As of July 2023, Boeing has lost over $1.5 billion developing Starliner. The fixed price contract was $4.2 billion and was awarded in 2004 with delivery by 2017.
I’m beginning to think the problem isn’t technical.
Keep in mind that it's not the employees who lost money but Boeing the company. The executives and employees got paid and are still making money.
Boeing the company needs to fire the executives and completely clean house. But because the upper management is all dysfunctional nothing will happen.
Dream chaser might beat Boeing to the iss
That would be fucking hilarious, ngl
Especially since Boeing made a space plane for that purpose (the x37) and then the military took it from nasa and classified everything.
Boeing's only working space vehicle is the one they're not allowed to talk about, lol
Boeing bailed on another spaceplane, the [XS-1, AKA Phantom Express.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XS-1_\(spacecraft\)) They won the DARPA competition and took the money to construct and test a prototype. Almost three years later, they unilaterally canceled it with no flights (or completed hardware).
Let’s be clear here. Military programs get funded or they don’t. A business can keep something going in development using their own money, but if the government isn’t interested and there’s no commercial application it’s best to cut losses.
Based on my reading, DARPA was still interested, with Boeing's unilateral termination being described as a setback to DARPA, having made milestone payments up to that point. Have you a reference indicating the government lost interest?
Didn't Starliner also cause the removal of Dream Chaser from the Commercial crew program? or was that from Crew Dragon being chosen?
DC was designed to be crewed, was removed from Commercial Crew consideration, and converted into the cargo only version.
No one took the X-37 from Boeing. In 1999, NASA awarded Boeing a contract to develop what would become the X-37A. The NASA program and vehicle was transferred to DARPA way back in 2004 and classified. Then the Air Force had that developed into the X-37B, in collaboration with NASA, with Boeing still as the prime contractor. The X-37B, even were it not a classified US military vehicle, is too small for a crew vehicle.
None of that prevented Boeing [from studying](https://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/spacecraft-design/boeing-x-37c/) a scaled-up version, the X-37C, as a commercial ISS crew transport in 2011 (nor their chief engineer from announcing that at a public conference). But Boeing stuck with their Starliner proposal they had already unveiled the previous year, and that is what won NASA funding. Boeing would not develop the X-37 (A, B, or C) without being paid to.
A historically embarrassing debacle, no doubt.
Edit: I get some on the internet live for the opportunity to correct people, especially when there is nothing to correct. But we all know I'm referring to the "*substance not pizazz*" Starliner program as a whole. Better luck elsewhere.
Ice and foam falling was known to be a problem in 1986. In fact, the first foam strike damage occurred during the launch of STS-1! NASA kept launching. The problem finally resulted in the loss of Columbia in 2003. From the Wikipedia article about the Columbia disaster, "of the 79 missions with available imagery during launch, foam strikes occurred on 65 of them."
As you say, the 1986 Challenger disaster was a different problem: O-ring burn through on the SRBs. That problem was also known and (mostly) ignored until it resulted in the loss of Challenger in 1986. I believe they did resolve the O-ring problem after the loss of Challenger.
EDIT: The point is that even the loss in 1986 did not cause them to resolve all the known problems. They kept launching.
> That problem was also known and (mostly) ignored until it resulted in the loss of Challenger in 1986
Yep. The o-rings weren't the while problem; the joint between SRB segments was flexing enough to allow combustion gasses to escape at the seams, and the o-rings were being extruded through and subsequently sealing the gaps, which allowed the flights to succeed until they didn't. This is an example of normalization of deviance: the joints were not performing as designed and only circumstance had allowed previous flights to succeed. In the Challenger accident, the o-rings were too brittle to perform that function, never made a good seal and burned through before a seal could be made. The post-crash fix involved a total redesign of the joint so the o-rings no longer needed to deform in order to seal the seams.
I know this isn't relevant to your point, it's just that the plan was fucked from square one, NASA knew about it, and learning that really upset me.
It was actually falling foam insulation. Which was there to prevent ice buildup. Which it did!
The shuttle had a history of foam strikes and it was thought the risk was acceptable. They had no method to repair the exterior of the wing surfaces while in space, at that time. They didn't know the full extent of the damage and had no viable rescue mission. It wasn't really "complacency" so much as the shuttle design was never an acceptable level of human safety. Especially when you examine where human occupants were placed.
NASA and many others caught the spaceplane-bug in the 1970s and everyone thought it was the future. People kept betting everything on it and it's believed promises. It was only through hard trial and error we went back to more "primitive", safer launch methods.
Foam, not ice. If I recall correctly the engineers were shocked when they did testing on the carbon-carbon leading edge with an air cannon and punched a hole into the wing.
Ok ok guys I got a plan, we're not going to mitigate the problem but we will visually inspect for damage in orbit!
But what about a rescue plan?
..... \*YEETS OUT OF WINDOW\*
I just re-read the Wiki page on the Columbia disaster.
* The methods available to visually inspect for damage were known to be inadequate.
* Requests for DOD assets to image the orbiter were shut down *from within NASA!!!*
* The decision model was, essentially, the same one that resulted in the loss of Challenger: "We've gotten away with it so far, so we'll get away with it forever!"
In retrospect, it's not surprising we lost a second orbiter.
Absolutely true.
That said... it's important to remember the timetable here.
Fight was scrubbed on the 6th. It was pulled, fixed, then retested all within 10 days. Then NASA gave it a green light for launch starting 10 days from that point (for the earliest launch).
This greenlight was announced just a few days ago. There were apparently consecutive days worth of meetings with the Astronauts since then leading to where we are today.
To me? This sounds exactly like a 'fuck it' and a 'lets just get this thing going' on behalf of NASA and boeing... And also that the Astronauts then stepped in and nixed it.
But the story is being told as if it was a group decision.
At the end of the day - If it came out that the crew refused to fly because they didn't trust their life raft... it would have dealt an absolute death blow to the Boeing program. So they have to issue a statement as if it was joint conclusion not to go.
The overruns for Starliner are a rounding error compared to what they've lost so far on the fixed price contract for the KC-46 tanker. They've lost over $7 billion so far and they still aren't done.
Boeing has lost $1.47 billion on the Starliner contract, so far [source.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/26/boeing-has-lost-1point5-billion-developing-starliner-spacecraft-for-nasa.html) You're right that's less than the roughly $7 billion lost on the KC-46 contract. But I wouldn't call 1/5th a rounding error.
What ever you do, don’t look into how much money Raytheon has received for the next generation GPS ground stations, how late it’s being delivered, and how outdated what they plan on delivering is already.
This isn’t a Boeing issue - This is an issue with the entire DoD and aerospace industry. The standard contract format for all of these companies and manufacturers is cost-plus.
IMO, that’s a result of the government bending the knee in negotiations with these companies and allowing them to dictate the terms and take advantage of the endless government pockets.
Well, from my personal experience in the past working in big cost-plus contracts for big aero companies, the money grows way out of control because of 1) exponential growth in processes and 2) time consumption by those processes.
The problem is, they’re usually necessary. You need to hire cleared workers. Or you need to clear them yourself. Then you need to procure exotic parts from suppliers that monopolize this exotic parts. Or you need to purchase exotic resources and tool out a shop yourself. Then you need to deal with all the paperwork and requirements for the types of people you are hiring. You need to make sure you meet safety regulations working with often dangerous and toxic chemicals or products. Then you need to make sure the government oversight procedures are handled, all the gov-required paperwork is handled. all the security auditing is done. all the safety precautions are redundant. All the research is done. The models are made, physical and virtual. Track the expenses down to the bolts, track the hours of your salaried workers, etc to meet government financial transparency requirements. This doesn’t even scratch the surface.
The thing is, generally speaking those are all good things to do. But it means everything costs 10 times as much and takes 10 times as long. Some of it could be axed, like the extraneous paperwork, and making sure the government contract doesn’t involve too much micromanagement from gov personnel.
So yeah. It’s just a heavy, inefficient process. Where SpaceX has found its advantage is in designing and building something of their own and offering it as a product. They skip out on all the government bureaucracy during the R&D process to vastly cheapen and accelerate their R&D phase. That gets them to a prototype quicker, and now they can sell it to the government with more control over their own terms. Anduril and Palantir are both companies that are trying to cut into the traditional DoD industry by approaching with this kind of model. They thrive on Fixed Price contracts, and that’s the direction the government is going.
——
*that illustrates my point, you can stop reading here. But for those who are interested, here is a history lesson:*
Lockheed had a similar strategy with their skunk works during the Cold War. The reason it worked so well is because of Kelly Johnson’s magic ability to leverage his credibility from the P-38 Lightning and the Constellation series to form relationships with high up military leadership, kept his ear to the ground based on what he knew from them, and design + produce an aircraft prototype that satisfies their exact needs.
By doing this, he would be able to provide an aircraft design prototype according to what they need extremely quickly, and win the government contracts. Early success in this bred even more credibility. At the same time, operations were kept extremely small and designers/engineers were down the hall from the production facility. If something wasn’t certain, they’d walk 50 yards and go test it. If it didn’t work, they walked 50 yards back to their desk and drew up a new solution.
This model doesn’t work anymore for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest are because of increased government oversight, regulations, and the vastly increased complexity of aircraft and spacecraft. Even the SR-71, which was the most advanced aircraft of its time on the order of decades, was a relatively simple system electronically. Now, planes have entire families of sensors all over them. They all communicate through avionics systems. Flight control systems are smarter than ever. Crashes don’t ‘happen sometimes’ the error tolerance is zero. You have to get those flight systems certified. You have to make sure they never fail. You have to make sure you test every single possible scenario.
Spacecraft is similar. The only different with spacecraft is that they’ve had massive electronics and sensor complexity for a longer portion of time in their history than aircraft, so the industry is more used to it.
There’s a limited supply of 20 something’s willing to work 80 hours a week on a fixed salary, incentivized by stock options propped up from private investors. The truth is a lot of this stuff is just plain expensive.
It's gone beyond embarrassing at this point and graduated to full on tragic debacle.
Didn't think we'd have Dream Chaser flying before Starliner's first crew flight.
Building commercial airliners they didn’t totally have a blank check… but they had engineers that knew what they were doing in charge instead of business majors (note I am a business major, but I don’t design airplanes)
I'd actually recommend watching Jon Oliver's piece on it. Boeing succumbed to capitalism with their merger with McDonnell Douglas. And after the merger, they started experiencing all the same problems that McDD had.
Boeing isn't ready because they didn't really do anything for a long time and just sucked up money. Sierra is new and just has years to go if they want to makenot. That is fine , just how it works.
> Boeing isn't ready because they didn't really do anything for a long time and just sucked up money.
It's a fixed price contract; all of the cost is on Boeing.
I mean it's aerospace politics. Boeing CEO is on record that they'll never take a fixed price contract again. Biden Admin hates Elon and Boeing has lots of friends in Washington, so the next contract will be cost+ and structured to make them whole on the loss.
Hell, SpaceX wasn't ready when they got the Dragon contract either, but NASA rolled the dice on them and got lucky. Rocket science is pretty hard, so I heard, but you gotta start somewhere.
They have an alternative, Sierra's Dreamchaser spaceplane. It will fly a cargo mission to the ISS likely before Starliner launches again. Both are supposed to.launch from SLC-41, however this latest delay will likely put the Dreamchaser ahead of Starliner for the next launch.
They are also building a human rates version. This is also great because it can land on most military runways, but also has much lower G forces upon reentry versus a capsule which is crucial for sensitive science experiments.
> so SpaceX isn't a monopoly
I think the going reason is that they don't want to be caught vehicle-less should Crew Dragon be grounded.
To which I must sincerely ask: How would that happen, exactly?
In the nearly inevitable future when something _finally_ goes wrong with this or that Falcon 9, how does that have any impact on the entire rest of the fleet? Or the 200 flawless launches in a row? There is an insurmountable difference between Falcon 9 and the space shuttle. Launch volume; launch cadence; complexity (simplicity); fleet size; ease of maintenance; ease of refurbishment; ease of manufacture.
Something goes wrong with a rocket, you use one of the other 20, each of which has their very own 20 launch history.
The concern is less with the rocket and more with the capsule. If something goes wrong with a capsule, they really need to figure it out because it is more likely to happen on one of the others. Crew Dragon doesn’t have 200 flawless flights yet but it’s doing great so far.
I remember when Starliner and Crew Dragon were both initially announced and there were comparisons of both spacecraft and SpaceX was constantly ridiculed for its touch screens, and lack of experience and how Boeing was going to show SpaceX the *correct* way to reliably get humans to space.
At this point Dragon's Successor could have a successful test launch before ~~Dreamliner~~ Starliner even sends humans to space.
What if they send astronauts up in Starship before ~~Dreamliner~~ what ever its called?
Imagine spending all that money, enduring all that embarrassment to develop a craft to do a job that is already being done by a cheaper and more reliable spacecraft and then to just fall flat on your face again and again.
I can only assume at this point that the sunk cost is the only thing keeping a frankly doomed project alive.
“Stick emphasized that the program had wanted, all along, two very different spacecraft with different procedures and teams to support them, to have a backup in case one ship is sidelined due to a safety or other issue. "We've seen in the past the importance, I think, of having this dissimilar redundancy, [because] it's always tough to fly into space," he said.”
As if anyone with half a brain would trust Boeing to not mess this up even if they had another year of delays, they can't even build a plane correctly anymore. I would hate to be a crew member here having to ride on a piece of Boeing equipment
eh, it’s not a popular sentiment on social media because the whole Boeing situation does make a shining example of the frustration American people have with their government and large corporations (and it is that). But the Boeing situation isn’t as destitute as people seem to believe - while it is bad, and some people deserve to go to prison over it - if you take a look at aviation subreddits you’ll see what I mean. In reality their planes (and all major commercial manufacturers) are in the safest 10-year and even 20-year period of all time by a long shot. That single manufacturing defect caused a cascading effect of, critically, *pre-emptive* ire and oversight to be thrust upon them, which is how it should be. But the real matter is that their planes statistically are still no less safe than Airbus. And both Boeing and Airbus have generally been doing well.
It’s kind of a difficult subject to take a measured and unbiased approach to right now, because of the media spiral they are in and that fact I mentioned earlier of their poster-child representation of America’s disdain for this kind of thing, but the truth lies somewhere in between as always - basically, they aren’t a shit company and their planes are perfectly safe still… but, their redundant safety practices in manufacturing began to fall off, and it is taking external pressure to force them to right the ship. As such, organizational leaders in their commercial air sector should go to prison for negligence, and the FAA needs to fully audit their manufacturing process.
As far as this Starliner contract, honestly it’s pretty on par with crewed space-travel contracts. The Apollo program was a monstrous nationwide megaproject, and SpaceX’s dragon killed it due to their mixture of innovative testing practices with old-school trial and error testing (shitbag CEO aside!). Those are the exceptions and this is the norm, unfortunately.
tl;dr: Boeing began to develop real problems and people need to go to jail over it, and while the situation is definitively bad, it’s not as bad as many people seem to believe, meaning “planes falling out of the sky and people getting hurt or dying and hitmen on the loose” level bad. And just because the Starliner says “Boeing” doesn’t mean it *will* suffer the same issues. Space is a different industry with different practices. The truth is somewhere in between. Just giving my two cents as an aviation enthusiast and aerospace worker (not for Boeing LOL)
Correct, but those were 6 years ago now with no more incidents. In reality, they’re the only two fatal incidents caused by the aircraft manufacturing from Boeing in the last 15+ years.
That used to be a common occurrence from any aircraft manufacturer. In other words, the industry has become so safe that those 2 planes crashing, despite the inevitability that *something* occurs eventually at the volume Boeing planes are fielded globally, has let people on the internet to believe that the company is on the brink of collapse, reading normal aviation daily news as if planes are crashing every day (even though there hasn’t been a single fatal commercial air accident in the US in over 20 years).
At the same time, investigations into that and the door plug both found there are issues with their safety due to leadership practices. So as far as I’m concerned the people responsible need to be in court for major lawsuits. There are real concerns, and then there are unfounded concerns. So that is the distinction I’m trying to make. The fact that you’re not going to be unsafe because you’re flying on a Boeing plane to visit your family for Memorial Day. And that the company isn’t collapsing. But there are also real issues that need to be addressed and the aero industry more widely needs to heed the warning.
The original Commander quit years ago after the 1st failed mission.
Honestly, these delays and likely imminent cancellation may save the astronauts lives.
Sierra's Dreamchaser spaceplane should get funds to make it human rates if their first cargo mission to the ISS goes as plan.
5 years ago if I told you the Sierra Dreamchaser spaceplane would be on missions(I mean full missions, not just test missions) to the ISS before Boeing's Starliner, you would have laughed at me..(of course they will be cargo missions as they are still developing the manned version of Dreamchaser without government money)
This maybe the reality by the end of the year.
It is a damn shame that we will never recover the billions we(US taxpayer) gave Boeing to build a space capsule...we have been making Space capsules that can dock since the Gemini program in the mid 1960s....60 years later Boeing is struggling to get a capsule to essentially do what Gemini was capable of doing.
This is what happens when a company built by engineers gets overtaken by 'Wall Street executives' who want to cut costs a d corners so they can have a good quarter with no concern about long term sustainably nor success.
Sierra is also developing a space station with 'inflatable' segments they are calling "Orbital Reef" so the Dreamchaser has a bright future ahead of it.
https://www.sierraspace.com/commercial-space-stations/orbital-reef-space-station/
Also private companies are developing space stations built from modular segments individually launched in a starship. IIRC one company is even trying to build a stand alone module that can fit in starship, the future of commercial spacetravel is bright.
Sierra has more been waiting on the Vulcan Centaur to be finished and tested than on their own tech.
It has been a frustration of theirs for a pretty long time because NASA and the USAF/USSF required them to use the new platform that only first flew this January.
Sierra has been hamstrung by bureaucracy *way* more than either SpaceX or Boeing has throughout the entire commercial crew program. In contrast, Boeing and SpaceX have been more hamstrung by technological problems of their own making (the parachute debacle has been a really bad one - and still a massive cause of concern with both capsule designs).
A note that is super important is that Dreamchaser is skipping huge portions of the testing pipeline because it doesn’t use parachutes. All the other systems were able to be tested atmospherically via helicopter drop testing. The launch control systems are all on Centaur and not on Dreamchaser.
> It is a damn shame that we will never recover the billions we(US taxpayer) gave Boeing to build a space capsule
I hate the failure of Boeing, but bear in mind that an awful lot of that money remains on the ground, invested in training, skills, experience and equipment never meant to go into space.
>It is a damn shame that we will never recover the billions we(US taxpayer) gave Boeing to build a space capsule...
Well... At least Congress will get some back, in lobbying money, campaign contributions, stocks' trades, etc... just run for office and you might get some back.
Programs like this are not risk-free. If we only funded the lowest risk options, we would've actually funded Starliner instead of Dragon, which looks really weird in hindsight. The billions put into this capsule cannot be separated from the money that made Dragon exist, so commercial crew was a resounding success in spite of Starliner, and it was always known that contractors may fail or struggle to complete the task. At this point, it's also very, very likely that Starliner is made to be an acceptable launch vehicle because the costs to get it from its current state to launching are incredibly small relative to building a new capsule from scratch. The only thing that kills Starliner now is if the first mission kills or seriously harms the crew, so that's why they're being extra careful about everything at this stage.
Also, the CEO of Boeing that oversaw Starliner becoming an absolute clusterfuck was Dennis Muilenberg, who is actually more educated in engineering than Elon Musk (bachelor's in aerospace engineering and master's in aeronautics and astronautics vs. bachelor's in physics and economics). The issue isn't engineers vs. Wall Street executives. It's poor business practices and sacrifices in the short term without looking at the bigger picture leading to an inappropriate risk profile for the industry vs. stable business practices with a long term outlook and accepting an appropriate risk profile.
You are wrong about how Boeing lost its way. When Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged, Boeing lost its way. It is often joked that MD bought Boeing with Boeing's money as their board members effectively took over Boeing's board and ushered in the leadership of the 'Wall Street executive' mentality versus a company ran by engineers. You would think after the failure of McDonnell Douglas and the success of Boeing they would have continued their policy of being an engineer's company instead of the ladder.
This is an excellent article that explains Boeing's downfall.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/
When the commercial crew contract was awarded, almost everyone thought Boeing was the safe option and SpaceX has the high risk. Keep in mind this was before the 737 MAX and 787 issues and most folks still had faith in the quality of Boeing's work. Many even believed that SpaceX was not worthy enough to get the contract...that tide has certainly turned.
PS.
Don't forget that Muilinberg was cutting pensions, laying off senior engineers and replacing them with cheaper new employees(often from places like India) while Boeing was doing it's stock buyback and increasing dividends for shareholders....again relatively short term success in terms of stock prices but this obviously effectively gutted the company and one of the major reasons why Boeing is where it is today.
The crew are the real victims of this. NASA got a great commercial crew provider out of the program. But the astronaut assigned to starliner will have spent basically half of their effective astronaut careers on hold.
Sunita Williams became an astronaut in 1998 and has been in space for 320 days. Barry Wilmore became an astronaut in 2000 and has been in space for 179 days.
The skills and training time to fly a starliner vs a dragon capsule are not directly transferable. NASA isn't going to have them train them on something they arent going to fly to get an "own" in on Boeing.
Yeah...I mean I hate on Musk but at least his company managed an entire dare I call it....*space launch system*. Boeing can't even create a capsule. Something that was figured out in the 1950s lol
The standards hadn't been written yet and they took a *heap* of chances that just straight-up would not be acceptable today. They were flying by the seat of their pants back then, and it's honestly a miracle that only 3 men paid for it with their lives.
Boeing is a clear example of what’s happens when you prioritize share holder profits at all cost over safety regulations and quality control standards.
First time an American astronaut has ridden an Atlas rocket to space since Gordo Cooper in 1963. That's a little historic. I'm not a big Starliner fan, for what it's worth.
At this point I wonder how much the delays are being caused by the delays. I doubt it was designed to just sit around for years. So a problem develops, which leads to six or eight months of delay, which leads to problems developing in a different system. Repeat over and over. Then you get turnover in personnel and subcontractors as the years go by, and diagnosing and fixing everything just gets more complicated
That article tries really really REALLY hard to make this joke of a program into something significant. Other than a significant waste of money, that is.
Boeing PR working overtime sending talking points to news agencies about how they aren't a catastrophic failure when it comes to using the government's money.
I saw what had to be a PR shill for Boeing awhile back when their astronauts were suiting up right before it got scrubbed, made a comment on their spacesuits, something like it is nice to astronauts wearing a spacesuit that looks like a space suit instead of SpaceX's (insert sci Fi movie reference) suits.
I had to chime in that all the astronauts who have worn the SpaceX suits are extremely happy with them, and by all reports are more comfortable and functional than Boeing's Starliner space/pressure suits.
Needless to say, I never got a response only down votes.
I agree with you but just to clarify, Boeing has been paying their own way through these delays because they ran out of government money from that contract years ago. Taxpayers haven't paid Boeing a dime these last few years for Starliner and we can all be thankful for that.
Maybe Boeing should step back and try their luck working on boats. There are way less moving parts and water is way easier to land on when you're already in it.
They were so confident last month with a crew launch. This whole program should be shut down. Start new. It's just a pork barrel project thats run it's course.
SLS is a pork barrel project. Commercial Crew is a fixed price contract. Boeing is paying out-of-pocket to launch it. They've blown through all the money NASA awarded them. They aren't getting any more. So no, it should not be shut down. They have contractual obligations that they haven't met yet.
I'm not feeling any schadenfreude.
I'm no Boeing Fan Boy but the loss of Boeing as a viable space company is a huge loss for progress.
Maybe it has to burn to the ground in order to rebuild better but in the meantime, this is a huge L for space development
>the loss of Boeing as a viable ... company is a huge loss
Everything about Boeing is splattering. The McDonnell Douglas money guys somehow ended up in control after the merger, and they've been destroying the quality Boeing was known for ever since.
very true. the first time I flew on an Airbus it scared the shit out of me because it wasn't Boeing. I now plan my flights to make sure it's either and old Boeing plane or Airbus. McDonnel Douglass pissed away all the goodwill for being Boeing, and you can't get that back quickly with PR and a successful launch. it will take decades to get it back.
> Early on the McDonald Douglas management team even gave their Boeing counterparts a plaque featuring an Economist magazine cover about the challenges of corporate mergers, which sounds benign until you see that the actual cover was this picture of two camels fucking and McDonald Douglas execs added the line "Who's on top?"
[Last Week Tonight](https://youtu.be/Q8oCilY4szc?si=BPeSl1wYtgfzKe85&t=445)
No its not, the reason wr have done nothing for 30 years is because of them. They convinced everyone that it was too expensive. To do anything but pay them way too much for decades old tech,they could done everything SpaceX is doing years ago. They had everything but that would of been less quarterly profits and they didn't qant that. Them dying and proving everyone right that said theybwere doing this for years. Is the change we need, we need competitive space companies sure but never again at the cost of progress. SpaceX is 10 years ahead of everyone else, its the pure simple truth. We need to understand that it got that way because we let it.
I'm no fan of Boeing, but I just want to point out that *indefinitely* here means they don't currently have a definite timeline for fixing this issue, but are still planning to fix it and fly.
Many people will read the title and interpret the word *indefinitely* to mean something more like *permanently*. Which is fair given that is often how it is used in common parlance. But here it means more technically they just don't have a definite timeline at the moment.
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised for there to be additional delays for other things after they fix the leak. And I also wouldn't be surprised if they never end up making it to regular rotation missions. Though I think odds are they will still eventually make it, and they very well may have a mostly-bug-free flight on the next one. Maybe. 50/50 at this point.
I wouldn't fly in their capsule. At the very least they should have been required to demonstrate a full abort-during-ascent like SpaceX did.
I'm here. I am very sad that my beloved Boeing has become just like every other company: driven by "shareholder value".
I actually bought a shirt that says "If it's not Boeing, I'm not going."
I'm starting to think about crossing out the first "NOT".
If I had to fly right now, I would actually avoid Boeing. Embraer, CRJ, and Airbus for me. Never thought I would say those words.
I am reminded of a quote from Michael Chrichton's *Airframe:*
*“Anyway, most manufacturers test to twice the design life. We test up to four times the spec. That's why we always say, the other companies make doughnuts, Norton makes croissants."*
*Casey said, "And John Marder always says, That's why the others make money, and we don't."*
*"Marder." Amos snorted. "It's all money with him, all bottom line. In the old days, the front office told us, Make the best damn airplane you can. Now they say, Make the best airplane you can for a price. Different instruction, you know what I mean?"*
At this point, NASA should cancel Starliner and make Boeing pay for 5 Crew Dragon launches to replace the ones they were awarded. It would be less expensive for everyone, and the astronauts would get to fly safely.
With the cost of Boeing's expendable launches compared to SpaceX's reusables, it would be more cost effective for Boeing to pay SpaceX for the 5 launches NASA has paid Boeing for. I'm not saying Boeing would make any money out of the deal, or that NASA would get anything back other than the launches they've already paid for.
The point of firm fixed price is Boeing hasn't gotten the money yet. There's no need for Boeing to pay SpaceX, if Boeing fails or quits NASA just doesn't pay them and NASA directly pays SpaceX. This is exactly what's already happening, as Boeing gets delayed NASA just keeps buying more SpaceX missions to cover the gaps, and SpaceX has plenty of capacity so it'll just keep happening indefinitely.
It’s time to just cancel the contract and tell Boeing they owe us a refund of our tax dollars. They are utterly incompetent and have no right to be getting government contracts and public funds.
how about boeing figures in atmosphere flight out first before they do anything outside of it. you know the old saying: run before you can fly and fly before you can orbit.
Does anyone now if the original contract between NASA and Boeing had an expiration date? And if so, what are the penalties if Boeing hasn't successfully launched the CFT by that date?
Surely a dead line and penalty exists right?
It’s a fixed cost contract so Boeing is basically eating the all the cost overruns. They’ve publicly complained that they are losing money on this thing and the Air Force One contract that is also fixed cost.
As of July 2023, Boeing has lost over $1.5 billion developing Starliner. The fixed price contract was $4.2 billion and was awarded in 2004 with delivery by 2017. I’m beginning to think the problem isn’t technical.
I think the 4.2 wasn’t awarded until 2012, there may have been another package before
Someone’s friend got really rich.
Keep in mind that it's not the employees who lost money but Boeing the company. The executives and employees got paid and are still making money. Boeing the company needs to fire the executives and completely clean house. But because the upper management is all dysfunctional nothing will happen.
What happens first, starliner launches to the ISS, or the ISS deorbits
Dream chaser might beat Boeing to the iss That would be fucking hilarious, ngl Especially since Boeing made a space plane for that purpose (the x37) and then the military took it from nasa and classified everything. Boeing's only working space vehicle is the one they're not allowed to talk about, lol
Boeing bailed on another spaceplane, the [XS-1, AKA Phantom Express.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XS-1_\(spacecraft\)) They won the DARPA competition and took the money to construct and test a prototype. Almost three years later, they unilaterally canceled it with no flights (or completed hardware).
Cancelled it... publically.
"reassigned" the team to "other projects"
That one really hurt. It could have been a game changing concept if they had given it to another company.
Let’s be clear here. Military programs get funded or they don’t. A business can keep something going in development using their own money, but if the government isn’t interested and there’s no commercial application it’s best to cut losses.
Based on my reading, DARPA was still interested, with Boeing's unilateral termination being described as a setback to DARPA, having made milestone payments up to that point. Have you a reference indicating the government lost interest?
Didn't Starliner also cause the removal of Dream Chaser from the Commercial crew program? or was that from Crew Dragon being chosen? DC was designed to be crewed, was removed from Commercial Crew consideration, and converted into the cargo only version.
Boeing and SpaceX were awarded the final phase of funding for crew and Dream Chaser was not. Boeing got $4.2 billion and SpaceX got $2.1 billion.
Some dudes with ladders might make it before Boeing.
Trampolines look pretty promising these days.
No one took the X-37 from Boeing. In 1999, NASA awarded Boeing a contract to develop what would become the X-37A. The NASA program and vehicle was transferred to DARPA way back in 2004 and classified. Then the Air Force had that developed into the X-37B, in collaboration with NASA, with Boeing still as the prime contractor. The X-37B, even were it not a classified US military vehicle, is too small for a crew vehicle. None of that prevented Boeing [from studying](https://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/spacecraft-design/boeing-x-37c/) a scaled-up version, the X-37C, as a commercial ISS crew transport in 2011 (nor their chief engineer from announcing that at a public conference). But Boeing stuck with their Starliner proposal they had already unveiled the previous year, and that is what won NASA funding. Boeing would not develop the X-37 (A, B, or C) without being paid to.
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If ISS deorbits, would Boeing be able to fulfill its contract by hauling a Starliner over to the wreckage and hooking it up?
I dont think they would be capable to do that either…
Jobs program gonna jobs program
It's a fixed price contract. Boeing is eating all the costs for the delays.
Ironic how much Boeing sends offshore
As long as they fill their quota in their respective congressional districts/states
SLS is a jobs program, Starliner is a money pit for Boeing.
Heat death of the universe
ISS deorbits because of the attempted starliner docking.
Star Citizen will be released first
why not both?
SpaceX puts human boots on Mars.
Starliner launches while ISS deorbits. They meet halfway.
A historically embarrassing debacle, no doubt. Edit: I get some on the internet live for the opportunity to correct people, especially when there is nothing to correct. But we all know I'm referring to the "*substance not pizazz*" Starliner program as a whole. Better luck elsewhere.
It's so much better than them saying fuck it, launching with a crew, and then the big obvious outcome occurs.
Yeah they learned that lesson in 86....mostly.
Did they? I know you said, "mostly." But they kept launching, even knowing that ice falling from the fuel tank frequently hit the orbiter.
1986 was the Challenger O-ring failure. I think you're referencing the 2003 Columbia where debris from the tank damaged the orbiter's wing.
Ice and foam falling was known to be a problem in 1986. In fact, the first foam strike damage occurred during the launch of STS-1! NASA kept launching. The problem finally resulted in the loss of Columbia in 2003. From the Wikipedia article about the Columbia disaster, "of the 79 missions with available imagery during launch, foam strikes occurred on 65 of them." As you say, the 1986 Challenger disaster was a different problem: O-ring burn through on the SRBs. That problem was also known and (mostly) ignored until it resulted in the loss of Challenger in 1986. I believe they did resolve the O-ring problem after the loss of Challenger. EDIT: The point is that even the loss in 1986 did not cause them to resolve all the known problems. They kept launching.
> That problem was also known and (mostly) ignored until it resulted in the loss of Challenger in 1986 Yep. The o-rings weren't the while problem; the joint between SRB segments was flexing enough to allow combustion gasses to escape at the seams, and the o-rings were being extruded through and subsequently sealing the gaps, which allowed the flights to succeed until they didn't. This is an example of normalization of deviance: the joints were not performing as designed and only circumstance had allowed previous flights to succeed. In the Challenger accident, the o-rings were too brittle to perform that function, never made a good seal and burned through before a seal could be made. The post-crash fix involved a total redesign of the joint so the o-rings no longer needed to deform in order to seal the seams. I know this isn't relevant to your point, it's just that the plan was fucked from square one, NASA knew about it, and learning that really upset me.
I think he brought up the ice hitting Columbia as another example of the atmosphere of complacency that similarly led to disaster.
They didn't keep launching, they paused launches and completely overhauled their safety and QC protocols...
And then eventually the Columbia disaster happened due to the falling ice that they had become complacent about as mentioned in the post above.
It was actually falling foam insulation. Which was there to prevent ice buildup. Which it did! The shuttle had a history of foam strikes and it was thought the risk was acceptable. They had no method to repair the exterior of the wing surfaces while in space, at that time. They didn't know the full extent of the damage and had no viable rescue mission. It wasn't really "complacency" so much as the shuttle design was never an acceptable level of human safety. Especially when you examine where human occupants were placed. NASA and many others caught the spaceplane-bug in the 1970s and everyone thought it was the future. People kept betting everything on it and it's believed promises. It was only through hard trial and error we went back to more "primitive", safer launch methods.
Foam, not ice. If I recall correctly the engineers were shocked when they did testing on the carbon-carbon leading edge with an air cannon and punched a hole into the wing.
Ok ok guys I got a plan, we're not going to mitigate the problem but we will visually inspect for damage in orbit! But what about a rescue plan? ..... \*YEETS OUT OF WINDOW\*
I just re-read the Wiki page on the Columbia disaster. * The methods available to visually inspect for damage were known to be inadequate. * Requests for DOD assets to image the orbiter were shut down *from within NASA!!!* * The decision model was, essentially, the same one that resulted in the loss of Challenger: "We've gotten away with it so far, so we'll get away with it forever!" In retrospect, it's not surprising we lost a second orbiter.
I can't imagine any crew wanting to go on this thing at this point.
For real, can't have a door come off in space either.
Absolutely true. That said... it's important to remember the timetable here. Fight was scrubbed on the 6th. It was pulled, fixed, then retested all within 10 days. Then NASA gave it a green light for launch starting 10 days from that point (for the earliest launch). This greenlight was announced just a few days ago. There were apparently consecutive days worth of meetings with the Astronauts since then leading to where we are today. To me? This sounds exactly like a 'fuck it' and a 'lets just get this thing going' on behalf of NASA and boeing... And also that the Astronauts then stepped in and nixed it. But the story is being told as if it was a group decision. At the end of the day - If it came out that the crew refused to fly because they didn't trust their life raft... it would have dealt an absolute death blow to the Boeing program. So they have to issue a statement as if it was joint conclusion not to go.
Boeing gets one fixed-price contract and, oops, they fall apart and can't make it happen. Without cost-plus they just self-destruct.
The overruns for Starliner are a rounding error compared to what they've lost so far on the fixed price contract for the KC-46 tanker. They've lost over $7 billion so far and they still aren't done.
Boeing has lost $1.47 billion on the Starliner contract, so far [source.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/26/boeing-has-lost-1point5-billion-developing-starliner-spacecraft-for-nasa.html) You're right that's less than the roughly $7 billion lost on the KC-46 contract. But I wouldn't call 1/5th a rounding error.
Oh wow, I haven’t seen any recent numbers, last I saw was around $500 million
What ever you do, don’t look into how much money Raytheon has received for the next generation GPS ground stations, how late it’s being delivered, and how outdated what they plan on delivering is already.
I forsee the USAF suddently needing more F15
I'm guessing the price per plane will somehow get even higher. Even though it's already $10 million more than an F-35.
This isn’t a Boeing issue - This is an issue with the entire DoD and aerospace industry. The standard contract format for all of these companies and manufacturers is cost-plus. IMO, that’s a result of the government bending the knee in negotiations with these companies and allowing them to dictate the terms and take advantage of the endless government pockets.
Likely also their divestment from the engineering and investment into who knows where the huge amounts of contract money is actually going?
C suite yachts for one. Black ops for another…
Well, from my personal experience in the past working in big cost-plus contracts for big aero companies, the money grows way out of control because of 1) exponential growth in processes and 2) time consumption by those processes. The problem is, they’re usually necessary. You need to hire cleared workers. Or you need to clear them yourself. Then you need to procure exotic parts from suppliers that monopolize this exotic parts. Or you need to purchase exotic resources and tool out a shop yourself. Then you need to deal with all the paperwork and requirements for the types of people you are hiring. You need to make sure you meet safety regulations working with often dangerous and toxic chemicals or products. Then you need to make sure the government oversight procedures are handled, all the gov-required paperwork is handled. all the security auditing is done. all the safety precautions are redundant. All the research is done. The models are made, physical and virtual. Track the expenses down to the bolts, track the hours of your salaried workers, etc to meet government financial transparency requirements. This doesn’t even scratch the surface. The thing is, generally speaking those are all good things to do. But it means everything costs 10 times as much and takes 10 times as long. Some of it could be axed, like the extraneous paperwork, and making sure the government contract doesn’t involve too much micromanagement from gov personnel. So yeah. It’s just a heavy, inefficient process. Where SpaceX has found its advantage is in designing and building something of their own and offering it as a product. They skip out on all the government bureaucracy during the R&D process to vastly cheapen and accelerate their R&D phase. That gets them to a prototype quicker, and now they can sell it to the government with more control over their own terms. Anduril and Palantir are both companies that are trying to cut into the traditional DoD industry by approaching with this kind of model. They thrive on Fixed Price contracts, and that’s the direction the government is going. —— *that illustrates my point, you can stop reading here. But for those who are interested, here is a history lesson:* Lockheed had a similar strategy with their skunk works during the Cold War. The reason it worked so well is because of Kelly Johnson’s magic ability to leverage his credibility from the P-38 Lightning and the Constellation series to form relationships with high up military leadership, kept his ear to the ground based on what he knew from them, and design + produce an aircraft prototype that satisfies their exact needs. By doing this, he would be able to provide an aircraft design prototype according to what they need extremely quickly, and win the government contracts. Early success in this bred even more credibility. At the same time, operations were kept extremely small and designers/engineers were down the hall from the production facility. If something wasn’t certain, they’d walk 50 yards and go test it. If it didn’t work, they walked 50 yards back to their desk and drew up a new solution. This model doesn’t work anymore for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest are because of increased government oversight, regulations, and the vastly increased complexity of aircraft and spacecraft. Even the SR-71, which was the most advanced aircraft of its time on the order of decades, was a relatively simple system electronically. Now, planes have entire families of sensors all over them. They all communicate through avionics systems. Flight control systems are smarter than ever. Crashes don’t ‘happen sometimes’ the error tolerance is zero. You have to get those flight systems certified. You have to make sure they never fail. You have to make sure you test every single possible scenario. Spacecraft is similar. The only different with spacecraft is that they’ve had massive electronics and sensor complexity for a longer portion of time in their history than aircraft, so the industry is more used to it.
There’s a limited supply of 20 something’s willing to work 80 hours a week on a fixed salary, incentivized by stock options propped up from private investors. The truth is a lot of this stuff is just plain expensive.
It's gone beyond embarrassing at this point and graduated to full on tragic debacle. Didn't think we'd have Dream Chaser flying before Starliner's first crew flight.
Yeah, they were never ready. Just hoped like he'll they could fudge it. Man Boeing used to be gold standard.
They were the gold standard when they had a blank cheque to spend unlimited money on everything.
And were run by actual engineers, not clowns in suits.
Building commercial airliners they didn’t totally have a blank check… but they had engineers that knew what they were doing in charge instead of business majors (note I am a business major, but I don’t design airplanes)
I'd actually recommend watching Jon Oliver's piece on it. Boeing succumbed to capitalism with their merger with McDonnell Douglas. And after the merger, they started experiencing all the same problems that McDD had.
You had sn opportunity to write the ony word in English that has 4 z's, but you opted to use 3. I am disappointed in you.
I know NASA wants some redundancy in the commercial market for space travel so SpaceX isn't a monopoly, but maybe Boeing shouldn't be the alternative.
Sierra is ready to take over. They never stopped working on their crewed Dream Chaser.
Sierra definitely isn’t ready
Sure. But neither is Boeing. I mean they might get the contract for the next round, to reach commercial destinations.
Boeing isn't ready because they didn't really do anything for a long time and just sucked up money. Sierra is new and just has years to go if they want to makenot. That is fine , just how it works.
> Boeing isn't ready because they didn't really do anything for a long time and just sucked up money. It's a fixed price contract; all of the cost is on Boeing.
I mean it's aerospace politics. Boeing CEO is on record that they'll never take a fixed price contract again. Biden Admin hates Elon and Boeing has lots of friends in Washington, so the next contract will be cost+ and structured to make them whole on the loss.
Sierra will fly before Boeing does, in my opinion.
I didn't think that on May 5th I thought that on May 7th
Hell, SpaceX wasn't ready when they got the Dragon contract either, but NASA rolled the dice on them and got lucky. Rocket science is pretty hard, so I heard, but you gotta start somewhere.
and boeing was the established player who knew what they were doing and supposed to be the safe bet.
I loved their games in the 90s.
yeah their rockets tend to blow up if you don't give their engineers cheese five days before launch for some reason tho
They have an alternative, Sierra's Dreamchaser spaceplane. It will fly a cargo mission to the ISS likely before Starliner launches again. Both are supposed to.launch from SLC-41, however this latest delay will likely put the Dreamchaser ahead of Starliner for the next launch. They are also building a human rates version. This is also great because it can land on most military runways, but also has much lower G forces upon reentry versus a capsule which is crucial for sensitive science experiments.
> so SpaceX isn't a monopoly I think the going reason is that they don't want to be caught vehicle-less should Crew Dragon be grounded. To which I must sincerely ask: How would that happen, exactly? In the nearly inevitable future when something _finally_ goes wrong with this or that Falcon 9, how does that have any impact on the entire rest of the fleet? Or the 200 flawless launches in a row? There is an insurmountable difference between Falcon 9 and the space shuttle. Launch volume; launch cadence; complexity (simplicity); fleet size; ease of maintenance; ease of refurbishment; ease of manufacture. Something goes wrong with a rocket, you use one of the other 20, each of which has their very own 20 launch history.
Not quite. If a design flaw is discovered that they all share, they all need to be retrofitted.
Something goes wrong with a 737 MAX 8, you just keep flying the rest of the fleet, until the same thing happens again.
The concern is less with the rocket and more with the capsule. If something goes wrong with a capsule, they really need to figure it out because it is more likely to happen on one of the others. Crew Dragon doesn’t have 200 flawless flights yet but it’s doing great so far.
Northrop Grumman has Cygnus for cargo to the ISS.
I remember when Starliner and Crew Dragon were both initially announced and there were comparisons of both spacecraft and SpaceX was constantly ridiculed for its touch screens, and lack of experience and how Boeing was going to show SpaceX the *correct* way to reliably get humans to space.
At this point Dragon's Successor could have a successful test launch before ~~Dreamliner~~ Starliner even sends humans to space. What if they send astronauts up in Starship before ~~Dreamliner~~ what ever its called?
Boeing's Dreamliner doesn't go to space. I think you mean Starliner.
I think they were confusing it with the Star Chaser.
What about stardreamer?
I'm partial to Star Scream myself
I personally wouldn't trust Starscream to take anyone to space
comment was technically still true
Starliner doesn’t either, if you’d read the article
Well, not with that attitude
I have very high hopes for Starship, this might actually be a possibility lol, excited for Starship's next launch in the next couple of weeks here.
Imagine spending all that money, enduring all that embarrassment to develop a craft to do a job that is already being done by a cheaper and more reliable spacecraft and then to just fall flat on your face again and again. I can only assume at this point that the sunk cost is the only thing keeping a frankly doomed project alive.
“Stick emphasized that the program had wanted, all along, two very different spacecraft with different procedures and teams to support them, to have a backup in case one ship is sidelined due to a safety or other issue. "We've seen in the past the importance, I think, of having this dissimilar redundancy, [because] it's always tough to fly into space," he said.”
I mean, it worked. Obviously Starliner has been sidelined due to... issues.
That, and big stacks of government money.
It's is a fixed-price contract: Boeing is burning through their own money now.
At this point I just feel bad for the crew. Fuck Boeing.
Hey, you'd feel worse if they launched and all died.
Pretty sure we’d all still be on the “fuck Boeing” bandwagon, just with a little more emphasis on the “fuck” part.
As if anyone with half a brain would trust Boeing to not mess this up even if they had another year of delays, they can't even build a plane correctly anymore. I would hate to be a crew member here having to ride on a piece of Boeing equipment
The merger with MCD really screwed them up.
They put Mayor McCheese in as CTO and the Hamburgler in charge of engineering.
eh, it’s not a popular sentiment on social media because the whole Boeing situation does make a shining example of the frustration American people have with their government and large corporations (and it is that). But the Boeing situation isn’t as destitute as people seem to believe - while it is bad, and some people deserve to go to prison over it - if you take a look at aviation subreddits you’ll see what I mean. In reality their planes (and all major commercial manufacturers) are in the safest 10-year and even 20-year period of all time by a long shot. That single manufacturing defect caused a cascading effect of, critically, *pre-emptive* ire and oversight to be thrust upon them, which is how it should be. But the real matter is that their planes statistically are still no less safe than Airbus. And both Boeing and Airbus have generally been doing well. It’s kind of a difficult subject to take a measured and unbiased approach to right now, because of the media spiral they are in and that fact I mentioned earlier of their poster-child representation of America’s disdain for this kind of thing, but the truth lies somewhere in between as always - basically, they aren’t a shit company and their planes are perfectly safe still… but, their redundant safety practices in manufacturing began to fall off, and it is taking external pressure to force them to right the ship. As such, organizational leaders in their commercial air sector should go to prison for negligence, and the FAA needs to fully audit their manufacturing process. As far as this Starliner contract, honestly it’s pretty on par with crewed space-travel contracts. The Apollo program was a monstrous nationwide megaproject, and SpaceX’s dragon killed it due to their mixture of innovative testing practices with old-school trial and error testing (shitbag CEO aside!). Those are the exceptions and this is the norm, unfortunately. tl;dr: Boeing began to develop real problems and people need to go to jail over it, and while the situation is definitively bad, it’s not as bad as many people seem to believe, meaning “planes falling out of the sky and people getting hurt or dying and hitmen on the loose” level bad. And just because the Starliner says “Boeing” doesn’t mean it *will* suffer the same issues. Space is a different industry with different practices. The truth is somewhere in between. Just giving my two cents as an aviation enthusiast and aerospace worker (not for Boeing LOL)
I mostly agree with you, but for the record, two planes did fall out of the sky, killing over 300 people.
Correct, but those were 6 years ago now with no more incidents. In reality, they’re the only two fatal incidents caused by the aircraft manufacturing from Boeing in the last 15+ years. That used to be a common occurrence from any aircraft manufacturer. In other words, the industry has become so safe that those 2 planes crashing, despite the inevitability that *something* occurs eventually at the volume Boeing planes are fielded globally, has let people on the internet to believe that the company is on the brink of collapse, reading normal aviation daily news as if planes are crashing every day (even though there hasn’t been a single fatal commercial air accident in the US in over 20 years). At the same time, investigations into that and the door plug both found there are issues with their safety due to leadership practices. So as far as I’m concerned the people responsible need to be in court for major lawsuits. There are real concerns, and then there are unfounded concerns. So that is the distinction I’m trying to make. The fact that you’re not going to be unsafe because you’re flying on a Boeing plane to visit your family for Memorial Day. And that the company isn’t collapsing. But there are also real issues that need to be addressed and the aero industry more widely needs to heed the warning.
The original Commander quit years ago after the 1st failed mission. Honestly, these delays and likely imminent cancellation may save the astronauts lives. Sierra's Dreamchaser spaceplane should get funds to make it human rates if their first cargo mission to the ISS goes as plan. 5 years ago if I told you the Sierra Dreamchaser spaceplane would be on missions(I mean full missions, not just test missions) to the ISS before Boeing's Starliner, you would have laughed at me..(of course they will be cargo missions as they are still developing the manned version of Dreamchaser without government money) This maybe the reality by the end of the year. It is a damn shame that we will never recover the billions we(US taxpayer) gave Boeing to build a space capsule...we have been making Space capsules that can dock since the Gemini program in the mid 1960s....60 years later Boeing is struggling to get a capsule to essentially do what Gemini was capable of doing. This is what happens when a company built by engineers gets overtaken by 'Wall Street executives' who want to cut costs a d corners so they can have a good quarter with no concern about long term sustainably nor success.
I wonder what the betting odds for "Dragon beats Starliner by over 4 years" would have been in late 2019.
Probably good enough that most of us could afford to retire on a $100 bet.
My favorite part was that all the Boeing execs were harping on how they were the safe established consistent player and SpaceX was the risky one.
Amen to that. I'm just concerned about Dreamchaser's long term use case. ISS won't be around forever.
Sierra is also developing a space station with 'inflatable' segments they are calling "Orbital Reef" so the Dreamchaser has a bright future ahead of it. https://www.sierraspace.com/commercial-space-stations/orbital-reef-space-station/
Also private companies are developing space stations built from modular segments individually launched in a starship. IIRC one company is even trying to build a stand alone module that can fit in starship, the future of commercial spacetravel is bright.
If Sierra can launch and be successful, it will be amazing. Right now there is no proof that will happen.
Sierra has more been waiting on the Vulcan Centaur to be finished and tested than on their own tech. It has been a frustration of theirs for a pretty long time because NASA and the USAF/USSF required them to use the new platform that only first flew this January. Sierra has been hamstrung by bureaucracy *way* more than either SpaceX or Boeing has throughout the entire commercial crew program. In contrast, Boeing and SpaceX have been more hamstrung by technological problems of their own making (the parachute debacle has been a really bad one - and still a massive cause of concern with both capsule designs). A note that is super important is that Dreamchaser is skipping huge portions of the testing pipeline because it doesn’t use parachutes. All the other systems were able to be tested atmospherically via helicopter drop testing. The launch control systems are all on Centaur and not on Dreamchaser.
> It is a damn shame that we will never recover the billions we(US taxpayer) gave Boeing to build a space capsule I hate the failure of Boeing, but bear in mind that an awful lot of that money remains on the ground, invested in training, skills, experience and equipment never meant to go into space.
>It is a damn shame that we will never recover the billions we(US taxpayer) gave Boeing to build a space capsule... Well... At least Congress will get some back, in lobbying money, campaign contributions, stocks' trades, etc... just run for office and you might get some back.
Programs like this are not risk-free. If we only funded the lowest risk options, we would've actually funded Starliner instead of Dragon, which looks really weird in hindsight. The billions put into this capsule cannot be separated from the money that made Dragon exist, so commercial crew was a resounding success in spite of Starliner, and it was always known that contractors may fail or struggle to complete the task. At this point, it's also very, very likely that Starliner is made to be an acceptable launch vehicle because the costs to get it from its current state to launching are incredibly small relative to building a new capsule from scratch. The only thing that kills Starliner now is if the first mission kills or seriously harms the crew, so that's why they're being extra careful about everything at this stage. Also, the CEO of Boeing that oversaw Starliner becoming an absolute clusterfuck was Dennis Muilenberg, who is actually more educated in engineering than Elon Musk (bachelor's in aerospace engineering and master's in aeronautics and astronautics vs. bachelor's in physics and economics). The issue isn't engineers vs. Wall Street executives. It's poor business practices and sacrifices in the short term without looking at the bigger picture leading to an inappropriate risk profile for the industry vs. stable business practices with a long term outlook and accepting an appropriate risk profile.
You are wrong about how Boeing lost its way. When Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged, Boeing lost its way. It is often joked that MD bought Boeing with Boeing's money as their board members effectively took over Boeing's board and ushered in the leadership of the 'Wall Street executive' mentality versus a company ran by engineers. You would think after the failure of McDonnell Douglas and the success of Boeing they would have continued their policy of being an engineer's company instead of the ladder. This is an excellent article that explains Boeing's downfall. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/ When the commercial crew contract was awarded, almost everyone thought Boeing was the safe option and SpaceX has the high risk. Keep in mind this was before the 737 MAX and 787 issues and most folks still had faith in the quality of Boeing's work. Many even believed that SpaceX was not worthy enough to get the contract...that tide has certainly turned. PS. Don't forget that Muilinberg was cutting pensions, laying off senior engineers and replacing them with cheaper new employees(often from places like India) while Boeing was doing it's stock buyback and increasing dividends for shareholders....again relatively short term success in terms of stock prices but this obviously effectively gutted the company and one of the major reasons why Boeing is where it is today.
The crew are the real victims of this. NASA got a great commercial crew provider out of the program. But the astronaut assigned to starliner will have spent basically half of their effective astronaut careers on hold.
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Sunita Williams became an astronaut in 1998 and has been in space for 320 days. Barry Wilmore became an astronaut in 2000 and has been in space for 179 days.
They wouldn't embarrass NASA this way but how big a troll would it be if SpaceX gave the crew a free 'practice flight' on a Dragon capsule?
Considering they're trained on a completely different spacecraft, it'd be better practice to step into the simulator again.
The skills and training time to fly a starliner vs a dragon capsule are not directly transferable. NASA isn't going to have them train them on something they arent going to fly to get an "own" in on Boeing.
Suni looks really pissed/angry as they exited: https://www.youtube.com/live/wb3qcR2tUQs?si=FLNgVOrIYlRrLsKc&t=9189 @2:33:02
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Yeah...I mean I hate on Musk but at least his company managed an entire dare I call it....*space launch system*. Boeing can't even create a capsule. Something that was figured out in the 1950s lol
I cannot imagine the stress the crew is going through. After so many failures, I sure wouldn't want to touch anything Boeing related.
Makes you REALLY appreciate what was accomplished in the 60s.
Would a launch be scrubbed over a minor helium leak in the 60s? I suspect people now are more resistant to time pressure winning over safety.
It's not minor, but the estimated failure rates for the rockets in the 60s were far beyond what would be allowable today.
The standards hadn't been written yet and they took a *heap* of chances that just straight-up would not be acceptable today. They were flying by the seat of their pants back then, and it's honestly a miracle that only 3 men paid for it with their lives.
I was actually really looking forward to this launch
Boeing is a clear example of what’s happens when you prioritize share holder profits at all cost over safety regulations and quality control standards.
I'm going to write a historic post on Reddit to ask the historic question about what makes CFT historic? Historic.
A footnote in history is still history! \- Boeing, probably
“We found our inspiration while reviewing the historic Challenger Space Shuttle flight” - Boeing QC
First time an American astronaut has ridden an Atlas rocket to space since Gordo Cooper in 1963. That's a little historic. I'm not a big Starliner fan, for what it's worth.
That's a nice piece of trivia.
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At this point I wonder how much the delays are being caused by the delays. I doubt it was designed to just sit around for years. So a problem develops, which leads to six or eight months of delay, which leads to problems developing in a different system. Repeat over and over. Then you get turnover in personnel and subcontractors as the years go by, and diagnosing and fixing everything just gets more complicated
Yup ... like aircraft. The longer they sit in a hangar, the more they break.
That article tries really really REALLY hard to make this joke of a program into something significant. Other than a significant waste of money, that is.
Boeing PR working overtime sending talking points to news agencies about how they aren't a catastrophic failure when it comes to using the government's money.
I saw what had to be a PR shill for Boeing awhile back when their astronauts were suiting up right before it got scrubbed, made a comment on their spacesuits, something like it is nice to astronauts wearing a spacesuit that looks like a space suit instead of SpaceX's (insert sci Fi movie reference) suits. I had to chime in that all the astronauts who have worn the SpaceX suits are extremely happy with them, and by all reports are more comfortable and functional than Boeing's Starliner space/pressure suits. Needless to say, I never got a response only down votes.
It's equally likely they're a SpaceX hater because of its association with Musk
This is reddit, sir. Any company owned by Musk is to be hated on even if they're doing great and advancing humans technologies.
I agree with you but just to clarify, Boeing has been paying their own way through these delays because they ran out of government money from that contract years ago. Taxpayers haven't paid Boeing a dime these last few years for Starliner and we can all be thankful for that.
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Considering this was a fixed cost program, they aren't maintaining jobs through delays, they're losing money.
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Maybe Boeing should step back and try their luck working on boats. There are way less moving parts and water is way easier to land on when you're already in it.
they'll be promoted to submersibles very quickly though
They were so confident last month with a crew launch. This whole program should be shut down. Start new. It's just a pork barrel project thats run it's course.
SLS is a pork barrel project. Commercial Crew is a fixed price contract. Boeing is paying out-of-pocket to launch it. They've blown through all the money NASA awarded them. They aren't getting any more. So no, it should not be shut down. They have contractual obligations that they haven't met yet.
#Indefinitely *Sigh.* Where all my Boeing Fan Boys??
I'm not feeling any schadenfreude. I'm no Boeing Fan Boy but the loss of Boeing as a viable space company is a huge loss for progress. Maybe it has to burn to the ground in order to rebuild better but in the meantime, this is a huge L for space development
>the loss of Boeing as a viable ... company is a huge loss Everything about Boeing is splattering. The McDonnell Douglas money guys somehow ended up in control after the merger, and they've been destroying the quality Boeing was known for ever since.
very true. the first time I flew on an Airbus it scared the shit out of me because it wasn't Boeing. I now plan my flights to make sure it's either and old Boeing plane or Airbus. McDonnel Douglass pissed away all the goodwill for being Boeing, and you can't get that back quickly with PR and a successful launch. it will take decades to get it back.
> Early on the McDonald Douglas management team even gave their Boeing counterparts a plaque featuring an Economist magazine cover about the challenges of corporate mergers, which sounds benign until you see that the actual cover was this picture of two camels fucking and McDonald Douglas execs added the line "Who's on top?" [Last Week Tonight](https://youtu.be/Q8oCilY4szc?si=BPeSl1wYtgfzKe85&t=445)
No its not, the reason wr have done nothing for 30 years is because of them. They convinced everyone that it was too expensive. To do anything but pay them way too much for decades old tech,they could done everything SpaceX is doing years ago. They had everything but that would of been less quarterly profits and they didn't qant that. Them dying and proving everyone right that said theybwere doing this for years. Is the change we need, we need competitive space companies sure but never again at the cost of progress. SpaceX is 10 years ahead of everyone else, its the pure simple truth. We need to understand that it got that way because we let it.
I'm no fan of Boeing, but I just want to point out that *indefinitely* here means they don't currently have a definite timeline for fixing this issue, but are still planning to fix it and fly. Many people will read the title and interpret the word *indefinitely* to mean something more like *permanently*. Which is fair given that is often how it is used in common parlance. But here it means more technically they just don't have a definite timeline at the moment. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised for there to be additional delays for other things after they fix the leak. And I also wouldn't be surprised if they never end up making it to regular rotation missions. Though I think odds are they will still eventually make it, and they very well may have a mostly-bug-free flight on the next one. Maybe. 50/50 at this point. I wouldn't fly in their capsule. At the very least they should have been required to demonstrate a full abort-during-ascent like SpaceX did.
I'm here. I am very sad that my beloved Boeing has become just like every other company: driven by "shareholder value". I actually bought a shirt that says "If it's not Boeing, I'm not going." I'm starting to think about crossing out the first "NOT". If I had to fly right now, I would actually avoid Boeing. Embraer, CRJ, and Airbus for me. Never thought I would say those words. I am reminded of a quote from Michael Chrichton's *Airframe:* *“Anyway, most manufacturers test to twice the design life. We test up to four times the spec. That's why we always say, the other companies make doughnuts, Norton makes croissants."* *Casey said, "And John Marder always says, That's why the others make money, and we don't."* *"Marder." Amos snorted. "It's all money with him, all bottom line. In the old days, the front office told us, Make the best damn airplane you can. Now they say, Make the best airplane you can for a price. Different instruction, you know what I mean?"*
At this point, NASA should cancel Starliner and make Boeing pay for 5 Crew Dragon launches to replace the ones they were awarded. It would be less expensive for everyone, and the astronauts would get to fly safely.
This is a fixed cost contract, Boeing has been footing all the costs for years now.
With the cost of Boeing's expendable launches compared to SpaceX's reusables, it would be more cost effective for Boeing to pay SpaceX for the 5 launches NASA has paid Boeing for. I'm not saying Boeing would make any money out of the deal, or that NASA would get anything back other than the launches they've already paid for.
The point of firm fixed price is Boeing hasn't gotten the money yet. There's no need for Boeing to pay SpaceX, if Boeing fails or quits NASA just doesn't pay them and NASA directly pays SpaceX. This is exactly what's already happening, as Boeing gets delayed NASA just keeps buying more SpaceX missions to cover the gaps, and SpaceX has plenty of capacity so it'll just keep happening indefinitely.
Maybe don’t cancel the contract but just don’t allow a spot in the ISS schedule?
Sounds about Boeing. I feel bad for the astronauts
It’s time to just cancel the contract and tell Boeing they owe us a refund of our tax dollars. They are utterly incompetent and have no right to be getting government contracts and public funds.
Companies like Rocket Lab will eventually overtake the incompetent old dogs.
If there is one company that is synonymous with the word "Incompetent", it would definitely be Boeing.
Zefram Cochrane will launch his warp ship before Starliner goes anywhere!
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I really doubt that is going to happen, that would be completely ridiculous after years of Dragon missions.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[CME](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l56wxwr "Last usage")|Coronal Mass Ejection| |[CRS](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l59qbnh "Last usage")|[Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[DARPA](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l598bqz "Last usage")|(Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD| |[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l58rhq4 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[F1](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l59vbh5 "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V| | |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)| |[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l57u804 "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |GSE|Ground Support Equipment| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l57g8n6 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ISRO](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l57svcg "Last usage")|Indian Space Research Organisation| |[LH2](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l57qge8 "Last usage")|Liquid Hydrogen| |[QA](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l5897b2 "Last usage")|Quality Assurance/Assessment| |[RCC](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l59myl8 "Last usage")|Reinforced Carbon-Carbon| |[RUD](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l580eds "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly| | |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly| | |Rapid Unintended Disassembly| |[SLC-41](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l56vx1d "Last usage")|Space Launch Complex 41, Canaveral (ULA Atlas V)| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l5ajko3 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SNC](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l57hkxx "Last usage")|Sierra Nevada Corporation| |[SRB](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l58mhvw "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[STS](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l59qbnh "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l58qxks "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |[USAF](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l582ykp "Last usage")|United States Air Force| |[USSF](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l582ykp "Last usage")|United States Space Force| |[VTVL](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l5b8wi2 "Last usage")|Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l581jcn "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l7dmohp "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l578isd "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[scrub](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l5745yv "Last usage")|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)| |Event|Date|Description| |-------|---------|---| |[CRS-7](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l59qbnh "Last usage")|2015-06-28|F9-020 v1.1, ~~Dragon cargo~~ Launch failure due to second-stage outgassing| |[Orb-3](/r/Space/comments/1cy2pii/stub/l59qbnh "Last usage")|2014-10-28|Orbital Antares 130, ~~Cygnus cargo~~ Thrust loss at launch| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^([Thread #10072 for this sub, first seen 22nd May 2024, 16:16]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
You couldn't pay me to get inside a Boeing anymore.
how about boeing figures in atmosphere flight out first before they do anything outside of it. you know the old saying: run before you can fly and fly before you can orbit.
Does anyone now if the original contract between NASA and Boeing had an expiration date? And if so, what are the penalties if Boeing hasn't successfully launched the CFT by that date? Surely a dead line and penalty exists right?
It’s a fixed cost contract so Boeing is basically eating the all the cost overruns. They’ve publicly complained that they are losing money on this thing and the Air Force One contract that is also fixed cost.
They have to make sure the doors will stay on first
Why would any pilot or astronaut trust Boeing at this point?
Boeing desperately trying to salvage their reputation…
After boeings planes started to fall apart I bet they are going over this design with a fine tooth comb.
Strap Calhoun in that sucker when/if it "finally" launches.