASA management of that has been keystone cops level of bad.

NASA seems utterly incapable of any sort of oversight or management of anything involving HSF. When something is that rotten simply writing new memos about it isn't enough. You need to change people out. Some people need to be fired, some demoted, some put on administrative review.

HSF projects NASA had oversight on over last 40 years

• STS - Two crews killed
• Constellation - Ares I would have killed a crew. It shouldn't even have been considered. Congress being cheap bastards likely saved the lives of a crew for the wrong reasons.
• SLS/Orion - Horribly mismanaged. Normalization of the deviance is already happening.
• Starliner - Came close to killing a crew after rubber stamping two failed flights in a row.
• Crew Dragon - Good but how much of this was NASA oversight and how much was simply SpaceX executing well regardless of if NASA was even there.

I think NASA can do great things again but I don't think it can happen without a change of culture and you can't do that with all the same people who rotted the culture down to begin with.

A source recently told Ars that two NASA astronauts, Woody Hoburg and Jessica Wittner, have begun training for a potential “Starliner-1” mission that could take flight during the first half of next year, should the uncrewed test flight in 2026 go well. NASA has not confirmed that any astronauts have been assigned to Starliner-1.

I thought Starliner-1 was going to be cargo only given there hasn't been a single successful flight yet. That crew wouldn't happen until Starliner-2. Three for three failures and they are even considering humans on the next flight? JFC. Take what I said above and double it.

 

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Yes, I agree he wasn't president during all this mess. But, he IS president NOW and Isaacman is dissing "HIS NASA"—making something within the Trump World look bad. Cardinal sin.

I guess you really gotta get into Trump's psyche to understand this! But, I can pretty much guarantee you Trump isn't happy that someone who works for Him is saying one of HIS agencies isn't PERFECT.

The good news is Trump is half senile, has the attention span of a gnat, and routinely naps half the day away. This might escape his radar simply because it is boring space nerd stuff. Trump just wants NASA to land on the moon during his term so he can get credit. He couldn't care less about anything else. There is zero chance of that happening but nobody is telling him yet. He proposed axing Artemis program entirely after Artemis III with no replacement. No alternate crew view, no replacement missions just zero it out. Why would he care? Artemis IV would happen after he is no longer President.

However yeah if the right person convinces Trump this was done to make him look bad then the director is gone.

 

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So fortunate the equivalent of Ctrl-Alt-Delete re-enabled the needed thrusters. Can you imagine what NASA would be like if we lost Butch and Suni?

They killed 8 astronauts twice and nobody so much as lost their job or had a demotion. A few resigned but weren't forced out. In fact the only action in the aftermath of Challenger disaster was to sideline the contractor who warned NASA endlessly that launching under those conditions had a serious risk of a fatal accident. See the problem wasn't killing eight crew the problem was this guy who kept warning us and removing any plausible deniability.

So if they killed two more I wouldn't expect much would change without outside action. "Thoughts and prayers. Space is dangerous. We must continue Butch and Suni's legacy."

 

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all for the purpose of fulfilling some DEI goal.

Fuck off bigot. Just fuck off. This is like the fourth or fifth time you went on your white man cryfest in various topics. Seems it is all you care about.

Also no that isn't the only stated objective of Artemis.

Are you suggesting that Artemis SHOULD continue?

To be clear Trump was not proposing enidng Artemis now. In fact their budget proposal over funded Artemis II and III only to zero it out AFTER a human landing on the moon because he thinks it will happen on his term and he will "get credit".