Boeing’s Starliner started making a repeating ‘pulsing’ sound yesterday
It’s probably nothing.
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The starliner is to return unmanned, according to this article. Can you imagine being on the ISS, and watching the ship you should have taken shred apart into burning rain as it attempts to pierce the veil of our atmosphere.
On the flip side, can you imagine being stranded on the ISS, and watching the ship that could have taken you home gone down safely?
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. They’re holding up amazingly well, I don’t envy the astronauts right now.
I think if the chances of a catastrophic re-entry is more than 1% and it still makes it back ok, I would still be happy i stayed back. Who knows what an additional 300lbs might do?
They're professional astronauts who have worked their whole lives for the opportunity to get into space. Both Butch and Sunny were probably doing the last mission of their career with this trip, so having it extended from 8 days to 8 months could well be a dream come true for them.
They were actually interviewed this last week and are very happy to stay. They're completing an unusually high number of scientific tests which were backlogged. This is, according to them, an awesome opportunity to work as their time in space is so restricted.
It seems unlikely to me that their public statements about their situation are a full and accurate reflection of their feelings. I mean, what else are they going to say? "Fuck Boeing, fuck this failed mission, we're pilots with families and it's less than ideal that we'll be stranded up here for 8 months doing busywork while our bone density gets nuked"?
If my employer sent me to a remote island without any of my personal effects, on a vehicle that couldn't safely return me home, I'd look at any list of tasks they sent me with some measure of bitterness. Even if it was my favourite remote island. Being trapped there would change the colour of things. Working is probably the only thing they can do to keep from going insane.
I mean, you're probably not entirely wrong, but this was a test flight so I'm sure they knew first off that there was increased risk that they may not even survive the journey. This definitely wasn't outside of the wheelhouse of possible outcomes.
well i mean, they've got the entire US government behind them in some capacity, so they're not likely to go anywhere lol.
They’re holding up amazingly well, I don’t envy the astronauts right now.
strongly suspect they're coping well lol. You gotta understand that people fight for any chance into space, and an opportunity to turn a 2 day trip into 6+ months? yeah, it'll require last moment changes to their lives but I imagine they're happy as hell. They've been training for decades for this.
Could you imagine being one of the remaining astronauts watching it from the ISS if it had returned with astronauts on board?
Can you imagine travelling in a toaster oven
Depends, who made it
Me and my boys. We keep getting these requests from blind old uncle sam up the road to build shiny new things, but eh, we have other things to do, so we just take our old shit and move it around slightly and baddabing baddaboom
Ah okay, then yes. I was just afraid it'd be a Boeing
That'll be six billion smacaraoos, please. If you can't pay right now, just take it from the next donation at church
As I said elsewhere: They should bring up the managers who are responsible for this program up with a SpaceX capsule, and let them descend with the Starliner.
I think it should be the suits and shareholders who destroyed Boeing's engineer-first culture.
I would be very unhappy if I saw this spacecraft, that still has probably more than 95% chance of bringing me home safely if something happened, leave with no alternative in sight.
In space exploration, 95% are terrible odds.
Wherever a life depends on it, 95% are terrible odds.
Great point. If motor vehicles had a 95% survival rate, there would be something like 15 million highway deaths per year in the United States.
My point was mostly just that the Space Shuttle program had something like a 98% survival rate and it was largely considered in retrospect to have had serious safety problems.
There is an alternative, in the event of disaster there's room on board the Dragon capsule currently docked at the station for them to come back down. They'd be strapped into the cargo hold rather than a seat, but that's acceptable in a disaster situation.
Don't they need different space suits to board the Dragon capsule though? I thought I read something the other day saying they'd need to wait for Dragon-compatible suits to be brought up to them for that to be an option.
The suits aren't technically needed for reentry, since the capsule isn't supposed to be depressurized at any point during the trip. It's just another layer of "if something goes wrong." So if it's a choice of taking that risk or staying on an exploding ISS you go with the risk. I expect that even if the suit can't be connected to Dragon's umbilicals it could still be sealed for at least a few minutes of air during the riskiest bits of the trip.
leave with no alternative in sight.
?? spacex is gonna get them home, this is hyperbole.
now, if they, like me, despise musk, that part might sting, but I strongly doubt these professionals are overly concerned with that end. I'd prefer my managers ERRING ON THE SIDE OF SURVIVAL, and considering the noises the craft suddenly started making, yeah, prudent decision after all.
Boeing doesn't like it, but... tsk, thrusters aren't new technology, this shit shouldn't have been a problem in the first place, and certainly never made it to ORBIT without being 99.999% reliable. Boeing fucked up. Boeing's thruster contractor - Rocketdyne - has been in the business since the 50s. This should be locked down, proven tech. Yet somehow startup spacex that doesn't have 50+ years in space is whipping the shit out of Boeing + Rocketdyne, EVEN THOUGH BOEING WAS PAID MORE THAN SPACEX, only for it to end in this shit show.
NASA errs on the side of caution and it's the right decision.
