NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on SpaceX Crew-9

Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by shirro on Saturday August 24, 2024 @08:28PM (#41343184)

Boeing was awarded more money for their vehicle, had years of extra time and two previous demonstration flights. This flight should have been close to flawless given the additional time Boeing had for remediation and testing. Boeing engineers should have understood their systems well enough to convincingly demonstrate the vehicle met NASA's safety requirements. Even after much additional testing during the flight they couldn't make their case. Starliner will probably complete its third uncrewed return intact and people might question if NASA was being overly cautious but perhaps Boeing should have supplied a crewed vehicle with reliable thrusters and avoided this embarrassment.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by sidcool on Saturday August 24, 2024 @11:42PM (#41344186)

This looks like written by Grok.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by yinser on Sunday August 25, 2024 @12:10AM (#41344315)

How do you identify posts written by grok and what is the chance you’re completely wrong?

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by sidcool on Sunday August 25, 2024 @12:15AM (#41344338)

The writing style. Looks like Grok normal mode. There's a big chance I am wrong. Hence the phrasing of my comment.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by rustcleaner on Sunday August 25, 2024 @12:51AM (#41344478)

Oh hell this place is being botted too?

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by Loughla on Sunday August 25, 2024 @01:04AM (#41344537)

Everywhere. I would bet this place is a particular target for bots just because of the connections people have on here to real life money.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by greenthrow on Sunday August 25, 2024 @01:56AM (#41344768)

Ask yourseld why does a VC organization want to run a news site?

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by firesteelrain on Sunday August 25, 2024 @01:25AM (#41344629)

Quill says it’s not.

The grammar and writing seems completely off though. Like poor.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by adwf on Sunday August 25, 2024 @11:54AM (#41348237)

And don't forget that SpaceX had to sue the government/Boeing/Lockheed/ULA, multiple times, just in order to be allowed to compete for these contracts rather than having it locked down to the usual suspects.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by suggestion on Sunday August 25, 2024 @12:34PM (#41348641)

This is what happens when MBAs are made technical leads in charge of engineers. All the big 5 Federal Contractors are plagued like this.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by davidparks21 on Sunday August 25, 2024 @04:09PM (#41350886)

Near flawless is an unreasonable expectation. SpaceX had the advantage of running years of cargo missions. The error was simply not using the same successful model with any new vehicle.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by averageRoyalty on Sunday August 25, 2024 @05:55PM (#41351813)

What a weird argument. Boeing has the advantage of building things for space and NASA since the 60s - orbiters, rockets etc. They had a 40 year head start and some of the best engineers in the world. Near flawless compared to a 20 year old company I would say is a very reasonable expectation.

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by Log_out_ on Wednesday August 28, 2024 @01:08AM (#41376137)

The process ship of theseus exchanges all components within a generation. It now even replaced its culture and is unable to ship. History of ability can not be interpolated to current disability .

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Re:NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on Space... by shirro on Sunday August 25, 2024 @09:10PM (#41353029)

It is subjective language but for me "near flawless" is a reasonable expectation for a qualification flight. Not perfect because that is unreasonable. A leaking toilet would have been fine if Starliner had one. It isn't a critical system. An off-nominal thruster or two would also be acceptable. They have redundancy for a reason.

The helium leaks were not desirable but helium is difficult. Boeing engineers could demonstrate the rate of the leaks did not threaten the mission so it was manageable.

The thruster issues are completely different. Boeing couldn't present NASA with a convincing model of how the thrusters would perform. If they can't characterize such a fundamental part of the vehicle it is impossible to make an informed decisions which is a huge fail.

In hindsight a cargo first experience would have been valuable for commercial crew whether the winner was Sierra, NG or Boeing however that would have disqualified Sierra and Boeing. Boeing's involvement in commercial crew legitimized it politically. Boeing directly, via acquisition and through their suppliers including Aerojet have decades of experience in space flight far beyond SpaceX at the time. Boeing were not the underdogs.

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