Boeing Starliner
Discussion
The guys on the ground knew pretty quickly what was happening and were able to shut the system down as soon as they could. My point is that people on board the spacecraft should have been able to do that even more quickly, thereby ensuring precious fuel was not wasted.
American spacecraft have ALWAYS allowed their crews more manual options than Russian ones. I'd be surprised that they had suddenly switched to a system whereby the crew was reduced to being fairly helpless passengers waiting for a guy or girl sitting at a console in Houston pressing the right button.
American spacecraft have ALWAYS allowed their crews more manual options than Russian ones. I'd be surprised that they had suddenly switched to a system whereby the crew was reduced to being fairly helpless passengers waiting for a guy or girl sitting at a console in Houston pressing the right button.
Interesting discussion. Though I can’t help but feel there is some needle between Boeing fans and Space X
Yes Space X are way cooler and probably more ambitious ion where they want to go, but Boeing are quietly producing some very good tech.
Test and iterate is not a monopoly held by Space X.
That said, the Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg got fired. Apparently over the 737 Max debacle, which is a pity. Not enough very sucessful people called Dennis anymore.
Yes Space X are way cooler and probably more ambitious ion where they want to go, but Boeing are quietly producing some very good tech.
Test and iterate is not a monopoly held by Space X.
That said, the Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg got fired. Apparently over the 737 Max debacle, which is a pity. Not enough very sucessful people called Dennis anymore.
Eric Mc said:
One thing that did strike me was how pristine the capsule looked sitting on the desert floor. It showed very little sign of re-entry scorching. This indicates that the heat loads were fairly benign and well within expectations and that heat shield technology has come on a long way, even compared to the Space Shuttle era.
Especially as it didn't get a dunking in the ocean to clean it up a bit. Mind you it probably came in slower than expected from its low orbit. I haven't seen any photos of the jettisoned heatshield yet, by I imagine that got a good scorching.The nature of the contract is not of consequence when you are talking about an engineering decision.That would be a commercial or legal matter.
The decision whether to make Boeing repeat this test (and delay the introduction of manned flights by three to six months - I reckon) has to be made with consideration to confidence in what was achieved on this first partially successful test and knowing that this particular fault won't recur.
If the only way to test that the fault won't happen again, then a further unmanned test is the only option. If Boeing can persuade NASA that they have fixed the problem, and NASA are in agreement, then I don't think a further unmanned test is needed.
It's a bit like the situation after Apollo 6 where the Saturn V very nearly failed completely. NASA had to make a decision as to whether they would need another unmanned Saturn V test before they risked putting people on it.
The decision whether to make Boeing repeat this test (and delay the introduction of manned flights by three to six months - I reckon) has to be made with consideration to confidence in what was achieved on this first partially successful test and knowing that this particular fault won't recur.
If the only way to test that the fault won't happen again, then a further unmanned test is the only option. If Boeing can persuade NASA that they have fixed the problem, and NASA are in agreement, then I don't think a further unmanned test is needed.
It's a bit like the situation after Apollo 6 where the Saturn V very nearly failed completely. NASA had to make a decision as to whether they would need another unmanned Saturn V test before they risked putting people on it.
I wasn't needling Boeing but rather questioning the belief that a crew could have sorted it out all by themselves, I'm really not convinced it would be as easy for a crew as it was for ground control.
The famous "SCE to Aux" call was, after all, from the ground to the crew, whose first response was "FCE what?"
Firstly there is the challenge of working it out without support from the ground (as there was apparently a loss of comms). I've hand-flown an aircraft in IMC when I had an instrument failure (vacuum pump ate itself, so I lost half my instruments ... or more correctly, the vacuum driven ones stopped agreeing with the electrically driven half as their gyros slowly toppled). It is very, very hard to figure out what is going on by yourself when all you have is a set of instruments which don't agree with each other. I am not picturing a scenario where the astronauts can simply look out the window and see the earth is in the wrong place, it would I think be much more subtle that that. The controllers had people whose *only* job was to monitor one specific subsystem. So the thruster guy could see they were firing too much; the guidance guy could see the capsule was pointed in the correct direction; the range controller could look at radar to see if the capsule was where it said it was and moving in the direction it said it was and they could compare notes then work out what was going on,.
Astronauts on board would have to firstly notice the thrusters firing incorrectly, then correlate that to their orientation, then check that with position reports. Then decide if they could trust the instruments - is it an instrumentation failure (we've lost comms; are all the electronics on the fritz or just the radio?) or is it a flight computer failure (can't tell if we're pointing up or down; the attitude indicator says we're upright and on course so why is the computer telling the thrusters to fire?) or is it a vehicle failure (are the thrusters firing uncommanded?). Given they are in a suborbital trajectory they need to decide pretty quickly what to do. Simply cutting off the thrusters might put them out of control - if the computer was firing the thrusters to correct a leaking tank that would otherwise have them spinning for example. These astronauts may be the very best in the world, but there are limits to their abilities to identify, diagnose and correct a system failure within a short space of time - they were only out of comms for 8 minutes or so, how long did Armstrong spending grappling with Gemini - it was a more primitive aircraft but that also meant he really could go "RCS Direct" as there wasn't much else that could be wrong.
Secondly there is a question to which I can't find an answer of how much manual control is available anyway. Possibly more so with the limited set of switches and instruments available as everything seems to have been "simplified". I strongly suspect everything runs through the computer like an Airbus without an easy "kill the computer and fly it by eye" RCS Direct option. That joystick they have might nominally be firing the thrusters under their command but in reality even Apollo under normal conditions had the computer controlling the thrusters - the astronauts essentially "suggest" and the computer works out what to fire. The error that occurred was the system which controlled the thrusters trying to be too precise. If the astronauts simply switched to "manual firing" that system would probably still be trying to be too precise, so they'd have to find on their screens the dodgy timer and/or divine that the "bands" were too tight - something that might be easy for a specialist in ground control sitting in front of four huge hi-res 27" monitors with nothing but that one subsystem's data on them but is a bit harder when you just have a couple of low-res 15" PFDs. You'd be quite brave to kill your thrusters entirely as the Starliner depends on an OMS burn to get into orbit - so simply cutting the thrusters means you're aborting the mission.
The loss of comms is, if anything, the more troubling issue. It's not entirely clear if they lost all comms (in which case, how come we could see the display in mission control showing the thrusters firing?) or just some weird subset that prevented them sending shutdown commands. If it was an actual blackout then that would be a very lonely 8 minutes for the crew, attempting to correlate conflicting information from their instruments without the benefit of a holistic overview or specialists who were experts in the pattern caused by different failures and being aware that the wrong decision could see them re-entering the atmosphere face first ...
The famous "SCE to Aux" call was, after all, from the ground to the crew, whose first response was "FCE what?"
Firstly there is the challenge of working it out without support from the ground (as there was apparently a loss of comms). I've hand-flown an aircraft in IMC when I had an instrument failure (vacuum pump ate itself, so I lost half my instruments ... or more correctly, the vacuum driven ones stopped agreeing with the electrically driven half as their gyros slowly toppled). It is very, very hard to figure out what is going on by yourself when all you have is a set of instruments which don't agree with each other. I am not picturing a scenario where the astronauts can simply look out the window and see the earth is in the wrong place, it would I think be much more subtle that that. The controllers had people whose *only* job was to monitor one specific subsystem. So the thruster guy could see they were firing too much; the guidance guy could see the capsule was pointed in the correct direction; the range controller could look at radar to see if the capsule was where it said it was and moving in the direction it said it was and they could compare notes then work out what was going on,.
Astronauts on board would have to firstly notice the thrusters firing incorrectly, then correlate that to their orientation, then check that with position reports. Then decide if they could trust the instruments - is it an instrumentation failure (we've lost comms; are all the electronics on the fritz or just the radio?) or is it a flight computer failure (can't tell if we're pointing up or down; the attitude indicator says we're upright and on course so why is the computer telling the thrusters to fire?) or is it a vehicle failure (are the thrusters firing uncommanded?). Given they are in a suborbital trajectory they need to decide pretty quickly what to do. Simply cutting off the thrusters might put them out of control - if the computer was firing the thrusters to correct a leaking tank that would otherwise have them spinning for example. These astronauts may be the very best in the world, but there are limits to their abilities to identify, diagnose and correct a system failure within a short space of time - they were only out of comms for 8 minutes or so, how long did Armstrong spending grappling with Gemini - it was a more primitive aircraft but that also meant he really could go "RCS Direct" as there wasn't much else that could be wrong.
Secondly there is a question to which I can't find an answer of how much manual control is available anyway. Possibly more so with the limited set of switches and instruments available as everything seems to have been "simplified". I strongly suspect everything runs through the computer like an Airbus without an easy "kill the computer and fly it by eye" RCS Direct option. That joystick they have might nominally be firing the thrusters under their command but in reality even Apollo under normal conditions had the computer controlling the thrusters - the astronauts essentially "suggest" and the computer works out what to fire. The error that occurred was the system which controlled the thrusters trying to be too precise. If the astronauts simply switched to "manual firing" that system would probably still be trying to be too precise, so they'd have to find on their screens the dodgy timer and/or divine that the "bands" were too tight - something that might be easy for a specialist in ground control sitting in front of four huge hi-res 27" monitors with nothing but that one subsystem's data on them but is a bit harder when you just have a couple of low-res 15" PFDs. You'd be quite brave to kill your thrusters entirely as the Starliner depends on an OMS burn to get into orbit - so simply cutting the thrusters means you're aborting the mission.
The loss of comms is, if anything, the more troubling issue. It's not entirely clear if they lost all comms (in which case, how come we could see the display in mission control showing the thrusters firing?) or just some weird subset that prevented them sending shutdown commands. If it was an actual blackout then that would be a very lonely 8 minutes for the crew, attempting to correlate conflicting information from their instruments without the benefit of a holistic overview or specialists who were experts in the pattern caused by different failures and being aware that the wrong decision could see them re-entering the atmosphere face first ...
I'm not sure that they really were in a communications blackspot as has been surmised. Something did prevent the instruction to shut the thrusters off from the ground from reaching the spacecraft quickly enough to prevent over use of the thrusters and the loss of propellant. That definitely needs looking at.
I would expect that a crew on board would realise full well that their thrusters were firing excessively - although they might not understand why. I still reckon they could have shut them down quickly.
It's my turn to bring up Gemini now - Gemini 8. On that mission they had thruster problems and it was the crew on board who diagnosed the issue and shut the system down.
I would expect that a crew on board would realise full well that their thrusters were firing excessively - although they might not understand why. I still reckon they could have shut them down quickly.
It's my turn to bring up Gemini now - Gemini 8. On that mission they had thruster problems and it was the crew on board who diagnosed the issue and shut the system down.
Eric Mc said:
I'm not sure that they really were in a communications blackspot as has been surmised. Something did prevent the instruction to shut the thrusters off from the ground from reaching the spacecraft quickly enough to prevent over use of the thrusters and the loss of propellant. That definitely needs looking at.
I would expect that a crew on board would realise full well that their thrusters were firing excessively - although they might not understand why. I still reckon they could have shut them down quickly.
It's my turn to bring up Gemini now - Gemini 8. On that mission they had thruster problems and it was the crew on board who diagnosed the issue and shut the system down.
Ahem I would expect that a crew on board would realise full well that their thrusters were firing excessively - although they might not understand why. I still reckon they could have shut them down quickly.
It's my turn to bring up Gemini now - Gemini 8. On that mission they had thruster problems and it was the crew on board who diagnosed the issue and shut the system down.
Flooble said:
... Or would you sit there wondering why the RCS thrusters were firing (Shades of Gemini 8), paging through instrumentation while your fuel ran down? For all we know the computer would be giving the wrong read outs to the crew about location, attitude etc.
Flooble said:
...
but there are limits to their abilities to identify, diagnose and correct a system failure within a short space of time - they were only out of comms for 8 minutes or so, how long did Armstrong spending grappling with Gemini - it was a more primitive aircraft but that also meant he really could go "RCS Direct" as there wasn't much else that could be wrong.
...
Einion Yrth said:
No needle from me: I don't think either company should fly people until their vehicles perform as advertised, shabby software, failing chutes, exploding abort systems, all contra-indicated for manned flight, if you ask me.
Agree with this whole heartedly, there is no pressure from a space race. And people will be going up in it.Boeing needs to do another flight, with docking and then landing 3 parachutes, before manned craft.SpaceX needs to do the in flight abort and do another 4 parachute landing. Then good to go for them too as already docked. .There no hurry apart from our interest and $$ by NASA as Soyuz still working fine no rush.
I get the eebygeebies seeing both teams rushing and NASA after such a delay trying to gloss that over
The way I see it this is an unqualified system.
I wouldn't fly it with people on board until the system has done a complete end to end qualification test.
Uncommanded rocket firing or rockets firing at the wrong time due to erroneous commands is pretty serious stuff.
It's not just a case of the timing being wrong. We don't know why the timing was out by 11 hours. That's a pretty fundamental error.
Having been through the whole process of setting up satellite command procedures from the Flight Ops Manual, tested those procedures against a simulator, then against the real spacecraft on the ground I'm struggling to get my head round how it could happen. I think it's probably a bit more than a "Doh!" moment.
But that's why we do the test flights unmanned so we learn without wiping people out.
I wouldn't fly it with people on board until the system has done a complete end to end qualification test.
Uncommanded rocket firing or rockets firing at the wrong time due to erroneous commands is pretty serious stuff.
It's not just a case of the timing being wrong. We don't know why the timing was out by 11 hours. That's a pretty fundamental error.
Having been through the whole process of setting up satellite command procedures from the Flight Ops Manual, tested those procedures against a simulator, then against the real spacecraft on the ground I'm struggling to get my head round how it could happen. I think it's probably a bit more than a "Doh!" moment.
But that's why we do the test flights unmanned so we learn without wiping people out.
Eric Mc said:
100% of flight testing of aircraft is done manned.
The Space Shuttle test flights were all manned.
It's not unheard of.
OK, quick question, for all, if you were an astronaut going up in April 1st 2020 would you rather be onThe Space Shuttle test flights were all manned.
It's not unheard of.
1. Crew dragon.
2. Starliner,
3. Soyuz.
at the current time? I know which I'd be rather on, being a bit of a chicken filled with the wrong stuff.
Hopefully the SpaceX launch abort will go well.
Gandahar said:
OK, quick question, for all, if you were an astronaut going up in April 1st 2020 would you rather be on
1. Crew dragon.
2. Starliner,
3. Soyuz.
at the current time? I know which I'd be rather on, being a bit of a chicken filled with the wrong stuff.
Hopefully the SpaceX launch abort will go well.
It's an unfair comparison. The Soyuz spacecraft has over half a century of usage behind it - and don't forget it has killed 4 cosmonauts and had three launch aborts in that time. It's booster rocket has been in use since the mid 1950s and has flown literally thousands of times.1. Crew dragon.
2. Starliner,
3. Soyuz.
at the current time? I know which I'd be rather on, being a bit of a chicken filled with the wrong stuff.
Hopefully the SpaceX launch abort will go well.
At the moment, the American systems haven't even made their first manned space flights yet. It's a bit like saying to someone at the end of 1968, which would they prefer to fly in, a Boeing 707 or Concorde on its first ever flight?
What I would say is that I would certainly prefer to fly on a Soyuz or a Saturn/Apollo combination than the Space Shuttle. The Shuttle was still extremely dodgy even after 135 flights.
I’m fascinated by all the variations but have limited knowledge on how they all stack up - I’ve found the following video really helpful as a synopsis if anyone has time -
https://youtu.be/RqLNIBAroGY
https://youtu.be/RqLNIBAroGY
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