I think many might not be aware of Starliner's sordid history. It has failed essentially every qualification test in various ways. Their pad abort test (where you simulate a launch abort while on the launch pad) resulted in only 2 of the 3 parachutes deploying in beyond optimal conditions. NASA considered that such a resounding success that they let them completely skip the far more challenging in-flight abort test. Their first automated mission to the ISS completely failed and did not make it to the station. NASA finally required a redo from Boeing and their second one did make it to the ISS, but only after experiencing widespread leaks and thruster failures literally identical to the ones that have now left these astronauts stranded.

If SpaceX or another company had remotely similar results, they would never have been greenlit. For instance in spite of a flawless pad abort test, NASA required SpaceX also carry out an in-flight abort. And that's completely reasonable - you don't simply skip tests, even with optimal performance. Skipping tests following suboptimal performance is simply unjustifiable. And so I think we're largely looking at another Challenger type disaster caused by a disconnect between management (and likely political appointees) versus engineering staff, rather than inherent risk. But this is not a vessel that should have ever had a single human anywhere near it, and so their official comments (and even actions) on the situation are going to be heavily biased due to their own behaviors.

> Some (many?) NASA engineers are at the high end of the band and are advocating a return on Dragon instead. Boeing is obviously at the low end of the band and thinks it is a low risk.

To me this gives a strong impression of history rhyming with itself. Back in the early 1980ies NASA engineers "close to the hardware" were raising warning, above warning about reliability issues of the shuttles, ultimately being overruled by management, leading to the Challenger disaster.

Then in 2003 again engineers were raising warnings about heat shield integrity being compromised from impacts with external tank insulation material. Again, management overruled them on the same bad reasoning, that if it did not cause problems in the past, it will not in the future. So instead of addressing the issue in a preventative action, the Columbia was lost on reentry.

Fool me once …, fool me twice …; I really hope the engineers will put their foot down on this and clearly and decisively overrule any mandate directed from management.

> I don't envy the engineers, either at NASA or at Boeing.

When I worked at Boeing, I talked with my lead engineer about this. He said there were indeed some excellent engineers who could not live with the possiblity of making a mistake. Boeing would find jobs for them that were not safety critical, like design studies of new aircraft. There they could be productive without the stress.

Personally, I found the stress to be motivating. It meant I was doing something that mattered.

    > This is probably the only way they'll be able to keep Boeing as a provider. A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a billion dollars, easy. And since the contract is fixed-price, this would just add to Boeing's losses.

As much as I get that Boeing is a major launch partner for the US in general and one of the only companies competing in the crewed space in the States right now, I don't get this part.

It's not NASA's job to keep Boeing in the running. It's completely up to Boeing to produce a vehicle that can safely and reliably get crews to and from orbit, and to do the appropriate amount of testing beforehand. If they can't be bothered to do that with the understanding the cost of failure, that's on them.

As a mountaineer, you play with this dichotomy safe/not-safe continuously and simultaneously.. but there comes a point sometimes where close calls add up the stammering indecision enters in, and at that point, in my opinion, you have already been defeated by the mountain. The indecision itself will consume too much of your energy and attention to perform the task even at a risk you could normally tolerate. Your judgement is too compromised to trust, and hubris and self-promising gets people killed.

Certifying a vehicle based on a test/qualification flight that was such a failure that it was considered too risky to let the crew fly back on the vehicle sounds about as reasonable as letting Boeing self-certify their airplane safety (instead of FAA oversight), or adding an automated nosedive-the-plane system with a non-redundant sensor just to avoid some training.

Sure, it is cheap, but when, not if, it results in deaths, it will be really hard to justify why someone thought it was a reasonable choice.

I'm fairly certain that sources from NASA have said the opposite regarding scrutiny.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/science/boeing-starliner-...

As it turns out, the official that admitted this was the same Steve Stich.

Dragon was held to a higher standard, they were the newcomers and the corrupt snakes in Congress were looking for any excuse to justify canceling commercial crew and just giving Boeing a blank check again.

> A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a billion dollars, easy.

I imagine so indeed, not in the least because all Atlas V launch vehicles are already assigned to missions. The booster for another non-operational flight would thus have to come from either their operational missions, or they'd have to pay someone else to give up their scheduled Atlas V payload. If they fail to buy someone else's Atlas V, they'd have to integrate Starliner onto a new (i.e. non-Atlas V) human-rated launch vehicle, or they would fail to deliver the contracted 6 operational missions.

Even if Boeing thinks that the chance of a catastrophic failure is infinitesimally small, they probably still can't ignore what a failure would mean for their already bad reputation. So returning the capsule without a crew is probably the safer option overall: if it's ok, it can still be certified; in the unlikely chance of a failure, NASA and Boeing can at least say that they were cautious and didn't succumb to the same wishful thinking that led to the Columbia disaster - and the damage for Boeing in the public opinion would be far smaller than if human lives were lost.

> In some ways, Starliner is being held to a higher standard than Dragon Crew-2

Maybe. I don't believe that's true, but let's assume it is.

They SHOULD be held to a higher standard. Of the 16 US astronauts that have died in the space program, 14 died on the shuttle which was Boeing. That, coupled with Boeings recent deterioration and demonstrated disregard for human life, makes it clear that Boeing needs to be kept on a short leash.

> 4. In some ways, Starliner is being held to a higher standard than Dragon Crew-2.

Wat? Have any Dragon missions encountered the number and severity of issues experienced by Starliner?

Maybe they have and are not public knowledge because NASA is less than transparency about its safety predictions and findings. But until the same confidence sapping mission performance is established it is not honest to say that Starliner is held to a higher standard.

Finally a good summary.

I also picked up on the potential to at least payout Boeing if starliner comes down in good order (which seemed likely). I think that solves Boeings issue and would make them relax on forcing crew.

The problem here is they have a seemingly somewhat safer option going up and down regularly. That is making taking risk MUCH much harder because the downside risk (2 crew trapped in space potentially for a long and slow death) is pretty disastrous especially if a safer option was sitting right there and it turns out the decision to send them down was contract driven.

Given the history of thruster issues that go way back (and keep on repeating despite "fixes") I feel like they'll collect about as much data sending starliner back uncrewed, and then they'll need to be doing fixes for things like the helium issues etc that are compounding the risks. Be great if they could do ONE uncrewed flight more trouble free before putting astro's back on, but their solution is a more expensive with longer lead times than crew dragon (the entire service module is dumped on every launch I think, the rocket is also totally dumped etc)

I think it’s very unlikely that Starliner will ever fly again, regardless of the ultimate outcome of this mission. In its three flights, Starliner has had so many serious problems, it’s obvious that it hasn’t been sufficiently engineered. Why take the risk when there’s an alternative that has been essentially trouble free?

> So I expect they will certify Starliner even if it comes down without a crew.

Considering the 'optics' of this, I imagine they will/should certify Starliner not with or without a crew, and at least not after 'enough' time has passed for any audit to be meaningful and for Boeing to prove that they are getting things right. Imagine 'ok-ing' the Starliner, and on the very next mission, the same (or different) critical error happens. Then I bid the NASA folks who ok-ed the Starliner a good start on their next jobs.

If there is one profession with zero tolerance for errors it's the 'space-stuff' because 1) good luck repairing things in space, 2) "in space no one can hear you scream" (profanities because you ended up staying x10 or x100 the time planned)(and I do understand that capacity planning, food, toilets, etc. etc. have been calculated to ensure that they won't be running out of food, toilet paper, etc.)

It would be fun to have a Season 3 of Space Force, and this time instead of Malkovich yelling at Microsoft, to be yelling at Boeing!

> In some ways, Starliner is being held to a higher standard than Dragon Crew-2.

That's pretty contrived. Dragon has a 'standard' of multiple successful flights.

> A redo of this mission would cost Boeing half a billion dollars, easy. And since the contract is fixed-price, this would just add to Boeing's losses. So I expect they will certify Starliner even if it comes down without a crew.

This is the problem with old space. SpaceX blows stuff up on the regular just to see what went boom. And they absorb the cost themselves. They don't fly something that has proven itself fully before. It's clear this approach works. If they can do it while not wasting billions, why can't Boeing?

And "it will cost the vendor money" should really not factor into safety decisions.

Boeing has burned enough of its reputation at this point that I wouldn't trust their assessment one bit. Bringing back Starliner without the crew seems like a no-brainer, and is the only way to restore some of Boeing's credibility.

So many weeks of anti-Musk cope on Twitter about this issue. People really can't think clearly even about factual issues anymore.

>And since the contract is fixed-price, this would just add to Boeing's losses. So I expect they will certify Starliner even if it comes down without a crew.

Yet another Boeing vehicle to avoid ...

Interesting tidbit: Talking about the upcoming Crew Dragon flight being moved around: "We will let SpaceX use our first stage booster, they'll go fly a starlink flight, ahead of our flight to get a little shakedown of that booster. It had some moisture intrusion and we want to go ahead and get that booster flown. And so there's a win win there - flying our booster on a starlink flight before our crew flight."

The complete 180 here is great to see. For the crewed demo flight of Crew Dragon, they used a brand new booster. It seems NASA didn't like the idea of flying on reused boosters, thinking they had an increased risk. Now they're liking the idea of a booster being flown an extra time.

It seems it'd be a massive reputational risk to NASA to bring them back on Starliner, just in case anything does go wrong. Given all the deliberations, NASA is going to be seen as at least 50% to blame if they make the wrong decision.

The title strikes me as an entirely fair characterization of your own summary of the situation.

It's not unfair given the information provided in this conference that was new. The dialog on conferences has shifted such that the main piece of news is that they may fly home on the Dragon.

Yeah this announcement sounds like the type of thing bad bosses do to look like their decisions till now were sound (they were not). Accepting star liner as a mistake will ask the question what NASA did anyway.

The rescue kit built for Apollo during Skylab, while a precedent, is not a complete one. Apollo was the only vehicle available in that situation, so if the CSM already at Skylab couldn't be used, the rescue CSM had to launch. There are alternatives to (say) squeezing in more than four people into Crew Dragon.

I think loss of institutional knowledge is a huge problem across all sectors of the economy. In my niche of specialty construction engineering I saw it get exacerbated by the Great Recession, companies froze hiring and laid folks off from the bottom up, while retaining senior people. Who are now or have already retired, without a younger cadre to have absorbed their knowledge and carry it on.

Supposedly that's a "it's currently running which version of the software?" issue:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-confirms-slip-of-...

Is it a hardware feature that's missing, or software? If the latter, can't it be restored? If the former, or if the latter but it can't be restored, is the docking station where Starliner is berthed going to remain unavailable forever? There are only TWO NASA docking stations. There are a bunch of Russian docking stations.

There's a hard rule for ISS that no astronaut may be on board the ISS without a corresponding return vehicle being docked at all times. This rule is effectively being violated for the two Starliner astronauts because they can't return on Starliner. And now no new Crew Dragons may berth without the current crew returning on the currently berthed Crew Dragon.

What a mess.

They said on the call that the software though but it's a 'flight data' load which is all setup for normal crew use; who knows where the line is between data/code.

I wonder if NASA were aware, or is it possible that they just assumed the demonstrated capability was there, and Boeing never told them this Starliner didn't have it ?!

I'd like to think NASA would consider all contingencies, but the Challenger O-ring disaster showed they can be as incompetent as Boeing themselves.

I can’t help but feel this is part of a game being played.

“The capsule needs the crew!”

Some pressure to nasa to fly the crew back on this and also some ass covering if the really embarrassing occurs: the unmanned capsule does fail - “hey everyone it just failed because it had no crew! Nothing to worry about!”

Surely you've taken out a feature in software and then later regretted it

Even if up for 8 months – and returning to a US with a different President, perhaps even a different party-of-the-President, they'll not match the experience of Sergei Krikalev – who traveled to the space station Mir for the USSR, & was for a while stuck there when the USSR dissolved, only returning 311 days later:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Krikalev

He later became the 1st cosmonaut to fly on the US Space Shuttle:

https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/p...

And not to forget, they traveled up without their personal clothing or handpicked hygiene items. They had to give those up for parts to repair the toilet on the ISS and are using the station's stocked contingency supplies.

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2024/0...

They are astronauts... There is some amount of expectation that the rocket will blow up before they get in to space. Nobody wants it, but they are the best of us and they are courageous as heck.

To be completely honest, the news cycle this summer has been so wild; I kind of forgot they were up there until today. That is something that it seems like they might not have trained the astronauts for, and that's really scary. That and there might be some sort of business politics involved in the plan to get home.

We're all sort of engineers here, given the choice, suppose Boeing thought they could land you next week or you would wait until 2025 and ride a Dragon down. Which would you pick?

Astronauts historically work closely with the people that build their spacecraft. I wonder how much they knew going in and how confident they really were. They decided to go through with the mission, but there was surely an immense amount of pressure on them to do so. Can you imagine the political firestorm if one of them refused? It would ground them for sure.

Going out on a limb here but astronaut training involves being prepared (physically, mentally and otherwise) for all eventualities, including delays like this probably.

Sucks for their families though.

I would be mostly concerned about the bone loss and health implications some of which can't be reversed.

The same thing can happen to any traveler. Sometimes you plan to stay for a few months and end up staying for 30 years. So, as cliché as it sounds, enjoy the journey, not the destination!

Reminds me if Gilligan's Island

...a three hour tour...

[flagged]

> Is this possibly the end for the Starliner project?

No. Remember, these are fixed-price contracts. NASA will force Boeing to fix the problem on its own dime.

Which is fitting, as Starliner is the stupidest space programme in present existence.

I think you're grossly underestimating how many bribes, er, excuse me, campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, and wine and dines Boeing has done. They could kill everyone on board ISS and crash six more planes and the US government would continue to bank roll them for years to come.

After all this, even in the best case (Starliner returns successfully with Butch and Suni), it’s hard to see that NASA would consider it vetted and ready for an operational (non-test) flight.

They still haven’t figured out a root cause for the thruster failures, and they won’t be getting the faulty flight hardware back to examine it. Is Boeing willing to put substantial engineering time into fixing/re-designing the thrusters, and then flying another 2-person test flight? I guess we’ll find out soon…

I suspect that NASA may want to keep Starliner around, given that SpaceX is owned by a man who seems to be getting ever more unhinged by the day and has a history of making highly questionable business decisions.

I would be willing to bet quite much on cancellation.

How would you feel if you were one of them?

I'd feel pretty upset. A few days in space is no big deal. Months in space is hard on the body, plus you're missing out on months of life on Earth -- maybe you're going to miss the birth of a child or grandchild, or a loved one's death and funeral, or some other big event. And are you getting paid while up there? Are there enough supplies? What if NASA and Boeing finally decide it's OK to return on Starliner, and as you know you basically must then, so now you're risking your life on a vehicle that you have much reason to think is not safe.

It'd be hard not to be hopping mad in private. I'd make the best of it, since there's no other choice, but I would not be happy about it.

Humans have a truly amazing ability to grow bored of any "new normal", no matter how exciting it may seem to outsiders.

I imagine it could be exciting, extra time in orbit a place so few humans have been.

But it's likely overshadowed by the concerns and fears building from the possible return trip.

I'd imagine they'd revel at the opportunity for more time, generally.

Their bodies will wither. They will be bathed in radiation. You can only watch Earth go by so many times before it gets mundane.

Do they have any assignments or tasks? Boredom is my version of hell.

The opportunity to go to space is worth so much that I think they would get qualified people to do it for free, maybe even pay to have the job. So I don't think there is a need to pay more than a regular "good salary".

I would gladly have done it for $100k.

The compensation they offer doesn’t seem to interfere with their ability to get the candidates they want. Why spend more?

Your average astronaut can easily walk into a $300k/year management job in some aerospace or technology related industry a short time after "retiring", on the other hand. Higher profile ones even more so.

That’s not how salaries work though. Supply and demand.

I will be an astronaut for $0 a year. Please pick me. If NASA is looking save more money they will save a ton with me.

We spoke to a former cosmonaut in HFT. He was doing well. Moved here to the US, though.

> Assuming the Starliner can be on autopilot

Apparently it can't. Idk if it's missing software, or missing hardware, though I'm gleaning from other comments here that it's software (thus presumably fixable).

Because law & PR 101 says you should never make a statement to the effect of "so um we may have sent some people into space on a rocket we knew wasn't safe and it's going to be a bit hard to get them down safely". A statement like that can end your career Micheal.

2010 article, "6 Private Companies That Could Launch Humans Into Space":

<https://www.space.com/8541-6-private-companies-launch-humans...>

That lists SpaceX, Orbital Sciences (since merged into Northrup Grumman), Blue Origin (which remains suborbital, though the orbital New Glenn is due for launch this year and Blue Moon is in development), Bigelow Aerospace (defunct), SpaceDev/Sierra Nevada Corporation (active, but struggling?), and Virgin Galactic (suborbital space tourism).

Wikipedia has a maintained list of current private spaceflight ventures, principally SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab*, Virgin Galactic, Axiom Space*, and Sierra Space. (Starred are additions to the space.com article's list).

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight>

Boeing has a decision to make: keep investing in Starliner, or cut the program now, and avoid having to do a bunch of rework to fix it plus at least one more test flight (and possibly two?) on their own dime.

It's not really clear (to me) how likely either of those outcomes is right now.

IF they drop it, then I would expect NASA to run a new commercial crew program. They need redundancy, and they don't want to be running the development process themselves.

Dream Chaser Space System (their crewed variant) is almost certainly the best-placed candidate to win an award from that program: they have an almost-flying cargo variant that was originally designed to be human rated, and existing plans to complete the crewed variant.

SpaceX might get some money for Starship, although I would expect NASA to try to write the rules such that they're not eligible. While having two options from a single company is better than just one, a fully-independent option would be better.

Blue Origin has some experience with the New Shepard capsule, and is working on their Blue Moon lander: I expect that they would cobble together a proposal, and perhaps between their previous experience in losing bids due to over-pricing, and NASA's experience with Starliner's fixed-price failure, the price might end up somewhere in the middle?

Maybe Northrop-Grumman would propose a Cygnus-derived vehicle? It'd need a human-rated launcher -- Dream Chaser would likely be using Vulcan, and Falcon9 is a dependency on SpaceX. NG would probably like to use its own Antares 330 booster, but then they'd be running both a crew vehicle and a booster program which is a lot of money and risk.

It's not entirely implausible that someone buys Starliner from Boeing, and attempts to complete the development (if Boeing gives up). Blue Origin is possibly the most likely candidate? They have Jeff's cash mountain, and a kinda compatible "old space" culture -- if Boeing is willing to sell it at a reasonable price, it's possibly a cheap way to get 80% of the way there?

Given the results from this commercial crew round (a likely 50% success), funding two programs with the expectation of one success seems reasonable. Whether they are able to get commercial interest in a fixed-price award like last time is an open question, as is who might apply.

Interesting times.

At this rate SpaceX will have two certified manned launch vehicles (Crew Dragon, Starship) by the time any other providers have a functioning platform.

(yes it will be years before Starship is human-certified... but Starliner has already had MORE years)

If Boeing wants out after this debacle, maybe Blue Origin would be interested in buying the program/IP?

Starliner is launching on ULA rockets (Atlas today, Vulcan likely in the future) anyway, and BE is rumored to be purchasing them too.

Right now, without further development time? Russia.

Lockheed has Orion, they could modify it for Vulcan or Falcon. Overkill for LEO but at least it's functional. Realistically NASA will have to go through another round of requests for proposal, though I don't know how much interest there will be after Boeing's troubles and with ISS disposal looming.

Sierra Nevada?

Sorry I don't provide any sources, but in ancient Rome the engineer that built a stone arc sometimes stood right below it when they removed the scaffolding supporting it. If he did a good job - he lives.

Sure, that worked just brilliantly over at OceanGate

They are both seasoned NASA astronauts who have done 6-month stints aboard the ISS before (Butch once, Suni twice). They know how to be useful and NASA has indicated that they've been working up there.

Bud imagine chilling in a space station and watching Netflix. I dunno about you, but me? I would enjoy that life

Boeing deleted that part of the firmware and it will take months to reload it. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-likely-to-signifi...

They probably can.

NASA is worried about the thruster issue meaning that they lose control of the vehicle as it undocks and moves away from the ISS, leading to a collision. I guess that's independent of crew being on board.

But also ... the current Starliner software doesn't support an automated (uncrewed) undock. The previous one did, but some code and/or configuration changes are required to enable this on the current vehicle. NASA has said that making the changes to enable this will take about a month (including QA).

It's launched on the Atlas V. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V

> After 87 launches, in August 2021 ULA announced that Atlas V would be retired, and all 29 remaining launches had been sold. As of July 2024, 15 launches remain. Production ceased in 2024.

IIRC they only have enough reserved Atlas V to fulfill all the manned missions they promised to NASA, so there is no room unmanned for test. (And that's a huge problem!)

Boeing should spend some time solely in the private sector and get its shit together, before applying for any more government contracts.

No, they will need suits from SpaceX that fit.

They would end up landing in Russia; with tensions between Russia and the west rising (i.e. the US supplying weapons to the country Russia is at war with at the moment), this isn't ideal.

I mean it's an option for sure and in case of emergency it won't really matter whose return pods they use, but it seems they prefer not to.

Because there's no need.

NASA is in on the denial, too. As late as July 28, flight director Ed Van Cise explicitly denied that the Starliner crew was stuck or stranded. <https://x.com/Carbon_Flight/status/1817754775196201035>. Even if one quibbles about whether "stranded" applies in this situation (I believe that it does <https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1ekicol/not_stranded...>), "stuck" definitely does.

In the 1960's (I think?) NASA did studies on various emergency situations in preparation for the post-Apollo space stuff that never happened. I remember a zippered inflatable sphere that could be used to EVA a person between vehicles, and I think there was an inflatable cone-shaped reentry device that got out of orbit, and down to a reasonable altitude, before being discarded and the person used a parachute for landing.

A quick search turns up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracone

With a really big parachute, you could I suppose. Although it would need to survive getting peppered with high velocity debris, and have a way of opening up without sufficient air drag.

Shipments on dragons are safe and work fine

People have stayed much longer on the ISS.

After the 737MAX debacle, with Boeing blaming the pilots for the crashes, how could anyone possibly trust Boeing's PR?

I never understood why companies adopted diamond shaped org charts where middle management out-numbered people doing the work

On the defense side, Boeing may be "too big to fail". After the the post Cold War consolidation, losing any of the big 5 USG contractors (Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics) would blow a huge hole in the industry. It's likely they'll be kept afloat with token contracts until they can get it back together. On the commercial side, Airbus is the only real alternative. I'm sure this is great for them but realistically how much of Boeing's market share could they scale up to fill? Embraer doesn't do large jets and the other manufacturers are Russian and Chinese.

Boing won't be allowed to fail until there's another American company building large passenger aircraft at scale.

They have a new CEO who's going to try to fix things. I wish him luck.

In all fairness, SpaceX is eating everyones lunch right now.

Here is the full article - sorry about that, should have used this link.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/science/boeing-starliner-...

It's a fixed price contract, they've been paying for Starliner out of their own pocket for a long time now, not to mention any penalties NASA will levy.

They spent $100B in the last decade buying back their own stock. Imagine if some of that went to this issue instead. Or making sure bolts were tight on doors.

I'm no conspiracy theorist but, if it's fake, the money is still real. Redistributing billions of dollars to the elite heads of the illuminati under the cover of socalled "space exploration".