Posted on 08/06/2024 5:14:25 AM PDT by Red Badger
That happened TWICE at a company I used to work for.
Two different contracts and two different major contractors, when the contractors (Martin Marietta and RCA) got into financial difficulties on their contracts with the military, they blamed the subcontractor, us, and pulled the contracts.
On one of the contracts, the company’s union was upset that the work was being done by a non-union sub, us.....................
You’ll note my lack of ‘sarc’...
90 days is all the Starliner can do in space, and that's if everything's working right. Boeing's in a bind -- they want the ground tests to verify that it's safe to fly, but instead the ground tests have only identified the problems, and these are all things that should have been figured out during engineering and development.
If they send the craft down with a crew in it, there's a good likelihood that the crew will die in one or more of the failures, and the scuttlebutt is that manual or partially manual reentry will no longer be an option.
If they send the craft back to Earth uncrewed and it fails (as seems likely) NASA will have to suspend the contract for the crewed flights until the craft (already delayed a few years) has its bugs ironed out.
If uncrewed automated landing (propulsive, on land) actually succeeds, sending the crew down in a different craft -- by a competitor -- will have been the right move but make them look like they can't get the job done.
Of course, if they send the crew aboard Starliner for return to Earth and it works, it will look more like gambling with their lives than it will look like a success.
3 hour cruise
“as of now I suspect there is no urgency”
At this point the astronauts are like prisoners of war—but as you say there is no urgency to get them home....
Lol.
Put the entire Boeing Board of Directors in jail until the astronauts get home—that would create some urgency.
They are stuck between a rock and a empty space..............
Butch and Sundance doesn’t end well - it’s a theme.
If so, why has it not carried the two astronauts back?
starliner lands on land at the white sands test range in new mexico
That’s where it’s supposed to land, but if it fails it will probably land in the ocean.........
no boeing will want to recover the capsule
If it won’t steer they might not have a choice...........
#3 NASA cannot bring back Starliner on auto pilot as they removed the software that had been used a few years ago on a unpiloted test mission.
There were at least two You tube articles yesterday on the subject....... bad news.
The star liner capsule can’t retrun unmanned. The soft ware requires human input from inside the capsule for operation. The worst aspect of this fact is that the capsuloe can’t even be detached, released from the space station without someone inside the capsule operating the release controls.
At present or at least yesterday NASA/Boeing have a very big and unsolvable problem. i
Interesting.
there is no thruster problem with the capsule, different system. the problem thrusters are on the service module, which is cast off before reentry
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