Boeing Starliner (CST-100) CFT mission discussion thread : June-September 2024

[DanClemmensen]

The ArsTechnica article says:

While the space agency has not said anything publicly, sources say NASA should announce the decision this week. Officials are contemplating moving the Crew-9 mission from its current date of August 18 to September 24, a significant slip.

Crew Dragon has a nominal max mission time of 210 days, and the longest Crew Dragon mission so far is about 200 days. Crew-8 launched on March 4. 200 days from March 4 is September 20. A slip to September 24 would be cutting into the safety margin.  This is particularly bad since if they do want to undock Starliner and send it home empty, then there will be at least a brief period when Crew-8 will be the lifeboat for six crew, not just four, and this will be at precisely the time when an uncrewed Starliner with problematic thrusters and untested control software will be flying near ISS.  the prpbability of something bad happening is quite low, but is higher than I think NASA will like.

In addition to the Crew Dragon timer, we have a potential Starliner timer. Steve Steich told us that the batteries are good for 45 days, but the 45 days start at the first indication that the battery has a problem. Such a problem could in theory happen at any time. If one were to occur before about 10 August, the timing does not work, and NASA would need to decide at that point whether or not to use Dragon instead of Starliner. It's possible in that scenario that the Starliner SW update would not happen before the battery timer runs out, with a worst case of a Starliner that can theoretically never undock. In practice, that 45-day limit is almost certainly arbitrary and there will be enough battery to do the undock for several months, or at least until Starliner runs out of its theoretical max mission time of 210 days some time in December.

[hoku]

Anyone care to continue defending Boeing after this latest news?

"The best part is no part" (i.e. no automatic undocking subroutine)   

[deltaV]

How can it not be able to return autonomously, if Starliner has already done that twice?

Good question. I don't know the answer but here are two guesses.

One possible explanation is maybe their software testing and deployment process is slow so it takes weeks to make any software change whatsoever. If this is the case this is a safety issue since software changes are often needed to respond to hardware failures.

Another possible explanation is Boeing thought they wouldn't need to do automated undocking any more so they deleted the automated undocking code to make their software simpler and easier to maintain. Unless they're truly dysfunctional they still have a copy of the deleted code in their version control system, but to get it working again they'll need to do all the work that they thought they saved by deleting the code earlier, i.e. figuring out how the recovered code should interact with all the other software changes that have been made since the code was deleted, and that takes engineering attention and hence time.

Both explanations involve Boeing cutting corners in ways that may have been consistent with the contract but are not consistent with doing a good job or with Starliner having a future beyond the current contract.

[DanClemmensen]

Anyone care to continue defending Boeing after this latest news?

"The best part is no part" (i.e. no automatic undocking subroutine)   

"The best part is no part" (i.e., no Starliner).

[matthewkantar]

This situation is unbelievable. Nobody at Boeing should be making so much as a peep other than the the reps at NASA news conferences. Boeing biz dev dude popping off? What the heck? 

Edit to add: The press wouldn’t need to ask the same question for a ninth time if they got a straight answer in any of the eight previous forays.

[rcoppola]

It occurs to me that:

Maybe they removed "undocking autonomy" from their flight software because they couldn't develop the algorithm to account for all the potential thruster issues? Otherwise, why would they excise such a function?

[racevedo88]

How can it not be able to return autonomously, if Starliner has already done that twice?

A possibility is that the software cannot account for the malfunctioning thruster

[OTV Booster]

Anyone care to continue defending Boeing after this latest news?

There is plenty of discussion to come if this reporting is correct ( and typically Eric is correct). Remember the 62 bullet checklist from NASA and Boeing to rectify OFT-1? We have never seen the list but between NASA and Boeing and all the debate about software quality and deliverables then you cannot tell me that there was no rule on “gradually incremental smaller changes to deliver a quality product”.
If I were the new Boeing CEO then this would be time to get on the Starliner voice conference and explain “we did wrong, we will get back to proper engineering but not overnight”
Anyway, let’s make sure the astronauts are safe and we’ll read the book later.

Part of the problem is that, in theory, Boeing and the Starliner project already had their come-to-Jesus moment in 2020 when multiple major mission-critical faults were found, and they did a massive code review. Loverro already made his mea culpas for insufficient oversight in 2020. This is supposed to be the result of those reforms, and somehow, we are having this same discussion four years later!

I don’t know the solution, or even if there is one.  NASA and Boeing have some incredibly hard decisions to make.  If NASA is united and feels the risks are acceptable, then yes, spaceflight is dangerous; things happen, and some risks are reasonable.  Bring back Butch and Suni as safely as is reasonably possible and then do some soul searching about the future of Starliner with ISS decommissioning looming.  But I very much get the sense that such a consensus does not exist

The next press conference is going to be a must see …

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1820521756182085829

Boeing business development guy says NASA and Boeing shouldn't hold Starliner news conferences because journalists ask the same question too many times. Interesting take.

https://x.com/jimmayjr/status/1820483229201445162

Maybe if the same question didn't get asked 9 times straight at every press conference they would be more useful than the updates being put out in text... Also avoids the blatant mischaracterizations of everything the PMs say.

It should. Honestly, NASA has been somewhat evasive in its communications, and this is giving all its critics a mountain of ammunition while its defenders, myself included, have some crow to eat.  I'm just saddened that it has gotten to this point where the space press and NASA have anything approaching an adversarial relationship.

NASAs in a tight spot and they are threading a tight verbal needle trying to be honest while not touching on anything speculative in a situation with many unknowns and high stakes.


The Congress critters (some with Boeing bucks in their pocket) will probably get involved with 20/20 hind sight once this is all over, however it ends. This situation is EXACTLY why NASA wants redundant crew capabilities and they don't want to screw that deal if it's still salvageable.


I fell sorry for NASA. Anger may come later but for now I want them to spend their energy figuring it out without having to look over their shoulder.


Anybody interested in an NSF Go Fund Me?
We'll take Starliner, factory and all ground support off their hands and they loan us $1B, interest free. We also get our pick of their engineering talent and we get all future NASA payments plus whatever other business we can drum up.


Bowing gets to wipe egg off their face and crow about how they really secretly support new space.


We couldn't screw it up any worse but I'm just joking - I think.

[gemmy0I]

On the question of why Starliner can't undock itself autonomously, the quote in the article from Berger's JSC source about potentially "bricking" the docking port makes me wonder if one of the issues is that Starliner's (present) flight software doesn't provide a way for ground controllers to command it to release the capsule's side of the IDSS hard-capture latches, except via the astronauts pressing a button, or perhaps operating some sort of mechanical lever from inside the capsule.

If this weren't the reason, then I don't see why "bricking" the docking port would be a major concern. So long as the hard-capture latches can be released on both sides of the interface (Starliner and ISS), the IDA's separation springs should push the Starliner gently away from the station without requiring any thruster firings. I can see how there would be concern about recontact with the station if it were released in the prograde direction (i.e. the forward direction of flight), since that would leave Starliner in a slightly higher orbit that (I think) could pass too close for comfort on the subsequent orbit. It would also make it difficult for the station to perform a Debris Avoidance Maneuver, since those are typically best done in the prograde direction. But if they just needed to safely dispose of a dead Starliner capsule, they could flip the station around to "face" retrograde before releasing Starliner. They used to flip it around like that routinely back in the Shuttle days to allow Shuttle to reboost the station (and will presumably do so in ~7 years for the Deorbit Vehicle, which is supposed to dock to the same port Starliner is at now). Anything released retrograde naturally falls into a slower faster (lower) orbit that retreats from the ISS without requiring any further propulsion; this is why when Russian EVAs dispose of trash, they have the cosmonauts throw it retrograde off the back of the station.

Thus, Starliner being unable to autonomously release its hard-capture latches is the only reason I can think of why a passive disposal wouldn't be possible without "bricking" the port. AIUI, there is an emergency release mechanism that can be activated from either side if an uncooperative departure is required. But I believe it involves something like explosive bolts, and if initiated from the station side might take part of the IDA's Hard Capture Ring with it (or at least the latching assemblies). That would certainly qualify as "bricking" the port, since the IDA would need to be repaired or replaced before the port could be used again. Which would be...challenging, given that any replacement parts (possibly a whole new IDA, depending on how well it was designed for in-space repairs) would most likely be shipped up in a Cargo Dragon's trunk. Good luck docking that Cargo Dragon to the station with only a single functional IDA already taken up by the crew.

There are several ways NASA could theoretically get replacement parts to the station with IDA-F being unusable (assuming the parts are bulky enough to have to go in a Dragon's trunk, versus being shipped in pressurized cargo on Cygnus/Dream Chaser). None of them are ideal options, but they at least could get a "bricked" IDA repaired or replaced if necessary, given sufficient time to construct the new hardware. Obivously, it's much more likely that Boeing just finishes (re-)certifying the autonomous undocking software in the ~month of extra time that's been bought by delaying Crew-9. But just for the sake of completeness:

1) The CRS-2 contract was written with a per-mission option that NASA can choose to exercise (with some advance notice) to have Cargo Dragon berthed by Canadarm (presumably to a CBM port like Cygnus and Dragon 1) instead of docking autonomously to an IDA. Whether that would involve modifying Cargo Dragon 2 with a berthing port and grapple fixture, or pulling a Dragon 1 out of mothballs, hasn't been stated publicly.

2) They could send up the cargo in Crew Dragon's trunk. It's not presently qualified for this (launch abort scenarios would be the concern), but it was discussed as a capability that could have been developed for the proposed Polaris/Hubble mission.

3) They could exercise the CRS-2 contract option to order a Cygnus variant that can launch unpressurized cargo. (Probably not as quick and straightforward as just ordering the berthing variant of Cargo Dragon.)

4) They could dock a standard (IDSS) Cargo Dragon, with the new docking hardware in the trunk, during an extended gap between Crew Dragon missions - during which only the three Soyuz crew would be on the station. Repair EVAs would have to be conducted by the sole USOS crew member along with a Russian participant.

Edited 8/6 to clarify that jettisoning retrograde would leave Starliner in a lower, but technically faster orbit, not a "slower" one (I was thinking in terms of kinetic/potential energy, which has the more intuitive relationship to orbit height). Thanks to all who caught this!

[whitelancer64]

The ArsTechnica article says:

While the space agency has not said anything publicly, sources say NASA should announce the decision this week. Officials are contemplating moving the Crew-9 mission from its current date of August 18 to September 24, a significant slip.

Crew Dragon has a nominal max mission time of 210 days, and the longest Crew Dragon mission so far is about 200 days. Crew-8 launched on March 4. 200 days from March 4 is September 20. A slip to September 24 would be cutting into the safety margin.  This is particularly bad since if they do want to undock Starliner and send it home empty, then there will be at least a brief period when Crew-8 will be the lifeboat for six crew, not just four, and this will be at precisely the time when an uncrewed Starliner with problematic thrusters and untested control software will be flying near ISS.  the prpbability of something bad happening is quite low, but is higher than I think NASA will like.

In addition to the Crew Dragon timer, we have a potential Starliner timer. Steve Steich told us that the batteries are good for 45 days, but the 45 days start at the first indication that the battery has a problem. Such a problem could in theory happen at any time. If one were to occur before about 10 August, the timing does not work, and NASA would need to decide at that point whether or not to use Dragon instead of Starliner. It's possible in that scenario that the Starliner SW update would not happen before the battery timer runs out, with a worst case of a Starliner that can theoretically never undock. In practice, that 45-day limit is almost certainly arbitrary and there will be enough battery to do the undock for several months, or at least until Starliner runs out of its theoretical max mission time of 210 days some time in December.

It's not arbitrary, the batteries have a life of 45 days, but they were recharged from the ISS power supply, resetting the 45 day clock. They could simply recharge the batteries again, and that's what would happen during a normal ~210 day crew rotation mission.

[gongora]

The current FCC communications permit for the capsule expires October 4, Boeing filed for an extension in case it lands after that.
1466-EX-ST-2024

[RedLineTrain]

After all, none of this would have been a huge issue if Boeing had been able to obtain root cause on the thruster issues.  This reminds me of SpaceX Amos-6, which as I recall took several months to obtain the root cause on the COPVs.  Shotwell described that as a painful process for the whole company, and that wasn't even with human lives on the line.

Sometimes you get lucky.  Falcon 9 was able to get back to flight in a couple of weeks.  But other times, you find gremlins in your hardware.

[laszlo]

...Anything released retrograde naturally falls into a slower orbit that retreats from the ISS without requiring any further propulsion;...

Did you mean a lower, faster orbit which results in the released object going ahead under the ISS (which in turn climbs to a higher slower orbit and falls back)?

[Comga]

https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1820484918419546576

NASA is planning to significantly delay the launch of the Crew 9 mission to the International Space Station due to ongoing concerns about the Starliner spacecraft currently attached to the station.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-likely-to-significantly-delay-the-launch-of-crew-9-due-to-starliner-issues/

Someone in above in this thread concluded that that the recent 1 month & $300k contract to SpaceX could not be related to carrying the Starliner crew down in Dragon as 5th or 6th passengers because the study's due date was only a few days before the launch of Crew 9.
That schedule tightness has been relived by this the delay announced by NASA, and so that conclusion is invalidated..

PS  This sort of thing has been planned before.
Apollo CM-119 was outfitted with two extra seats so that two Apollo astronauts could launch to Skylab to rescue three astronauts if their Apollo Command and Service Module was unusable.

[StraumliBlight]

The current FCC communications permit for the capsule expires October 4, Boeing filed for an extension in case it lands after that.
1466-EX-ST-2024

Operation End Date:   03/31/2025

That's ~299 days, while the batteries were only originally rated for 45 days.

Also the Tech Description document is hidden due to a Confidentiality Request.

5. Explanation of how disclosure of the information could result in the substantial competitive harm:
Boeing submitted this application because this information would provide advantages to competitors.

[StraumliBlight]

Someone in above in this thread concluded that that the recent 1 month & $300k contract to SpaceX could not be related to carrying the Starliner crew down in Dragon as 5th or 6th passengers because the study's due date was only a few days before the launch of Crew 9.

In the NG-21 Prelaunch Media Teleconference, it was asked at 22:20 and Bill Spetch replied that it was to develop a potential return scenario aboard Dragon for Tracy Dyson (Soyuz MS-25).

[laszlo]

PS  This sort of thing has been planned before.
Apollo CM-119 was outfitted with two extra seats so that two Apollo astronauts could launch to Skylab to rescue three astronauts if their Apollo Command and Service Module was unusable.

Wasn't it also on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project so if the Soyuz had problems the cosmonauts could be returned to Earth in the Apollo?

[pathfinder_01]

PS  This sort of thing has been planned before.
Apollo CM-119 was outfitted with two extra seats so that two Apollo astronauts could launch to Skylab to rescue three astronauts if their Apollo Command and Service Module was unusable.

Wasn't it also on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project so if the Soyuz had problems the cosmonauts could be returned to Earth in the Apollo?

No, it was just for Skylab.

[pathfinder_01]

I thought both ccrew craft were supposed to be able to handle autonomous operation in case of emergency. The next press conferences will be interesting.

[mn]

https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1820484918419546576

NASA is planning to significantly delay the launch of the Crew 9 mission to the International Space Station due to ongoing concerns about the Starliner spacecraft currently attached to the station.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-likely-to-significantly-delay-the-launch-of-crew-9-due-to-starliner-issues/

Someone in above in this thread concluded that that the recent 1 month & $300k contract to SpaceX could not be related to carrying the Starliner crew down in Dragon as 5th or 6th passengers because the study's due date was only a few days before the launch of Crew 9.
That schedule tightness has been relived by this the delay announced by NASA, and so that conclusion is invalidated..
....

So far the delay has only been announced by Eric Berger, no official NASA announcement (yet)