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51
Boeing Starliner Flight of NASA Astronauts Is Scrubbed (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

NASA astronauts will have to wait until another day to launch to orbit in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The planned launch was called off Monday night because of a problem in the Atlas V rocket that was to send them to space.

Engineers will work through the night to assess whether the two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, can get back on the launchpad on Tuesday, or if repairs will be needed that could delay the flight by at least several days.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Launch is scrubbed til Friday due to a part malfunction. A pressure regulator on the upper stage was rapidly cycling so they're investigating.

People seem to forget that the Shuttle had an average of 1.9 launch attempts per mission. I don't even know what the scrub rate is for other launch vehicles, it happens all the time due to weather and part malfunctions, it's not even considered part of launch reliability statistics. Let's maybe let it actually get off the ground before we start wild speculation about reliability.

Anyways, nationalize ULA.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I've heard this number cited as one of many reasons why the Space Shuttle is a piece of shit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

It didn't help that the shuttle's main engine fuel was hydrogen. Hydrogen plumbing plus Florida air equals rocket engineer headaches, and scrub after scrub after scrub. We saw it again in all those delays on the SLS test launch. And SLS is basically a space shuttle with different lego instructions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Absolutely. But every vehicle platform scrubs, so there's not a ton of point in speculating about the reliability of a brand-new launch vehicle based on one scrub. There's a huge gulf between Soyuz and the Space Shuttle.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The shuttle was the worst crewed space vehicle of all time by a wide margin

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

A pressure regulator on the upper stage was rapidly cycling so they're investigating.

It's worrying that the new dual-engine Centaur that was developed exclusively for Starliner is also having teething issues. I know they can't use the proven single-engine Centaur because of abort-scenario reasons, but as the kids say, this ain't a good look.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Making your engineers work overnight is a great idea. The mind is super good at problem solving when it's overworked and sleep deprived. What could possibly go wrong?

Space exploration when it's nationalised: Scientific breakthroughs. Learning about the very fabric of the universe, exploring new frontiers of nature and using the research to help invent life saving machines like MRIs, artificial hearts and insulin pumps.

Space exploration when it's privatized: Space tourism on piss leaking shuttles that barely work, but only for rich people to gawk at space and do nothing of value. No significant breakthroughs in space exploration.

Yes, they made a reuseable rocket or some shit. I don't care. Humanity built spaceships from the ground up over 70 fucking years ago using 50s/60s technology, Tesla/Boeing/Virgin has 70 years of research to build from and they've done dick all considering what they have to work with.

I'm so glad we're wasting our limited space fuel resources on this rich pissbaby dick waving shit.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

Well you gotta remember, free market means innovation! And cost cutting! And overcharging the government for increasingly shittier products. And those sweet sweet kickbacks...

Best system evar

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Humanity built spaceships from the ground up over 70 fucking years ago

And Soviets engineers did that with slide rulers and none of this super computer AI desgne bullshit. Russians are still using the same rockets to ferry stuff into space. It's amazing how fucking incompetent these people are.

Yes, they made a reusable rocket or some shit.

I don't think they even manage to do that. Those things Melon Husk is shooting up needs so much refurbishing that it's pointless to call them "reusable". Assuming they even manage to land and not blow up first.

It's all cooked.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Since June 2010, rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 339 times, with 337 full mission successes, two failures…

Falcon family boosters have successfully landed 303 times in 314 attempts. A total of 42 boosters have flown multiple missions, with a record of 20 missions by a booster.

Reusable rockets have been a massive advancement in space flight, should just be operated by governmental agencies, not private companies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely agreed. I think it's possible to both loathe the jackass who owns SpaceX, and also to appreciate the top-tier R&D being done by all those engineers and scientists and technicians who are doing the real work there. They're the people who just launched the most powerful rocket ever built to put the biggest spaceship ever built into near-orbit. (And the only reason they didn't put Starship in a real orbit was to make absolutely certain it would never be a debris hazard even if they lost control.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The success is probably due to the fact that Elon has basically zero involvement in the day-to-day operation.

Published earlier today

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Oh I can absolutely believe that. No other explanation makes sense, really.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

We’d have a CyberShuttle^TM^ by now lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

they made a reuseable rocket or some shit

Or have they? Baikal-Angara system predates space ex meme boosters by a long while. They were only scrapped because USSR went pop and, well, everything got scrapped

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Good point

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago

Launch is rescheduled to ten years from now

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

can't fly yet, gotta pack in some more whistleblower bodies somewhere that they'll burn up

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Haha don’t give them any ideas!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Just to point out:

The planned launch was called off Monday night because of a problem in the Atlas V rocket that was to send them to space.

This delay is due to an issue with the launch vehicle, not the crew capsule. "Boeing" is in the title for clickbait purposes only, this delay has nothing to do with them in any way.

Also, delays for astronaut lauches are good. Finding a problem with your human-carrying missile before you launch it is a lot better than the alternative.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

I also want to remind people that this is quite literally rocket science. Delays and scrubs happen a lot. That's is not to say there's isn't a slew of inefficiencies and garbage that goes on in the space industry, but this shit is hard.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Boeing is so incompetent. Imagine your competition being one of the dumbest people on earth, and your still like half a decade behind his company. The fist crewed test was supposed to be in fucking 2017.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Imagine being those astronauts…

“Yeah we’ve been working on this a decade and it’s not safe today, but tomorrow you should be good“

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

They've done two uncrewed test flights, one of which was a success, and a pad abort test but not an in flight abort test.