NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as “Type A” mishap, says agency made mistakes
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Control your temper, a dumb post isn't worth this kind of response
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.
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".
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I must have missed somewhere in all of this that the return to earth, uncrewed, on the return, there were ALSO thruster failures.
I thought Boeing had said that the return to earth was 'flawless'
I thought Boeing had said that the return to earth was 'flawless'
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I used that phrasing because most likely this is the level of being held accountable that results in high-level people losing their jobs.
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Maybe it's bad reading comprehension on my part, but what does the "type A" classification mean? What are the other mishap classifications?
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"should the uncrewed test flight in 2026 go well"
I think Eric is calling Starliner-2 (the first operational crew mission) Starliner-1.
Which, really, it should be; they should be calling the cargo mission OFT-3.
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Is there a version of the NASA administrator letter available without having to head over to Xitter ?
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Jonathan McDowell has both it and the full report hosted.
Letter: https://planet4589.org/space/misc/starliner26.ji.pdf
Report: https://planet4589.org/space/misc/starliner26.pdf
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It didn't miss the earth, and came down in one piece. That's Boeing flawless.
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by those definitions, I suppose "didn't burn up on re-entry" also adds to the list.
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Terribly easy? Really?
This steaming pile of crap was dumped into Jared's lap. He's just showing that he understands how to handle crisis management since he knows the risks from the astronaut's viewpoint (he's an astronaut himself) and from upper management viewpoint (he is a successful founder of billion-dollar corporations and knows how to handle management problems like the ones at NASA). For once NASA has a young, experienced, energetic Administrator who is not tied to political coattails.
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Thanks.
quick show of hands for how many folks looked to see if NASA had done the redactions badly. LOL
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The issue was a bit more pernicious than that.
The thrusters overheated on OFT-1. But the clock error triggering precision-keeping mode was a reasonable explanation for that issue. So it wasn't that Boeing didn't get enough information to fix the problem, they didn't get enough information to know they had a (thruster) problem in the first place.
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I believe it was at the post-flight news conference that two seats on the stage were meant for Boeing representatives that ended up not being present. I'd love to know more about that particular moment and what it says about this wider timeline of events.
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NASA put a huge amount of effort into trying to assert that the heat shield risk had been worked through: but what I think is open to discussion: what else on the risk manifest wasn't retired as completely
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I will react today exactly as I did in the comments of that the article that covered that: Taht was Bridenstine being a good politician and saving as much face for a valued contractor as he could. His words didn't matter. What would matter was his (and NASA's) actions. And as it turns out, the actions were spot-on. NASA forced Boeing to refly OFT-1.
Unfortunately, Ballast Bill Nelson was the Administrator after the OFT-1 repeat and he has a long history with Boeing and Old Space in general. And it was under his watch that the OFT-1 repeat was accepted as sufficient even though there were thruster issues again.
NASA owned up to not monitoring Boeing closely enough prior to the OFT-1 launch. However, they at least did the right thing and made Boeing repeat the test. NASA performed far more poorly when human life was on the line for OFT-2.
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Where is a reliable source for that quoted exchange? Google doesn't have any record of it in search results.
And even if that is accurate, the government not wanting to lay off a lot of its employees just because a private contractor failed to deliver under the budget it proposed to win the contract seems entirely legitimate.
But what really makes what you're posting deeply suspect is that we are continuing a thread in this discussion where you said that the Artemis program's sole purpose was "DEI". Which is not only obviously false, but is exactly the kind of slander that Trump cultists chant while posting lying memes. Trump cultists who heiled at Musk's DOGE getting rid of a lot of government employees who were in Musk's way.
So where is that reliable source for that quoted exchange? Just because you're popping off so many red (hat) flags doesn't mean you're definitely lying about the quotes you posted. But until you back it up it's a safe assumption.
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Since it happened 40 years ago, there may not be many of us who remember Challenger. Isaacman was only 3 years old so he probably does not remember it, but most likely he has studied it. And to make a black humor reference, Richard Feynman (a dying physicist) was "Schrodinger fired" - simultaneously fired and not fired - from the review board until Sally Ride (a famous NASA astronaut) stepped in and threatened to publicly quit the board unless Feynman and his findings were restored.
To this day people remember it was the cold o-rings that caused the Challenger disaster, but the cause of flying with cold o-rings happened because NASA administration really pressured to fly, because appearances.
If one is to believe this report, then forty years later either that culture has returned, or it never really went away.
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Yes at that point Boeing's software appeared so bad that the notion the thrusters fired so much they damaged themselves seemed not only possible but probable. I guess the fact that the thrusters that ultimately failed were not randomly distributed somehow went unobserved though. I would like to think were I am engineer on that project (thank god I'm not) and all the ones that failed just happened to be aft facing I might have at least gone, huh?
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Did anyone outside of Boeing and NASA think Starliner had been proven safe to carry humans after the results of the second test flight? I sure as hell didn't. Shouldn't they try to at least get one flight without any failures that called into question whether Starliner could successfully fly to ISS and back?
That was a colossal failure of judgment, probably motivated by the desire to keep Boeing involved in the Commercial Crew program. I understand the desire to avoid being reliant on a single contractor, but that can't justify the risks they took by not requiring another uncrewed test to prove that theprevious failures had been solved.
That was a colossal failure of judgment, probably motivated by the desire to keep Boeing involved in the Commercial Crew program. I understand the desire to avoid being reliant on a single contractor, but that can't justify the risks they took by not requiring another uncrewed test to prove that theprevious failures had been solved.
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Honestly, that may be better than we had any business expecting. That it would enter the earth's atmosphere in a correct orientation seemed like a 50/50 proposition to me.
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Wasn't it obvious that wasn't a real exchange? Even if Boeing and NASA had those thoughts, they'd never express them that bluntly or briefly.
I understood the post as sarcasm/parody and not especially humorous parody. It might have helped to add a "/s" to it, but I don't think there was an intent to deceive.
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Space exploration is dangerous and worthwhile. We will lose more people in future. I'm encouraged that Isaacman won't settle for "they died because somebody was stupid".
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When Jared Isaacman was first nominated for NASA Administrator there was opinion from some that he would not be a good fit for the job, since he came from a commercial background with no experience of NASA and political culture.
Surely it’s now clear to the non-partisan doubters that “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”
Jared is off to a very promising start.
Surely it’s now clear to the non-partisan doubters that “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”
Jared is off to a very promising start.
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Captain Dunsel
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
As time goes by, I find myself becoming more convinced that Starliner won't fly again.
The window for it to be useful at the station is shrinking and now the NASA Administrator is pretty much saying 'no more free passes'. The optics, dollars, and timing seem to be conspiring against Starliner.
But I'm terrible at predicting the future and am prepared to be wrong.
The window for it to be useful at the station is shrinking and now the NASA Administrator is pretty much saying 'no more free passes'. The optics, dollars, and timing seem to be conspiring against Starliner.
But I'm terrible at predicting the future and am prepared to be wrong.
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Are y'all seriously going to ban one of your most prolific posters who often adds to discussions relating to spaceflight for no better reason than that heused a naughty word twice in responding to a bigoted and asinine post?
That's an overreaction.
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The upcoming cargo flight exists so that NASA will be the ones paying for another test flight before putting crew on board again. It's an end-run around the CC contract but at least NASA will be getting some service out of it.
CC only had a redundancy requirement because Boeing's supporters couldn't justify kicking SpaceX out of the program.
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He got threadbanned and a week off. Please do not make drama about moderator actions.
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Starliner, like various Boeing products, is a crock of shit. But the main lesson here is that the company is not only protected by Congressional interests but by shills, lapdogs and managers safeguarding their butts, within NASA. It remains to be seen whether Isaacman does anything to remove them.
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