Commercial Crew - Discussion Thread 3

[su27k]

Saw this mentioned on nasawatch but it looks like the other articles missed it, from the OIG report:

NASA’s crew access analysis also did not include the five Soyuz seats the Agency was planning to purchase from Boeing for flights in 2017 through 2019. However, HEOMD officials knew in November 2016—one month before the CCP crew access analysis was finalized—that Boeing would be submitting another proposal for Soyuz seats to fill the crew access gap after the last Soyuz mission returned in May 2019.45 These seats, along with others already purchased from Roscosmos, provided uninterrupted crew access through November 2019 and provided the ISS Program redundancies without paying extra for shorter production lead times for four Boeing crewed missions. Five days after NASA committed to pay $287.2 million in price increases for four commercial crew missions, Boeing submitted an official proposal to sell NASA up to five Soyuz seats for $373.5 million for missions during the same time period. In total, Boeing received $660.7 million above the fixed prices set in the CCtCap pricing tables to pay for an accelerated production timetable for four crew missions and five Soyuz seats.

This looks really bad, basically both NASA and Boeing knew Boeing was already planning to sell NASA 5 Soyuz seats which can fill the gap, yet NASA agreed to pay Boeing $287.2M so that Boeing can fill the gap using Starliner. Then just 5 days after paying Boeing $287.2M for Starliner to fill the gap, NASA spent another $373.5M to buy the 5 Soyuz seats from the Boeing to fill the gap, again(!)

[ncb1397]

Saw this mentioned on nasawatch but it looks like the other articles missed it, from the OIG report:

NASA’s crew access analysis also did not include the five Soyuz seats the Agency was planning to purchase from Boeing for flights in 2017 through 2019. However, HEOMD officials knew in November 2016—one month before the CCP crew access analysis was finalized—that Boeing would be submitting another proposal for Soyuz seats to fill the crew access gap after the last Soyuz mission returned in May 2019.45 These seats, along with others already purchased from Roscosmos, provided uninterrupted crew access through November 2019 and provided the ISS Program redundancies without paying extra for shorter production lead times for four Boeing crewed missions. Five days after NASA committed to pay $287.2 million in price increases for four commercial crew missions, Boeing submitted an official proposal to sell NASA up to five Soyuz seats for $373.5 million for missions during the same time period. In total, Boeing received $660.7 million above the fixed prices set in the CCtCap pricing tables to pay for an accelerated production timetable for four crew missions and five Soyuz seats.

This looks really bad, basically both NASA and Boeing knew Boeing was already planning to sell NASA 5 Soyuz seats which can fill the gap, yet NASA agreed to pay Boeing $287.2M so that Boeing can fill the gap using Starliner. Then just 5 days after paying Boeing $287.2M for Starliner to fill the gap, NASA spent another $373.5M to buy the 5 Soyuz seats from the Boeing to fill the gap, again(!)

They were also concerned that there could be a problem with Soyuz after a Soyuz Progress vehicle failed. So, Soyuz flights weren't guaranteed in that time period. The 18 month gap was seen as occurring from the beginning of 2019 to the middle of 2020. In fact, there was a non-fatal launch failure with Soyuz right before that, in October 2018 that would have likely grounded Soyuz for American astronauts for an extended period had it been a LOC event.

[woods170]

Saw this mentioned on nasawatch but it looks like the other articles missed it, from the OIG report:

NASA’s crew access analysis also did not include the five Soyuz seats the Agency was planning to purchase from Boeing for flights in 2017 through 2019. However, HEOMD officials knew in November 2016—one month before the CCP crew access analysis was finalized—that Boeing would be submitting another proposal for Soyuz seats to fill the crew access gap after the last Soyuz mission returned in May 2019.45 These seats, along with others already purchased from Roscosmos, provided uninterrupted crew access through November 2019 and provided the ISS Program redundancies without paying extra for shorter production lead times for four Boeing crewed missions. Five days after NASA committed to pay $287.2 million in price increases for four commercial crew missions, Boeing submitted an official proposal to sell NASA up to five Soyuz seats for $373.5 million for missions during the same time period. In total, Boeing received $660.7 million above the fixed prices set in the CCtCap pricing tables to pay for an accelerated production timetable for four crew missions and five Soyuz seats.

This looks really bad, basically both NASA and Boeing knew Boeing was already planning to sell NASA 5 Soyuz seats which can fill the gap, yet NASA agreed to pay Boeing $287.2M so that Boeing can fill the gap using Starliner. Then just 5 days after paying Boeing $287.2M for Starliner to fill the gap, NASA spent another $373.5M to buy the 5 Soyuz seats from the Boeing to fill the gap, again(!)

Yes, this is the very reason why OIG concludes that NASA overpaid Boeing for preventing a gap in access to ISS. The additional $287 million which NASA paid to Boeing was largely unnecessary.

[woods170]

Saw this mentioned on nasawatch but it looks like the other articles missed it, from the OIG report:

NASA’s crew access analysis also did not include the five Soyuz seats the Agency was planning to purchase from Boeing for flights in 2017 through 2019. However, HEOMD officials knew in November 2016—one month before the CCP crew access analysis was finalized—that Boeing would be submitting another proposal for Soyuz seats to fill the crew access gap after the last Soyuz mission returned in May 2019.45 These seats, along with others already purchased from Roscosmos, provided uninterrupted crew access through November 2019 and provided the ISS Program redundancies without paying extra for shorter production lead times for four Boeing crewed missions. Five days after NASA committed to pay $287.2 million in price increases for four commercial crew missions, Boeing submitted an official proposal to sell NASA up to five Soyuz seats for $373.5 million for missions during the same time period. In total, Boeing received $660.7 million above the fixed prices set in the CCtCap pricing tables to pay for an accelerated production timetable for four crew missions and five Soyuz seats.

This looks really bad, basically both NASA and Boeing knew Boeing was already planning to sell NASA 5 Soyuz seats which can fill the gap, yet NASA agreed to pay Boeing $287.2M so that Boeing can fill the gap using Starliner. Then just 5 days after paying Boeing $287.2M for Starliner to fill the gap, NASA spent another $373.5M to buy the 5 Soyuz seats from the Boeing to fill the gap, again(!)

They were also concerned that there could be a problem with Soyuz after a Soyuz Progress vehicle failed. So, Soyuz flights weren't guaranteed in that time period. The 18 month gap was seen as occurring from the beginning of 2019 to the middle of 2020. In fact, there was a non-fatal launch failure with Soyuz right before that, in October 2018 that would have likely grounded Soyuz for American astronauts for an extended period had it been a LOC event.

The fact that this "concern" led NASA to pay Boeing $287 million - for closing a theoretical gap - goes to show that NASA had absolutely no clue about the robustness of the Soyuz system and how fast Russia gets back to flying. Had NASA bothered to review the previous 40 years of Soyuz and Progress operations than NASA would have known that generally the Russians resume flying within a few months.

The Soyuz T-10A and MS-10 missions have demonstrated the robustness of the Soyuz LAS. Several other missions suffered separtion failures upon reentry but the sheer robustness of the Soyuz system prevented LOC. Extended gaps, such as happened in US spaceflight when Challenger and Columbia happened, simply do not exist in Russia.

Most recent examples:
- Progress M-12M (2011): Stand down of only 2 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Progress MS-27M (2015): Stand down of only 2.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Progress MS (2016): Stand down of only 2.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Soyuz MS-10 (2018): Stand down of barely 1.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.

Even the spectacular failure of Soyuz T10A in 1983, which resulted in the only real-life pad abort in history, had only limited impact: stand down of 5.5 months between the on-pad explosion and resumption of flight.
Stand downs of 2 years and longer are a US problem. NASA made the mistake of projecting a NASA metric on the Russian spaceflight program.

[meberbs]

Here is a relevant job listing example:

The vehicle engineering team tackles space exploration’s toughest problems through the development of our reusable launch vehicles (Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship) and spacecraft (Crew Dragon). Currently responsible for delivering satellites into orbit and cargo to the ISS, these vehicles will be instrumental in extending humanity’s reach to the moon, Mars and beyond.

https://boards.greenhouse.io/spacex/jobs/4438066002?gh_jid=4438066002

What is the relevance that you claim? Your bolding is absurdly misleading, as the Falcon 9 and heavy mentioned just before your bolding are what currently deliver satellites to orbit and cargo to the ISS of the listed things.

[TripleSeven]

Saw this mentioned on nasawatch but it looks like the other articles missed it, from the OIG report:

NASA’s crew access analysis also did not include the five Soyuz seats the Agency was planning to purchase from Boeing for flights in 2017 through 2019. However, HEOMD officials knew in November 2016—one month before the CCP crew access analysis was finalized—that Boeing would be submitting another proposal for Soyuz seats to fill the crew access gap after the last Soyuz mission returned in May 2019.45 These seats, along with others already purchased from Roscosmos, provided uninterrupted crew access through November 2019 and provided the ISS Program redundancies without paying extra for shorter production lead times for four Boeing crewed missions. Five days after NASA committed to pay $287.2 million in price increases for four commercial crew missions, Boeing submitted an official proposal to sell NASA up to five Soyuz seats for $373.5 million for missions during the same time period. In total, Boeing received $660.7 million above the fixed prices set in the CCtCap pricing tables to pay for an accelerated production timetable for four crew missions and five Soyuz seats.

This looks really bad, basically both NASA and Boeing knew Boeing was already planning to sell NASA 5 Soyuz seats which can fill the gap, yet NASA agreed to pay Boeing $287.2M so that Boeing can fill the gap using Starliner. Then just 5 days after paying Boeing $287.2M for Starliner to fill the gap, NASA spent another $373.5M to buy the 5 Soyuz seats from the Boeing to fill the gap, again(!)

They were also concerned that there could be a problem with Soyuz after a Soyuz Progress vehicle failed. So, Soyuz flights weren't guaranteed in that time period. The 18 month gap was seen as occurring from the beginning of 2019 to the middle of 2020. In fact, there was a non-fatal launch failure with Soyuz right before that, in October 2018 that would have likely grounded Soyuz for American astronauts for an extended period had it been a LOC event.

The fact that this "concern" led NASA to pay Boeing $287 million - for closing a theoretical gap - goes to show that NASA had absolutely no clue about the robustness of the Soyuz system and how fast Russia gets back to flying. Had NASA bothered to review the previous 40 years of Soyuz and Progress operations than NASA would have known that generally the Russians resume flying within a few months.

The Soyuz T-10A and MS-10 missions have demonstrated the robustness of the Soyuz LAS. Several other missions suffered separtion failures upon reentry but the sheer robustness of the Soyuz system prevented LOC. Extended gaps, such as happened in US spaceflight when Challenger and Columbia happened, simply do not exist in Russia.

Most recent examples:
- Progress M-12M (2011): Stand down of only 2 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Progress MS-27M (2015): Stand down of only 2.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Progress MS (2016): Stand down of only 2.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Soyuz MS-10 (2018): Stand down of barely 1.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.

Even the spectacular failure of Soyuz T10A in 1983, which resulted in the only real-life pad abort in history, had only limited impact: stand down of 5.5 months between the on-pad explosion and resumption of flight.
Stand downs of 2 years and longer are a US problem. NASA made the mistake of projecting a NASA metric on the Russian spaceflight program.

Soyuz is robust only because Soviet/Russian safety systems are minimal

[tyrred]

Saw this mentioned on nasawatch but it looks like the other articles missed it, from the OIG report:

NASA’s crew access analysis also did not include the five Soyuz seats the Agency was planning to purchase from Boeing for flights in 2017 through 2019. However, HEOMD officials knew in November 2016—one month before the CCP crew access analysis was finalized—that Boeing would be submitting another proposal for Soyuz seats to fill the crew access gap after the last Soyuz mission returned in May 2019.45 These seats, along with others already purchased from Roscosmos, provided uninterrupted crew access through November 2019 and provided the ISS Program redundancies without paying extra for shorter production lead times for four Boeing crewed missions. Five days after NASA committed to pay $287.2 million in price increases for four commercial crew missions, Boeing submitted an official proposal to sell NASA up to five Soyuz seats for $373.5 million for missions during the same time period. In total, Boeing received $660.7 million above the fixed prices set in the CCtCap pricing tables to pay for an accelerated production timetable for four crew missions and five Soyuz seats.

This looks really bad, basically both NASA and Boeing knew Boeing was already planning to sell NASA 5 Soyuz seats which can fill the gap, yet NASA agreed to pay Boeing $287.2M so that Boeing can fill the gap using Starliner. Then just 5 days after paying Boeing $287.2M for Starliner to fill the gap, NASA spent another $373.5M to buy the 5 Soyuz seats from the Boeing to fill the gap, again(!)

They were also concerned that there could be a problem with Soyuz after a Soyuz Progress vehicle failed. So, Soyuz flights weren't guaranteed in that time period. The 18 month gap was seen as occurring from the beginning of 2019 to the middle of 2020. In fact, there was a non-fatal launch failure with Soyuz right before that, in October 2018 that would have likely grounded Soyuz for American astronauts for an extended period had it been a LOC event.

The fact that this "concern" led NASA to pay Boeing $287 million - for closing a theoretical gap - goes to show that NASA had absolutely no clue about the robustness of the Soyuz system and how fast Russia gets back to flying. Had NASA bothered to review the previous 40 years of Soyuz and Progress operations than NASA would have known that generally the Russians resume flying within a few months.

The Soyuz T-10A and MS-10 missions have demonstrated the robustness of the Soyuz LAS. Several other missions suffered separtion failures upon reentry but the sheer robustness of the Soyuz system prevented LOC. Extended gaps, such as happened in US spaceflight when Challenger and Columbia happened, simply do not exist in Russia.

Most recent examples:
- Progress M-12M (2011): Stand down of only 2 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Progress MS-27M (2015): Stand down of only 2.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Progress MS (2016): Stand down of only 2.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Soyuz MS-10 (2018): Stand down of barely 1.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.

Even the spectacular failure of Soyuz T10A in 1983, which resulted in the only real-life pad abort in history, had only limited impact: stand down of 5.5 months between the on-pad explosion and resumption of flight.
Stand downs of 2 years and longer are a US problem. NASA made the mistake of projecting a NASA metric on the Russian spaceflight program.

Soyuz is robust only because Soviet/Russian safety systems are minimal

How so? Recent Russian safety system saved the crew. And it was present, at the moment needed. Unlike a couple Shuttle safety systems, that did not even exist, at the moment needed.

[Ken the Bin]

Boeing has issued this statement today:

Boeing Statement Regarding OIG Report on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program

ARLINGTON, Va., Nov. 18, 2019 – In response to the Nov. 14 Office of the Inspector General report titled “NASA’s Management of Crew Transportation to the International Space Station,” Boeing today issued the following statement:

“We strongly disagree with the report’s conclusions about CST-100 Starliner pricing and readiness, and we owe it to the space community and the American public to share the facts the Inspector General [IG] missed,” said Jim Chilton, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space and Launch. “Each member of the Boeing team has a personal stake in the safety, quality and integrity of what we offer our customers, and since Day One, the Starliner team has approached this program with a commitment to design, develop and launch a vehicle that we and NASA can be proud of.”

Specifically, Boeing offers the following responses to the main assertions:

Boeing’s commitment to commercial transportation to ISS

-- Boeing has made significant investments in the Commercial Crew program, and we are fully committed to flying the CST-100 Starliner and keeping the International Space Station crewed and operational. Any implication that we ever wavered in our participation in Commercial Crew is false.

“NASA overpaid Boeing to prepare for multiple crewed missions”

-- Through fair and open negotiations with NASA in a competitive environment, we offered single-mission pricing for post-certification missions (PCMs) 3-6, thus enabling additional flexibility and schedule resiliency to enhance future mission readiness.

-- This single-mission pricing for PCM 3-6 was included in the pricing table in the original contract. That original pricing table remains unchanged.

-- Contrary to the conclusion in the IG report, Boeing contends that the benefits in shorter lead time and flexibility in adjusting launch dates are well worth the higher price in the table.

-- We cut lead time to launch by two-thirds and doubled the launch rate for an overall price increase of only 5%.

-- Boeing assumed more up-front financial risk and is helping NASA with critical decisions key to optimizing future ISS operations.

-- Boeing now holds all the up-front mission costs, which NASA will not have to pay until after each PCM is officially ordered and given the Authority to Proceed (ATP).

$90 million per seat?

-- Boeing rejects the average seat price assessment in the IG report.

-- Boeing will fly the equivalent of a fifth passenger in cargo for NASA, so the per-seat pricing should be considered based on five seats rather than four.

-- For proprietary, competitive reasons Boeing does not disclose specific pricing information, but we are confident our average seat pricing to NASA is below the figure cited.

-- The report also fails to mention Starliner's superior value:

-- Starliner provides a fifth passenger seat or more cargo capacity at the customer’s direction.

-- NASA crews have full vehicle control in all phases of spaceflight, including backup manual capability.

-- Starliner flies on the most reliable lifter in the business, an Atlas V modified for human spaceflight safety by people with actual experience in the domain.

-- The spacecraft touches back down to Earth on land, not a splashdown, something Boeing considers much safer.

-- Starliner astronauts train in Houston with Boeing and NASA working side-by-side in the former space shuttle and ISS training facilities.

Boeing vs. the competition

-- Because of our history in spaceflight, we understood how difficult this program would be on a short timeline, and priced our offering accordingly.

-- Boeing presented a development bid based on creating a safe and reliable orbital crewed space vehicle from scratch, while positioning our pricing to be sustainable long-term.

-- By contrast, our competitor offered a crewed vessel based on a cargo vehicle designed for human rating, whose development had been funded for several years by NASA on a predecessor contract. That cargo vehicle had already flown multiple times at the time of the Commercial Crew awards.

-- Boeing started development much later but attempted to achieve the same schedule, which is a more expensive development approach.

-- Starliner development and flight prices incorporate the rigorous design, test and verification approach we proposed – leaving no stone unturned to ensure we deliver a quality vehicle and service to our customer.

-- Change requests are considered case by case, but generally use a commercial pricing approach, which we see as aligned with NASA’s policy objectives for the program.

-- NASA remains the single buyer in this market, and therefore enjoys significant buying power, tempered only by their policy objectives.

-- Through accepting our bid, NASA agreed we would be delivering them significant value with a spacecraft that meets the original requirement of landing on land, can expand to five passengers, and allows positive control by NASA’s flight crews in all spaceflight phases.

“Technical challenges continue to impact the Commercial Crew program schedule”

-- We have made excellent progress on all outstanding technical challenges since the OIG began collecting information for this report.

-- We have retired nearly all possible risk ahead of our uncrewed and crewed flight tests. We are confident that we have designed and built a safe, quality system that meets NASA’s requirements.

-- In 2019, we completed:

-- Service module hot fire test, validating the performance of our propulsion system in both nominal and contingency scenarios.

-- All parachute qualification tests without a single test failure, demonstrating the resiliency of our parachute system even in dual-fault scenarios.

-- Discussions with NASA about our system led to our mutual agreement to perform even more tests and analysis, which validated our system as designed.

-- We are confident in the safety of our system, and we have proven through extensive testing that we have a robust design that has consistently performed above requirements, even in dual-fault scenarios.

-- Pad Abort Test, which was Starliner’s first flight test and a near-flawless performance of our integrated propulsion and flight control systems in an abort case.

Certification

-- We are working with our customer to achieve crew certification as soon as possible, but safety is our guiding principle and we will not fly our Crew Flight Test (CFT) before we are ready.

-- Orbital Flight Test (OFT) is currently targeted for Dec. 17, and following a successful flight, we are well positioned to fly our first crew in early 2020.

-- Certification depends on the timing and success of both of those flights.

-- We are more than 99% done with Verification Closure Notices (VCNs) for OFT.

-- There are a smaller number of CFT VCNs, and those are mostly reliant on OFT and Pad Abort Test data, the latter of which we are working on submitting right now.

# # #

[chrisking0997]

Saw this mentioned on nasawatch but it looks like the other articles missed it, from the OIG report:

NASA’s crew access analysis also did not include the five Soyuz seats the Agency was planning to purchase from Boeing for flights in 2017 through 2019. However, HEOMD officials knew in November 2016—one month before the CCP crew access analysis was finalized—that Boeing would be submitting another proposal for Soyuz seats to fill the crew access gap after the last Soyuz mission returned in May 2019.45 These seats, along with others already purchased from Roscosmos, provided uninterrupted crew access through November 2019 and provided the ISS Program redundancies without paying extra for shorter production lead times for four Boeing crewed missions. Five days after NASA committed to pay $287.2 million in price increases for four commercial crew missions, Boeing submitted an official proposal to sell NASA up to five Soyuz seats for $373.5 million for missions during the same time period. In total, Boeing received $660.7 million above the fixed prices set in the CCtCap pricing tables to pay for an accelerated production timetable for four crew missions and five Soyuz seats.

This looks really bad, basically both NASA and Boeing knew Boeing was already planning to sell NASA 5 Soyuz seats which can fill the gap, yet NASA agreed to pay Boeing $287.2M so that Boeing can fill the gap using Starliner. Then just 5 days after paying Boeing $287.2M for Starliner to fill the gap, NASA spent another $373.5M to buy the 5 Soyuz seats from the Boeing to fill the gap, again(!)

They were also concerned that there could be a problem with Soyuz after a Soyuz Progress vehicle failed. So, Soyuz flights weren't guaranteed in that time period. The 18 month gap was seen as occurring from the beginning of 2019 to the middle of 2020. In fact, there was a non-fatal launch failure with Soyuz right before that, in October 2018 that would have likely grounded Soyuz for American astronauts for an extended period had it been a LOC event.

The fact that this "concern" led NASA to pay Boeing $287 million - for closing a theoretical gap - goes to show that NASA had absolutely no clue about the robustness of the Soyuz system and how fast Russia gets back to flying. Had NASA bothered to review the previous 40 years of Soyuz and Progress operations than NASA would have known that generally the Russians resume flying within a few months.

The Soyuz T-10A and MS-10 missions have demonstrated the robustness of the Soyuz LAS. Several other missions suffered separtion failures upon reentry but the sheer robustness of the Soyuz system prevented LOC. Extended gaps, such as happened in US spaceflight when Challenger and Columbia happened, simply do not exist in Russia.

Most recent examples:
- Progress M-12M (2011): Stand down of only 2 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Progress MS-27M (2015): Stand down of only 2.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Progress MS (2016): Stand down of only 2.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.
- Soyuz MS-10 (2018): Stand down of barely 1.5 months between launch failure and resumption of flight.

Even the spectacular failure of Soyuz T10A in 1983, which resulted in the only real-life pad abort in history, had only limited impact: stand down of 5.5 months between the on-pad explosion and resumption of flight.
Stand downs of 2 years and longer are a US problem. NASA made the mistake of projecting a NASA metric on the Russian spaceflight program.

everything Im seeing in the OIG report indicates all this gap analysis and payments happened prior to the Soyuz abort...I dont see how it led to the "concern" noted.  Further, surely you dont believe NASA has no idea about how the Russians handle an RTF or the robustness of their systems.  Youre throwing them under the bus for the wrong reasons

[Kansan52]

"-- Boeing started development much later but attempted to achieve the same schedule, which is a more expensive development approach."

I disagree with this strongly. They had worked on capsules for the Orion program and the Bigelow program. If anything, they had already started Starliner before Commercial Crew began.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Boeing are consistent in saying that one parachute failing to deploy on the recent abort test is not a parachute failure ...

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1196475981357338625

Boeing senior VP Jim Chilton, in an email to employees, says SpaceX "has not achieved the same level of success" as Boeing's Starliner astronaut system.

Attached Boeing comment about SpaceX’s parachute issues from:

https://twitter.com/wapodavenport/status/1196475220674170880

[whitelancer64]

-- Boeing will fly the equivalent of a fifth passenger in cargo for NASA, so the per-seat pricing should be considered based on five seats rather than four.

I literally LOL'd.

Both providers have removed seats to accommodate cargo, so this would apply equally well to SpaceX.

[TripleSeven]

How so? Recent Russian safety system saved the crew. And it was present, at the moment needed. Unlike a couple Shuttle safety systems, that did not even exist, at the moment needed.

Safety is more then just systems, it is the SYSTEM in which the machines are operated in

Soviet/Russian systems are robust due to 1) their maturity and 2) their reliance on mostly mechanical/electrical systems with little reliance on software and 3) backup systems or abort systems that are similar in nature to 1 and 2.

what is weak in the Russian space program and Russian life in general (with some exceptions) is a system in which failures are analyzed past the failure itself and the process changed accordingly.  an example. 

1.  hole drilled in wrong place, 2) no mention of hole drilled in wrong place, 3) hole patch breaks, 4) problem occurs 5) fix problem, 6 find person who drilled hole in wrong place 7) replace person

end of process

There is no real effort to find out "why" the person drilled hole in wrong place.  Was it 1) training, 2) fatigue, 4) process or 5) a personal human factor (booze, sloth whatever)

Until proven otherwise most safety analysis starts with the basic assumption that the person did not intend to make the mistake but somehow events lead them to it...(the anyone could have made this mistake theory) and if that event or what we call error chain, is not corrected it could happen in that or some other form again.  The Russian space agency, at least when I was tied in with them and based on what I hear from my friends at JSC is not very good at that.

This is a function of culture in that "side" of the world.  From Russia down through Pakistan, India, across to China (but not so much in Japan which is very western in that way) its common.

It was common iin NASA during the shuttle era and was responsible for 14 deaths.  It was not the systems failure that killed people...it was the system in which the systems were operated, that did it.  It was a system where error was detected in both people and mechanical things...and the system would not allow questions to be raised as to why the error was occurring or its consequences.  Today we call this CRM, crew resource management...And I think it is one reason that NASA is like they are about commercial crew. 

They have seen this error chain on both operators and are concerned how both operators are responding to it.  The only really good example of commercial ops that you can see, right now at least, good CRM is over at Virgin.  They took the crash to heart. 

When Vladimir P decided that Aeroflot was going to be a profit center and appeal to western cash part of the transformation was bringing in heavy Boeing and Airbus talent.  They hired one of the best safety guys iin the US, away from Boeing and gave him more or  less carte blanche to completely reshape the safety system there...and today it is one of the best in the world.  its unique in Russia

[TripleSeven]

Boeing are consistent in saying that one parachute failing to deploy on the recent abort test is not a parachute failure ...

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1196475981357338625

Boeing senior VP Jim Chilton, in an email to employees, says SpaceX "has not achieved the same level of success" as Boeing's Starliner astronaut system.

Attached Boeing comment about SpaceX’s parachute issues from:

https://twitter.com/wapodavenport/status/1196475220674170880

in my view both are correct.  Boeing has never on a corporate level considered quitting Commercial crew.  I would like to see what proof there is for the opposite opinion. 

  As for the issue with the chutes...from a safety standpoint they are correct. 

[FutureSpaceTourist]

twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1196498396359598080

NASA said it would conduct an "invasive" safety review of SpaceX and Boeing last year.

SpaceX asked NASA to cover $5 million in costs.
Boeing asked NASA to cover $25 million.

NASA balked at Boeing's cost and went with "a far more limited paper audit:"

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1196498757854076928

@wapodavenport reports that "NASA officials were more concerned about SpaceX," with one official saying “Boeing didn’t do anything to trigger a deeper dive."

[envy887]

"We never had a parachute test failure".

Forgetting to pin one of your chutes on a test has exactly the same result as a chute or line failing. I don't care what you call it.

[TripleSeven]

"We never had a parachute test failure".

Forgetting to pin one of your chutes on a test has exactly the same result as a chute or line failing. I don't care what you call it.

in the short term (the chute did not deploy) yes, in the long term no.  a parachute failure would require some understanding of why it failed, if it is design or manufacturing flaw extensive rework and more testing. 

this requires neither. 

[dlapine]

"We never had a parachute test failure".

Forgetting to pin one of your chutes on a test has exactly the same result as a chute or line failing. I don't care what you call it.

in the short term (the chute did not deploy) yes, in the long term no.  a parachute failure would require some understanding of why it failed, if it is design or manufacturing flaw extensive rework and more testing. 

this requires neither.

You are correct in that it is neither of those, but it a process failure, and the amount of investigation into that has been, um, cursory. At least as to what was reported, and how quickly it was resolved.

[whitelancer64]

"We never had a parachute test failure".

Forgetting to pin one of your chutes on a test has exactly the same result as a chute or line failing. I don't care what you call it.

in the short term (the chute did not deploy) yes, in the long term no.  a parachute failure would require some understanding of why it failed, if it is design or manufacturing flaw extensive rework and more testing. 

this requires neither.

You are correct in that it is neither of those, but it a process failure, and the amount of investigation into that has been, um, cursory. At least as to what was reported, and how quickly it was resolved.

How much investigation do you think it takes to confirm that a pin was not correctly inserted into a loop? It's not exactly a complex problem.

[TripleSeven]

"We never had a parachute test failure".

Forgetting to pin one of your chutes on a test has exactly the same result as a chute or line failing. I don't care what you call it.

in the short term (the chute did not deploy) yes, in the long term no.  a parachute failure would require some understanding of why it failed, if it is design or manufacturing flaw extensive rework and more testing. 

this requires neither.

You are correct in that it is neither of those, but it a process failure, and the amount of investigation into that has been, um, cursory. At least as to what was reported, and how quickly it was resolved.

Cursory "adjective: cursory

    hasty and therefore not thorough or detail

do you have any evidence of that?  quick does not imply hasty, non thorough or in detail. 

what "quick" would imply is "simple"  ie that the error chain was short and the solution to the process "fix" was relatively easy to come by.  I could name several serious process issues that were solved in minutes in fields from open heart surgery to reactor maintenance to flying to...my five year old daughter not forgetting her cell phone

this is particularly easy to do when there is video evidence of procedures, people are honest about what happened and the safety people are pretty good  No one was fired so ....

the trick then is that you want to go through and see if there are any similar process error possibilities but that is something the safety office completed "at the office".  I bet you the igniter issue for SpaceX took about the same time...

I am told that Virgin after their accident found 9 things and corrected process that were similar to the wing unlocking process...I doubt there are many here.