Posted on 01/04/2020 1:38:27 PM PST by rktman
Over 50 years after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed the first humans on the Moon, the beleaguered agency can’t even pull off basic landings at the International Space Station (ISS) in Earth’s orbit. On Dec.20, 2019, the agency debuted the delayed, over-budget Starliner capsule for a test-run to and from ISS before being deemed ready for ferrying astronauts. But the Boeing-built aircraft couldn’t even dock in the space station due to a system error, instead pointlessly orbiting Earth before landing in New Mexico on Dec. 22. Taxpayers deserve better than billions of dollars of their hard-earned money quite literally going up in smoke.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
I find it both sad and amusing that NASA’s decades long work to kill private space flight and willing subornment to do Muslim outreach have resulted in NASA and their favorite contractors being a joke and the private sector delivering as promised.
NASA killed DC-X/Delta Clipper, Rotary Rocket and soooo many other ventures. Screw them.
What good is that money hole called the ISS anyway? All they do is run experiments on things like how bees react to zero gravity. Yeah, that’s very important. Might advance our entire understanding of the universe. NASA needs to return to actual manned exploration of space. Maybe land a science team on Mars for a year.
The ISS would likely need to be used as a mustering/assembly point for a Mars mission.
SpaceX has an in flight abort test scheduled in about a week. They’ll be ready to launch a crew in February, but NASA probably won’t let them until this Summer.
The Starliner fail was not that big, a crew could have corrected it. That said, Boeing is having trouble with software, in this case a timer.
If you want manned exploration, you need to get manned flight restarted. Starliner and Crew Dragon are for that.
I’m with NASA Administrator Jim “Baby Face” Bridenstine (sp). This “SNAFU” does not represent a setback.
This “SNAFU” does not represent a setback.
You will always find those who go straight to even the smallest problem and try and make a conspiracy story out of it.
This is a small problem that can and will be easily corrected. NASA and Boeing did the smart thing and continued testing through the rest of the mission and all else went great.
I doubt it, it is in a weird-ass inclined orbit. Waste of energy to stop on the way to mars
I agree with you, but what ticks me off is that NASA overpaid for a shoddy Boeing design.
Well, the Apollo program existed to get a man on the Moon, but it took until Apollo 11 (and a lot of unmanned and unnamed hardware tests prior to that, plus the entire Gemini series of flights) to accomplish that. For a first shakedown mission, I thought it went pretty well.
There is actually a lot of good physiology and psychology data coming from ISS that is needed for long duration outer planet missions that will last years. We are finding permanent and detrimental anatomical and genetic changes in ISS personnel, and there are also a lot of psychological issues during the mission and after the mission that aren’t being talked about openly. These things need solutions.
Other than planting a UN flag on Mars and claiming it to be a weapons-free neutral planet, I don’t see much interest in sending people there when robotic drones seem very capable of doing exploration and have literally barely scratched the surface of what can be learned remotely.
The only “setbacks” are with SpaceX. Boeing gets a pass from Bridenstine.
PING!
No such thing as “zero tolerance” in manufacturing and metrology. If just a couple of heads are rolled over this, I’d think it’d be enough to light a Quality fire under their asses.
Roger copy.
That’s not what I’m talking about. They were over budget and behind schedule. Furthermore, there were better designs by other vendors that were dismissed by NASA to fund the Boeing boondoggle.
The space program was a race to build an ICBM.
I probably should not have used “shoddy”. “Inferior” would have been better.
Screw Obama. He was the one who said that making Muslims feel good about themselves was a top priority.
What, precisely is a system error?
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