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#80
by
DanClemmensen
on 20 May, 2022 16:36
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From the OFT-2 mission thread:
... Boeing, after a long and distinguished history of engineering excellence, has badly tarnished their reputation with this program and others over the past few years. How much longer do we continue to give them the benefit of doubt? ...
How long? As long as they keep working to fix it on their own dime.
Firm fixed price, baby!
(Answered here in hope of corralling this general programmatic discussion in one place, even if the latest concerns arise from OFT-2.)
It wont happen, but could Boeing just "give up" and walk away from this contract? If so, are there any penalties involved?
I have absolutely no idea because I have not read the contract. The $4.2 B fixed price contract was signed in 2014. According to NASA OIG, in 2018 "NASA agreed to pay an additional $287.2 million above Boeing's fixed prices to mitigate a perceived 18-month gap in ISS flights anticipated in 2019 and to ensure the contractor continued as a second commercial crew provider, without offering similar opportunities to SpaceX."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Commercial_Crew_Program https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-report-finds-boeing-seat-prices-are-60-higher-than-spacex/If that $287 M was actually paid, I would hope that Boeing is obligated to pay it back. However, it might be cleaner to just allow Boeing to walk away, avoiding never-ending negotiation and litigation. As an American citizen, I hope Boeing gets its act together and returns to being an excellent engineering company, and I don't think a contentious divorce would help.
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#81
by
ZachS09
on 20 May, 2022 16:36
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From the OFT-2 mission thread:
... Boeing, after a long and distinguished history of engineering excellence, has badly tarnished their reputation with this program and others over the past few years. How much longer do we continue to give them the benefit of doubt? ...
How long? As long as they keep working to fix it on their own dime.
Firm fixed price, baby!
(Answered here in hope of corralling this general programmatic discussion in one place, even if the latest concerns arise from OFT-2.)
True in general, but there are some additional issues:
--The most basic: we need a second operational CCP spacecraft and we don't have it.
--NASA is incurring additional costs for salaries and facilities
--Boeing had exactly 8 Atlas Vs allocated, enough for OFT-2, CFT, and Starliner 1 through Starliner 6. If OFT-3 is needed, they are forced to qualify Starliner on Vulcan (or something). They would have needed this anyway to do any non-NASA flights, but now they would need it for the last NASA flight. I guess (no actual info) that the NASA flights are more profitable and are needed to keep Starliner profitable or reduce the loss.
I don’t want to believe there will be an OFT-3.
I have a high hunch they’ll pull off all the planned mission objectives even with those failed thrusters.
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#82
by
SpeakertoAnimals
on 20 May, 2022 16:40
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Looks like someone's camera took an unexpected flight.
I hope that isn't a thruster from Starliner.
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#83
by
kdhilliard
on 20 May, 2022 16:56
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Looks like someone's camera took an unexpected flight.
Mentioning @LaunchPhoto aka Ben Cooper implies An Tran thought it was a camera, but both Cooper and John Kraus disagree in their replies. Tory Bruno's "Ouch" was likely in the context of thinking it was a camera.
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#84
by
nicp
on 20 May, 2022 17:39
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Is the thruster issue known to be a hardware fault? Could it be, for example, an overly conservative thermal limit in software?
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#85
by
kdhilliard
on 20 May, 2022 17:43
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Is the thruster issue known to be a hardware fault? Could it be, for example, an overly conservative thermal limit in software?
They didn't know as of last night's
presser.
(7:20) We've got to do a little bit more work to figure out why they failed off.
(17:18) [Re the 12 aft-facing OMAC thrusters] ... ten of them are working just fine. These other two, we'll just have to look at what happened and try to figure out, is it instrumentation? Did the commands get out to the thrusters? Was there something else going on with the thrusters?
Two hours ago Jeff Foust tweeted: "Boeing tells me they’ll have an OFT-2 mission update soon."
So perhaps we will learn more.
It is unfortunate that these thrusters are on the service module and will not be recovered for ground inspection.
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#86
by
Jim
on 20 May, 2022 18:04
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Two failures point to a system problem instead of a single-sample failure. What is the relationship between these thrusters and the valves that failed last August, other than being on the same spacecraft?
Not really. Could be just too tight band on system monitoring software.
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#87
by
Jim
on 20 May, 2022 18:05
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Face the Facts Folks...Boeing has build a Ford Edsel!
far from it
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#88
by
DanClemmensen
on 20 May, 2022 18:17
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Two failures point to a system problem instead of a single-sample failure. What is the relationship between these thrusters and the valves that failed last August, other than being on the same spacecraft?
Not really. Could be just too tight band on system monitoring software.
Yep. That would be a system problem in the software or in the specification as opposed to a design problem in hardware or any of hundreds of other things. My point is that if it affects two thrusters, then it's less likely to be single defects in each of the two thrusters.
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#89
by
Jim
on 20 May, 2022 18:17
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Comparisons to other vehicles with a bad thruster are missing the point here.
Two thrusters failing at the same time points to a system issue, not simply a "bad thruster".
Not really. There are many reasons that it wouldn't be.
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#90
by
litton4
on 20 May, 2022 18:19
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As I recall, Dragon had thruster problems in it's early flights....
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#91
by
deadman1204
on 20 May, 2022 18:26
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Comparisons to other vehicles with a bad thruster are missing the point here.
Two thrusters failing at the same time points to a system issue, not simply a "bad thruster".
Not really. There are many reasons that it wouldn't be.
True, its pure speculation on my part. I'm just troubled that the issue occurred twice.
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#92
by
freddo411
on 20 May, 2022 18:33
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In reference to the issues that Starliner is having, I think that concern about the design is justified. However, I would point out that having the expectation that the design display perfection on the first or second flight is a *GREATER* failure that whatever the technical issue is.
It is foolish to believe that complex spacecraft will perform perfect without a number of test flights to work out the bugs. One flight is way, way, way to few. Starliner is now on flight number two. Two flights is also too low.
NASA can contribute to fixing these false expectations by setting requirements for future vehicles to fly enough (unmanned) missions to develop and demonstrate reliability.
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#93
by
DanClemmensen
on 20 May, 2022 18:38
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As I recall, Dragon had thruster problems in it's early flights....
So did the Wright brothers. Why is this relevant? This OFT (Orbital Flight
Test) is , well, a test, and this thread is supposed to be about this test. Things fail during tests sometimes. I'd like to hear about this test and it's consequences.
I think the Nauka module is much more relevant right now. It docked to ISS last summer and it's thrusters failed "on" due to a software problem, throwing ISS badly out of proper orientation. I would think NASA, et. al., would worry about a thruster failure of any type when a spacecraft is near the ISS. Fail "off" is as dangerous as fail "on" if it happens at just the wrong time. Yes, I know the current known failure did not affect Starliner's RCS, so maybe the professionals at NASA will conclude that the risk is minimal or non-existent.
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#94
by
Paul Moir
on 20 May, 2022 18:39
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#95
by
russianhalo117
on 20 May, 2022 18:44
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Two failures point to a system problem instead of a single-sample failure. What is the relationship between these thrusters and the valves that failed last August, other than being on the same spacecraft?
none because the two events used different service modules.
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#96
by
Jim
on 20 May, 2022 19:02
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Fail "off" is as dangerous as fail "on" if it happens at just the wrong time.
No, it isn't. There is redundancy just like what worked during the orbit raising.
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#97
by
Robert_the_Doll
on 20 May, 2022 19:20
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Boeing appears to be going live soon with rendezvous and docking coverage:
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#98
by
thirtyone
on 20 May, 2022 20:38
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A bit late to the discussion, but I'm really happy with all the detailed views with spacecraft tracking! Guessing someone figured out space fans would be happier with more info. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this might be the most instrumentation data I've seen livestreamed out of any space vehicle.
Re: thrusters, if this is within their design for redundancy and margins, then it's not bad for a first flight, though obviously they should attempt to correct the issue (and hopefully it was a reasonable problem and not an unreasonable problem, e.g. FOD, poor processes). In the interest of encouraging lower cost spaceflight, part of the reason some other vendors like SpaceX save $$$ is that they prefer redundant design over individually high reliability parts when those parts are exceedingly expensive. The approach for onboard computers for Dragon has been exactly that, redundancy over individual reliability. If you've listened in to all the progress reports, their computers, for example, there have been reasonably frequent individual computer failures, and they have increased redundancy over time in order to compensate.
The recent valve failure obviously didn't really have much redundancy, so from a launch reliability (not safety necessarily) perspective it was quite a failure.
The original software had no meaningful redundancy wrt MET, and in fact a failure wasn't realized for many minutes despite the system being grossly broken.
And the parachute failure did have redundancy, though the root cause could have been indicative of other systemic issues.
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#99
by
kdhilliard
on 20 May, 2022 22:05
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Here is a still from 3 seconds into the
twitter video showing Starliner's thruster firing for Inbound Fly-around Maneuver 1. What are the two large/bright dots flying outward?
I know that with boosters the answer is always, "It's just ice! (or oxygen snow)," but what are we seeing here? I'd have thought that by this point all of the RCS thrusters would have already been test tired, and we wouldn't be seeing their covers flying away, but not knowing any better, that's what I'd guess.
Edited to add: Then again ...
Flapping visible on the top doghouse when the thrusters there fire: they are remnants of the rain covers for the orifices. According to PAO, doesn't matter if they're there or not there. Seems like they stuck them in too much (nominally?).