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The Starliner mission was a test. You wouldn't have 100% confidence that a test would be executed flawlessly. The purpose of the test is to find flaws in the sy

The Starliner mission was a test. You wouldn't have 100% confidence that a test would be executed flawlessly. The purpose of the test is to find flaws in the system, and that's exactly what they did.

philwelch 7y ago
Doing the tests is fine, but Boeing is acting as though the tests were successful when they were not. Between this and the parachute issues from the pad abort test, I think actually approving Starliner for crewed use would constitute normalization of deviance. This is historically how astronauts die.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  They were partially successful, which is a realistic goal. Few things work flawlessly the first or second go, even rocket science. I'm not sure why you're being so binary here. It's also why it wasn't manned, they have to test to work out the kinks. Overall Starliner was a bigger success than not.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    I’m not saying to cancel the thing altogether, just maybe run some more unmanned tests first to make sure.
jonplackett 7y ago
Reminds me of the news coverage of SpaceX’s first landing attempts, where they crashed into the barge and exploded and everyone was like “it’s a failure, it will never work”. Yeah but so much went right. I think it’s just the (well deserved) media narrative Boeing is in now. When you kill hundreds of people and then pretend it wasn’t your fault, you get what’s coming to you.
- khuey 7y ago
  The obvious difference is that SpaceX's landings were secondary objectives and something that nobody had ever done before. Getting in the proper orbit to the ISS was a primary objective for Starliner and something we've been doing for 20 years.
  - Grimm665 7y ago
    I don't know, space is hard and things go wrong. Just because we've done it hundreds of times doesn't mean we should expect perfection.
    - remarkEon 7y ago
      Yes it does? These are known engineering problems with known engineering solutions. The explanation from Boeing was that a timer was set incorrectly. This sounds like a trivial error to me (though I'm not a "rocket scientist" just a "kerbal scientist", I guess, but we've been using timers for a long time afaik to properly manage burns to orbit).
      - mlyle 7y ago
        The procedures and how software systems handle changes to launch time are members of the set of hundreds of thousands of choices made during design and implementation that need to be validated. Yes, they feel like a "silly mistake" but ultimately most things that lead to failure will be in that category.
        ethbro 7y ago
        Or, in other words, getting to space is hard because it requires millions of opportunities for silly mistakes. Most complex engineering projects are hard not because of one thing, but because of the mind-bogglingly large number of things that must all be done correctly. (1 - x) ^ y, where x is the chance of each small mistake and y is the total number of opportunities, doesn't need a very large x, if y is large enough, for things to start looking dicey.
crowbahr 7y ago
Yes but the test was not supposed to be basic orbital insertion, it was supposed to be ISS rendezvous.
- sitkack 7y ago
  Imagine if it had taken out the ISS. Oopsie.
sbuttgereit 7y ago
I"m not completely sure that's the case (and to be fair, I've not been following Starliner closely, so could well be wrong). There are tests to prove out ideas during the course of development, but then there are tests which would perhaps be more accurately called "demonstrations"; where you're not trying to find flaws and refine your designs, but rather prove that you're [insert thing-name you're proving here] actually works the way you are representing it to work. I understood this test to be more in the demonstration category, where Boeing would/should have had very high confidence, but they needed to prove to NASA that their spacecraft worked as advertised. If that's true, it was almost more a test on how much NASA should trust the confidence of the Boeing team than it was a test engineering and manufacture. If that wasn't the character of the test, then I apologize for the distraction.
- FrojoS 7y ago
  You are correct. The SpaceX version of this exact same test was literally called „Demo-1“. Ironically Boeing called it „Boeing Orbital Flight Test“. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Orbital_Flight_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Orbital_Flight_Test
  - camel_gopher 7y ago
    Boeing boefted that one
yardie 7y ago
You're thinking of test, as in pilot. Everyone else is thinking of test, as in drive. I mean there are dramatically different expectations of what you, Boeing, and the public is supposed to believe what happened.
robryan 7y ago
That is fair. When a test fails you would also expect them to repeat the test before putting humans on, we will see if that happens.
- cmiles74 7y ago
  The article in the Washington Post hinted that NASA might not require them to pass this particular test (automated approach to the ISS and docking). "It was unclear whether NASA would require Boeing to fly another test mission without crews onboard before allowing its astronauts to fly in the Starliner. Bridenstine said he wouldn’t rule out a mission with crews onboard, pointing out that the space shuttle had been piloted by astronauts, not computers."[0] While Boeing makes noises about how there's no systemic problem with their ability to write software in general, earlier in the same article NASA comes to their defense by pointing out that if the craft was manned then the test would have been... saved? That seems strong to me but that is word used in the quote. "NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a news conference Friday that the failure would not have been life-threatening had astronauts been onboard. He said that had the spacecraft been crewed, the mission might have been saved. “They are trained to deal with a situation where the automation is not working according to plan,” he said." [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/20/boeing-starliner-launch/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/20/boeing-...
  - bumby 7y ago
    During the post-event interview it was asked if testing docking was a hard requirement for NASA (with the implication the test would have to be redone before acceptance). The answer was no. If NASA wants this to be a new requirement they would likely have to pay extra for it
duelingjello 7y ago
They’ll run remember to run PTP or NTP before launch next time, won’t they?
paulmd 7y ago
This is akin to saying the US Vanguard TV3 launch was a test. Yeah, it was, but it was also a response to their competitor having launched first and better, and a catastrophic failure blows up confidence in your programme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_TV-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_TV-3

The Starliner mission was a test. You wouldn't have 100% confidence that a test would be executed flawlessly. The purpose of the test is to find flaws in the system, and that's exactly what they did.

philwelch 7y ago

Doing the tests is fine, but Boeing is acting as though the tests were successful when they were not. Between this and the parachute issues from the pad abort test, I think actually approving Starliner for crewed use would constitute normalization of deviance. This is historically how astronauts die.

stjohnswarts 7y ago
They were partially successful, which is a realistic goal. Few things work flawlessly the first or second go, even rocket science. I'm not sure why you're being so binary here. It's also why it wasn't manned, they have to test to work out the kinks. Overall Starliner was a bigger success than not.
- philwelch 7y ago
  I’m not saying to cancel the thing altogether, just maybe run some more unmanned tests first to make sure.

jonplackett 7y ago

Reminds me of the news coverage of SpaceX’s first landing attempts, where they crashed into the barge and exploded and everyone was like “it’s a failure, it will never work”. Yeah but so much went right. I think it’s just the (well deserved) media narrative Boeing is in now. When you kill hundreds of people and then pretend it wasn’t your fault, you get what’s coming to you.

khuey 7y ago
The obvious difference is that SpaceX's landings were secondary objectives and something that nobody had ever done before. Getting in the proper orbit to the ISS was a primary objective for Starliner and something we've been doing for 20 years.
- Grimm665 7y ago
  I don't know, space is hard and things go wrong. Just because we've done it hundreds of times doesn't mean we should expect perfection.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    Yes it does? These are known engineering problems with known engineering solutions. The explanation from Boeing was that a timer was set incorrectly. This sounds like a trivial error to me (though I'm not a "rocket scientist" just a "kerbal scientist", I guess, but we've been using timers for a long time afaik to properly manage burns to orbit).
    - mlyle 7y ago
      The procedures and how software systems handle changes to launch time are members of the set of hundreds of thousands of choices made during design and implementation that need to be validated. Yes, they feel like a "silly mistake" but ultimately most things that lead to failure will be in that category.
      - ethbro 7y ago
        Or, in other words, getting to space is hard because it requires millions of opportunities for silly mistakes. Most complex engineering projects are hard not because of one thing, but because of the mind-bogglingly large number of things that must all be done correctly. (1 - x) ^ y, where x is the chance of each small mistake and y is the total number of opportunities, doesn't need a very large x, if y is large enough, for things to start looking dicey.

crowbahr 7y ago

Yes but the test was not supposed to be basic orbital insertion, it was supposed to be ISS rendezvous.

sitkack 7y ago
Imagine if it had taken out the ISS. Oopsie.

sbuttgereit 7y ago

I"m not completely sure that's the case (and to be fair, I've not been following Starliner closely, so could well be wrong). There are tests to prove out ideas during the course of development, but then there are tests which would perhaps be more accurately called "demonstrations"; where you're not trying to find flaws and refine your designs, but rather prove that you're [insert thing-name you're proving here] actually works the way you are representing it to work. I understood this test to be more in the demonstration category, where Boeing would/should have had very high confidence, but they needed to prove to NASA that their spacecraft worked as advertised. If that's true, it was almost more a test on how much NASA should trust the confidence of the Boeing team than it was a test engineering and manufacture. If that wasn't the character of the test, then I apologize for the distraction.

FrojoS 7y ago
You are correct. The SpaceX version of this exact same test was literally called „Demo-1“. Ironically Boeing called it „Boeing Orbital Flight Test“. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Orbital_Flight_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Orbital_Flight_Test
- camel_gopher 7y ago
  Boeing boefted that one

yardie 7y ago

You're thinking of test, as in pilot. Everyone else is thinking of test, as in drive. I mean there are dramatically different expectations of what you, Boeing, and the public is supposed to believe what happened.

robryan 7y ago

That is fair. When a test fails you would also expect them to repeat the test before putting humans on, we will see if that happens.

cmiles74 7y ago
The article in the Washington Post hinted that NASA might not require them to pass this particular test (automated approach to the ISS and docking). "It was unclear whether NASA would require Boeing to fly another test mission without crews onboard before allowing its astronauts to fly in the Starliner. Bridenstine said he wouldn’t rule out a mission with crews onboard, pointing out that the space shuttle had been piloted by astronauts, not computers."[0] While Boeing makes noises about how there's no systemic problem with their ability to write software in general, earlier in the same article NASA comes to their defense by pointing out that if the craft was manned then the test would have been... saved? That seems strong to me but that is word used in the quote. "NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a news conference Friday that the failure would not have been life-threatening had astronauts been onboard. He said that had the spacecraft been crewed, the mission might have been saved. “They are trained to deal with a situation where the automation is not working according to plan,” he said." [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/20/boeing-starliner-launch/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/20/boeing-...
- bumby 7y ago
  During the post-event interview it was asked if testing docking was a hard requirement for NASA (with the implication the test would have to be redone before acceptance). The answer was no. If NASA wants this to be a new requirement they would likely have to pay extra for it

duelingjello 7y ago

They’ll run remember to run PTP or NTP before launch next time, won’t they?

paulmd 7y ago

This is akin to saying the US Vanguard TV3 launch was a test. Yeah, it was, but it was also a response to their competitor having launched first and better, and a catastrophic failure blows up confidence in your programme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_TV-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_TV-3