Boeing Starliner

[RobDickinson]

All the Astronauts from the first flight of starliner have been pulled now I think?

Plus the valve issue is far from resolved, unlikely to get another test flight until mid/late 2022.

Also they have mentioned it will only fly on atlas (not vulcan), doesnt bode well for its future either.

[14]

RobDickinson said:

Also they have mentioned it will only fly on atlas (not vulcan), doesnt bode well for its future either.

I doubt that Starliner will only fly on Atlas V, as Boeing would be shooting themselves in the foot if that were true. Wikipedia says that Starliner is designed to be compatible with Atlas V, Delta IV, Vulcan and Falcon 9.

[RobDickinson]

Yes thats what it was designed for but it would still need work and certification and so would the vulcan rocket. Doesnt sound like that is going to happen

[Flooble]

Remember BAe saying the UK's new carriers were "designed for but not with" electromagnetic catapults. Then when the government mooted putting in catapults it was suddenly going to be incredibly expensive to make the changes (50% or more of the cost of a new ship from scratch)?

I would categorise Starliner flying on anything other than an Atlas V in the same category. Do-able, but you may as well pay Boeing to build a totally new design of capsule instead.

I am sure there are enough Atlas V's in the inventory to launch the manifest of Starliners - is it three or six missions that are the minimum to complete the contract?

[MartG]

Flooble said:

...- is it three or six missions that are the minimum to complete the contract?

It would be a bit embarrassing for Boeing if they unilaterally killed off the Starliner, making NASA's entire '2nd source for manned flight' ethos a huge waste of time and money - it certainly could prejudice them getting any future NASA contracts

[Flooble]

MartG said:

Flooble said:

...- is it three or six missions that are the minimum to complete the contract?

It would be a bit embarrassing for Boeing if they unilaterally killed off the Starliner, making NASA's entire '2nd source for manned flight' ethos a huge waste of time and money - it certainly could prejudice them getting any future NASA contracts

I just checked and it is six flights. So they need 8 Atlas Vs (2 demo missions and 6 operational ones) and at one every six months, they'd need Atlas V to keep flying for three years after their crew demo. About 2025 or 2026. Which tallies with Atlas V stopping in the middle of the decade.

What do you reckon Boeing was expecting to be paid to re-engineer Starliner to work on Vulcan? And what do you think NASA's attitude would be when it received the estimate for the work?

[montymoo]

I wonder if anyone is asking the question.
Will the ISS still be around before starliner can complete the contracted flights?

[14]

RobDickinson said:

Yes thats what it was designed for but it would still need work and certification and so would the vulcan rocket. Doesnt sound like that is going to happen

ULA designed the Vulcan to be human rated, so there isn’t any additional planned costs to for them to get Vulcan certified for human spaceflight. I also expect that the teams working on Starliner and Vulcan have been working together, so that there won’t be any need for big changes to Starliner or Vulcan to get Starliner to fly onboard Vulcan.

Boeing have had at least 7 years knowing that Atlas V would be replaced by Vulcan, so if Boeing don’t plan on getting Starliner certified to fly on Vulcan then that would be an extremely poor business decision.

[14]

montymoo said:

I wonder if anyone is asking the question.
Will the ISS still be around before starliner can complete the contracted flights?

I would of thought so. The last 2 or so flights might be to help decommission the ISS, as I don’t see it lasting that much longer.

[MartG]

14 said:

... so if Boeing don’t plan on getting Starliner certified to fly on Vulcan then that would be an extremely poor business decision.

Not if they think they can bill NASA for the extra work

[14]

MartG said:

14 said:

... so if Boeing don’t plan on getting Starliner certified to fly on Vulcan then that would be an extremely poor business decision.

Not if they think they can bill NASA for the extra work

I think NASA will pay for a portion of the cost in some extent but not all it. I think Boeing will pay for most of the cost itself, as otherwise NASA can tell Boeing that they won’t pay all of it, and NASA will just end up using SpaceX exclusively. In that situation Boeing would stand to lose more money than what it would gain from getting NASA to pay for the certification of Starliner flying on Vulcan.

[Beati Dogu]

I don’t believe Vulcan is man rated and it won’t be until a spacecraft company pays ULA to do so. I imagine all that bureaucracy is like pulling teeth and it’s not something any company would go though on the off chance of it being useful one day. The experience of that process is one of the main reasons why Falcon Heavy won’t be man rated either.

ULA is contracted to fly Sierra Nevada Corporation’s unmanned Dreamchaser space plane to the ISS on Vulcan. The way it going with Boeing, it seems more likely Sierra Nevada will be the one to pay ULA to have Vulcan man rated.

[Einion Yrth]

Beati Dogu said:

I don’t believe Vulcan is man rated and it won’t be until a spacecraft company pays ULA to do so. I imagine all that bureaucracy is like pulling teeth and it’s not something any company would go though on the off chance of it being useful one day. The experience of that process is one of the main reasons why Falcon Heavy won’t be man rated either.

I suspect a more important factor is that Musk is going all out for starship/superheavy. Why man rate a system you don't intend to continue to develop?

[RobDickinson]

Theres no manned mission the FH would be applicable to anyhow.

F9 can launch dragon to the ISS or higher orbit, potentially FH could put dragon round the moon but no one is doing that (and I am not sure dragon is capable enough).

If it came to it they could launch a larger craft on FH and dock a dragon launched on an F9 in orbit, IMO like they should be doing with SLS. SLS is a terrible rocket to launch people on.

[Beati Dogu]

They did have plans to launch Yusaku Maezawa plus one on a round trip to the Moon on a Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy. Nothing came of that and it has been moved over to Starship now.

The capsule has an endurance of 7 days I believe. It would take 6 days to get to Moon and back.

[MartG]

Beati Dogu said:

The capsule has an endurance of 7 days I believe.

I suspect that is standard 'ISS ferry' spec, and that endurance would be increased for lunar missions e.g. adding extra consumables ( O2, water, food, LiOH canisters )

[Flooble]

MartG said:

Beati Dogu said:

The capsule has an endurance of 7 days I believe.

I suspect that is standard 'ISS ferry' spec, and that endurance would be increased for lunar missions e.g. adding extra consumables ( O2, water, food, LiOH canisters )

For some reason I had it in my head that it was only 60 hours of free flight. I think I may have conflated Starliner and Dragon; I found an untrusted source that Starliner has a 60 hour free flight endurance (https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-key-differences-between-the-SpaceX-Dragon-Lockheed-Orion-and-Boeing-CST-100-spacecrafts).

Which could be a tad bottom-clenching if you launch, have a few on-orbit glitches that delay your docking attempt and then you can't dock with the ISS for whatever reason, and your landing site(s) is weathered out. Yes that's a bit Swiss-Cheese but 60 hours really does seem a bit stingy.

That link concurs with the 7-day figure for Dragon, however, it also says that is for 7 crew. Which suggests that if you only sent 2 or 3 astronauts on a mission you would have ~ 500kg of spare capacity for extra supplies and would also naturally be using them at roughly half the rate (I know it doesn't scale perfectly like that, but close enough). That feels (yeah, I know, "feels") like it would be enough to do a circumlunar flight with some contingency - depends on how much of a kick FH could give it I guess.

[Beati Dogu]

Sounds like Boeing are getting to the root of Starliner’s sticking valves issue.

“Boeing has demonstrated success in valve functionality using localized heating and electrical charging techniques. Troubleshooting on the pad, at the launch complex, and inside the Starliner production factory at Kennedy Space Center has resulted in movement of all but one of the original stuck valves. That valve has not been moved intentionally to preserve forensics for direct root cause analysis.

Most items on the fault tree have been dispositioned by the team including causes related to avionics, flight software and wiring. Boeing has identified a most probable cause related to oxidizer and moisture interactions, and although some verification work remains underway, our confidence is high enough that we are commencing corrective and preventive actions. Additional spacecraft and component testing will be conducted in the coming weeks to further explore contributing factors and necessary system remediation before flight.“

From here:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2021/10/08/n...

[Flooble]

Well that's progress, at least all the valves they tried to unstick are now unstuck. Although having to take it back to the factory to get them unstuck is probably not ideal - unless now they have worked out what to do it can be done more easily if it happens again.

It does irritate me though when they write press releases like a 12 year old with a dictionary: "items on the fault tree have been dispositioned by the team"

Seriously guys? Why they can't just say "most possible causes have been eliminated". Fewer words and more understandable.

Mind you, when you do read that sentence they are essentially repeating what we already knew - Not "avionics, flight software and wiring". But "oxidizer and moisture interactions". I think they worked out the valve were physically stuck about two days after they first noticed the problem?

Interesting that they say they are working towards opportunities "in the first half of 2022". Someone is being more pragmatic than the previous PR which implied they'd be launching in a day or two!

[Beati Dogu]

Yes, that phrase is rather jarring. Americans can be surprisingly prissy sometimes.

Beverage- drink
Momentarily - soon
Restroom- toilet

The thing with Starliner is that they can’t just launch when they feel like it. Making it to the ISS is part of the flight test and it has to fitted in around other activities both at the station and launch site.