Science Boeing’s Attempt to Compete With SpaceX Is Even More Cursed Than We Thought - Things seem pretty bleak over there.

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Curses​

Boeing’s Starliner, its crew capsule that rivals SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, has clearly been cursed from the start — and its most recent problems run far deeper than initial reports suggested.

The good news is that there’s still a chance Starliner is going to make its May 19 International Space Station launch date after ample turmoil, CNBC reports.

The bad news is that the underlying valve issue that’s resulted in repeated setbacks is likely going to require a full redesign, yet another potential complication.

“A valve redesign is definitely on the table,” Boeing vice president Mark Nappi said during a Wednesday news conference after news of Boeing clashing with valve manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne first broke. “Once we get all the information that we need, we’ll make that decision.”

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Costly Mistakes​

As CNBC notes, Boeing has spent upwards of $600 million additional dollars to date due to the repeated setbacks plaguing the launch of its Starliner spacecraft.

The cursed launch has been viewed by many as the airplane manufacturer’s losing gambit to compete with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. Both companies have been under contract with NASA to establish a new reliable way to launch astronauts into space.

While SpaceX has launched five crewed missions to the ISS so far, Boeing has been stuck in development hell and has yet to send an uncrewed Starliner to the orbital outpost.

Nevertheless, the continued delays — many of which appear to have stemmed from the same valve issue — seem to have displeased NASA, who, in a rare about-face, re-assigned astronauts to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon from Starliner last year after Boeing failed to get its capsule into stable orbit.

In other words: it looks like there’s even more trouble in aerospace manufacturing paradise than we thought.

READ MORE: Boeing considers redesigning problematic valve that has kept Starliner from flying NASA astronauts [CNBC]

More on Starliner’s fails: Piece Falls Off Boeing Starliner As It Trundles Toward Launchpad


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Not surprising. My understanding is that Boeing never expected Starliner to actually be finished on time or on budget. They saw the budget and timeline, and assumed SpaceX would fail both, and Boeing and SpaceX could go to Congress together to beg for more money.

And then SpaceX delivered on budget, if not on time. And Boeing can't. Whoops!
 
usernames can change now! dijo:
Not surprising. My understanding is that Boeing never expected Starliner to actually be finished on time or on budget. They saw the budget and timeline, and assumed SpaceX would fail both, and Boeing and SpaceX could go to Congress together to beg for more money.

And then SpaceX delivered on budget, if not on time. And Boeing can't. Whoops!
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Say what you want about Elon, but the dude can make companies meet budget and time deliverables.
 
Chilson dijo:
Say what you want about Elon, but the dude can make companies meet budget and time deliverables.
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People talk about "Elon time". But Boeing time is much worse. Just look at the JWST and SLS.

However, if you want to see astronauts die on live television, Boeing might have your back. If they can get this unmanned mission off the ground first.
 
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On top of it when you look at Starliner you can't really get past the feeling that they just dusted off some old Apollo follow up designs from 1972, gave them a questionable modernization pass to bolt on some new computers and tried to build the resulting kludge. Dragon was clearly a Clean Sheet design that rethought everything about a spacecraft. The only retro component on it is the docking port. It looks and feels and performs like a 21st century spacecraft. Starliner feels like a Plymouth Volare built in 1977.
 
Do they even believe in their space project or is it just a way to get more funds from congress/government?
 
How the fuck are they gonna make the May 19th deadline if they have to redesign shit? I'm no rocket scientist, pun intended, but doesn't this type of shit take a really really long time?
 
With all Boeing's issues, I've simply assumed that Boeing's diversity hires have decided all development should be done in Kerbal Space Program. If it's good enough for Jeb, it's good enough for us!
 
JustSomeDong dijo:
With all Boeing's issues, I've simply assumed that Boeing's diversity hires have decided all development should be done in Kerbal Space Program. If it's good enough for Jeb, it's good enough for us!
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Tangentially Related: Boeing is leaving Chicago due to "crime" concerns.....

FARK: They're going to DC (well, Arlington)
 
Looks like Boeing wants to give every newish project the 737max treatment and result. They should probably hire real engineers on merit and fix their corporate bloat problem.
 
Éamon de Valera dijo:
How the fuck are they gonna make the May 19th deadline if they have to redesign shit? I'm no rocket scientist, pun intended, but doesn't this type of shit take a really really long time?
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When I read that I assumed that they planned to launch anyway, and add the redesigned component to the next Starliner. But then maybe you would expect them to do another uncrewed launch before finally sending astronauts up.

On Tuesday, during a teleconference with reporters, officials from Boeing and NASA discussed the steps they have taken to ameliorate the problem for Starliner's upcoming test flight. Michelle Parker, vice president and deputy general manager of Boeing Space and Launch, said the valves remain the same on the vehicle but that technicians have sealed up pathways by which moisture might get inside the propulsion system. They are also purging moisture from the valves using nitrogen gas and loading propellants onto Starliner closer to launch.

With those mitigations undertaken, Starliner will soon be stacked on top of an Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance.
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The problem is "mitigated".
 
Éamon de Valera dijo:
How the fuck are they gonna make the May 19th deadline if they have to redesign shit? I'm no rocket scientist, pun intended, but doesn't this type of shit take a really really long time?
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I know with a lot of aero and high-precision/high-accuracy applications you wouldn't be starting over from square one. Your "Valve Team" likely had hundreds of potential designs in the brainstorming phase, dozens of CAD/3D models for strong contenders, and several they have at least created scale prototypes for testing. The engineering teams for stuff like this will have an understanding of their components "depth chart" on par with NFL coaches. You'd be surprised what a high-speed sophisticated CNC shop can put out in this amount of time. Frankly the major scheduling concern would be testing. They would need their theoretical data, a unit to use, and probably several for testing. They would need to pray every bit of testing data affirms their theoretical findings (without corrupting the process creating massive liability exposure).

That's frankly the most damaging thing to Boeing at this point. Race car engineers are used to frantic turnarounds like this and while extremely well qualified, they don't hold a candle to cutting edge rocket scientists. Boeing is the major American aerospace country that does things other than defense. They've had and addressed similar problems effectively and with poise in the past. Struggling now is an ominous signal.
 
BelUwUga dijo:
That's frankly the most damaging thing to Boeing at this point. Race car engineers are used to frantic turnarounds like this and while extremely well qualified, they don't hold a candle to cutting edge rocket scientists. Boeing is the major American aerospace country that does things other than defense. They've had and addressed similar problems effectively and with poise in the past. Struggling now is an ominous signal.
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Boeing lacks what those race car engineers and SpaceX aren't afraid to do and that's blow shit up and wreck it to see how it breaks. There is a time and place for non-destructive testing, but it sure isn't for a mission critical system like a $5,000 dollar flow valve. Quite a few people, "industry experts" especially, mocked the multiple rockets SpaceX flat out detonated, but that was the point and the development time for the Falcon family is well within Boeing's current iteration of a project that's actually something like 30 years old at this point. Same thing with Dragon, quite a lot of analysts (glorified bloggers) and experts (retards in suits who were never engineers) had a lot of things to say that turned out to be hot air. Even the name was chosen because of all the shit-talking.

Boeing has been in the business for so long that they forgot the days when they weren't top dogs and were just yet another bomber manufacturer. When major competition for aircraft began to whittle down the market to a handful of big names it showed because those giants that survived started coming up with dumbass, go-nowhere designs and had "trouble" meeting deadlines and production budgets. Mind you this is all after the CAD revolution so costs should have been even lower than years prior, but hey there are consequences for retiring all your old salt slide rule guys and replacing them with autistic point and click adventurers. (who then got replaced by neon haired morons lmao)

Now they have to compete with new companies that aren't the hollow imitations of great names from the 30's and 40's and it shows how far they have fallen. They can push the blame all they want but Boeing in 1962 would not have been this far along with nothing to show for it and waddling around with their dicks in their hands wouldn't have been accepted by the feds either. Aerojet is no different in terms of diminished performance, but they haven't been their own company even before the merger. So I don't think it matters who takes the blame because neither company is able to hold a candle to what they were capable of in the past. This is a sink or swim sort of deal and I don't have sympathy while I watch Boeing tread water.
 
moonman1488 dijo:
Should a company known for designing a plane that crashes itself into the ground be attempting space travel?
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Maybe that's why they reversed up and down in the code, so that the capsule would try and crash into the ground, miss, and end up in space.
 
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