Boeing Starliner crewed test flight delayed indefinitely

Space Daily ^ | May 22, 2024 | Doug Cunningham

[Salman]

Boeing's Starliner manned Crew Flight test has been indefinitely delayed after a string of issues, NASA officials said.

The launch has been scheduled for no earlier than Saturday, and no new date has been announced.

"The team has been in meetings for two consecutive days, assessing flight rationale, system performance and redundancy. There is still forward work in these areas, and the next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed," NASA, Boeing and United Launch Alliance said in a statement.

The original May 6 launch date to send a crew to the International Space Station was canceled, and subsequently the launch date was pushed back multiple times.

The Starliner has experienced several different issues that delayed the launches, including a problem with a pressure valve on the Centaur upper stage oxygen tank and a small helium leak in the spacecraft service module.

...

[rlmorel]

Mewzilla’s point is a valid one, that incompetent people hate competent people. They don’t like to be shown up.

That said, I disagree with mewzilla’s sentiment that we shouldn’t be going into space on top of rockets, which I take to mean, why are we doing it at all. (If I am wrong, just correct me)

If the sentiment was not that we shouldn’t be going into space at all, but we shouldn’t still be using rockets to do it and instead using some other technology to escape Earth’s orbit, I would conditionally agree.

The problem is, the alternative technologies (like making a ship that takes off from a runway like an airliner, goes into space, and returns like an airliner) aren’t yet feasible in the same way fusion energy to generate power instead of fission power isn’t yet feasible.

[RckyRaCoCo]

DEI stifilization(new word)

Progressive policies = flying cars eat bugs.

[NorthMountain]

For the present discussion, I’m completely uninterested in smack-talk about who has, or doesn’t have, or doesn’t want other people to have, the “right stuff”.

I’m purely interested in physics and engineering.

[suthener]

“And if you are, too, I bet you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I know exactly what you’re talking about. Only those with no vision do not understand. I believe a lot of progress is initiated by people simply saying, “There must be a better way”, even if they don’t know immediately know what the better way is.

[NorthMountain]

And then there are the unmanned flights.

Until two or three years ago, a rocket launch of any kind was a rare event.

SpaceX is launching every 2-3 days, now.

[wildcard_redneck]

Thank God for SpaceX. The useless rent seekers at NASA and the crooked defense contractors think the most important thing is to waste our money and get nothing done.

[lee martell]

After that summer of the 1969 Moon Landing, most of us Americans felt bold, bright and near invincible. I recall that Saturday morning of watching the televised landing with my family. I shall never forget the feeling of that optimism and joy.

[1Old Pro]

After that summer of the 1969 Moon Landing, most of us Americans felt bold, bright and near invincible. I recall that Saturday morning of watching the televised landing with my family. I shall never forget the feeling of that optimism and joy.

And now we cannot even protect our own borders, which is how far we've sunken.

[telescope115]

I’m starting to think that there may be some kind of design flaw that they’ve found, and are trying to work around. Something that is so built into the design that they would have to tear everything apart to fix it, and THAT would be a disaster. I can only imagine how pissed off the astronauts are right now.
That whole rocket assembly might get them killed.

NASA no longer has “The Right Stuff”. NASA has “The Woke Stuff”.

[SaveFerris]

If they put “Max” on it....

[Soul of the South]

“Mewzilla’s point is a valid one, that incompetent people hate competent people. They don’t like to be shown up.”

A wise HR person I knew once gave some wise advice to a colleague who had delegated a hiring decision to an average performing subordinate. The HR manager said, “C students never hire A students”. If you don’t exercise some oversight, your organization will be weakened.

[devere]

Or dreamliner

[rlmorel]

I would disagree, in that this present discussion does bear directly on the relative capabilities, given the baldly stark contrast and what is at stake. After all, I think you would agree, the only reason this is really newsworthy is that NASA cannot get their first manned mission of StarLiner off the ground with all the weight of the government funding behind it, yet a privately run company has been doing it astonishingly, even cutting the costs down as they become more reliable and more capable. Remarkable.

Check out this AMAZING video that show, in a graphical launch format, just how SpaceX has revolutionized space flight. The video shows, over a time period spanning years, how many launches they have done. At first, it is like a target shooter, BANG...long pause, time passes...BANG...then by the end, it is like a .50 caliber machine gun on rapid fire!

LINK: Every SpaceX Launch Attempt From Cape Canaveral 2010-2023

I have always been an enormous fan of the Wright Brothers. And one of the reasons is that they wanted to achieve flight on their own without the tug of government monies to force their fealty to the government teat.

Samuel Langley (Head of the Smithsonian Museum at the time) was their chief competitor, and he accepted tens of thousands of dollars in government grant money, and never produced a plane that could lift a man into the air, and he failed to do so in an extraordinarily public and embarrassing way.

The Wright Brothers were absolutely determined to do it on their own with no strings from anyone else attached.

In the end, Langley spent $70,000 dollars (very little or none of that money was his, coming from the government or the Smithsonian IIRC) and failed miserably, and the Wright Brothers, using all their own time, funds, and resources, spent under $1,000 dollars to get a plane into the air.

[rlmorel]

Absolutely...as that link in my past post shows!

By the way, I completely understand your focus on the engineering-which is another reason SpaceX is so amazing. I believe their next generation of rocket engines that they may already be manufacturing and using are 30% lighter, provide more lifting capability, are smaller, and have far fewer parts and simpler design!

LINK: Overview of new Raptor 4 engine

[rlmorel]

My mistake-This was the Raptor 2-vs Raptor 3. I think they just came up with a Raptor 4...

[catnipman]

“It’s times like this when I really, really miss the guy in the crew cut and vest”

my mom’s brother was one of those guys ... worked for NASA during the slide-rule era ...

[Shady]

And the commander and pilot have touch screens, and they are launched on re-used boosters.

[rlmorel]

NASA PILOT: Dang! They forgot to make our space suit gloves with fingers that can work with touchscreens!

NASA COPILOT: Bill… Those aren’t touchscreens!

[markman46]

spacex is either launching a starlink for either coast, or a cargo, or crew dragon, or some type of launch every few days.
oh and their starship and booster development in texas is just off the chain.
i believe spacex is shooting for 400 launches this year alone

[NorthMountain]

SpaceX is shooting for “more than 100 launches” this year. At their current rate of approximately 1/3 days, they’ll make it. Most are Starlink missions.