Boeing Starliner upcoming launch, first w/crew

[floobydust]

Not a surprise. The way Boeing does engineering is not working well at all, it's a fail. The fiasco with the valves, changing contractor then the lawsuit over stolen IP showed it's all about the money.

The spacesuits being incompatible between SpaceX and Starliner's is interesting. They're too big to use so they'll have to send up extra SpaceX suits that fit I guess but I thought they are custom fitted.

[themadhippy]

Astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams are now expected to stay on the International Space Station until next year

Hope there getting paid overtime and not time off in lieu

[coppice]

As I recall, when the Starliner returns to earth at least some of the questionable hardware will be destroyed in re-entry, obviously making it more difficult to analyze the problem(s).

I think you are referring to the ship being in two parts, only the crew module of which is designed for a safe descent. The part where all the hardware problems seem to be always burns up on re-entry. That said, the Strarliner is not loaded with the software needed for automated descent. They apparently can't even safely detach the ship from the ISS, and make it go safely away without a crew right now. They need to get appropriate software prepared and loaded into the ship. It sounds like there is still plenty of opportunity to screw things up. Maybe nothing will get back for analysis.

[SiliconWizard]

Astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams are now expected to stay on the International Space Station until next year

Hope there getting paid overtime and not time off in lieu

They should sue.

[magic]

They should have known about "if it's Boeing I'm not going"
Think positively: the automatics could have crashed them, but they made it to the station. With the door.

[SiliconWizard]

They could have crashed into the ISS while attempting to dock, wreck the whole thing and make it deorbit.

[coppercone2]

Its funny though because we were talking seriously about going to live on mars but we can't get the proverbial cat out of a tree.


I think they need to put serious money and R&D into space instead of just constantly trying to go further like some dare devil stunt

This really high lights the effects of all that NASA budget slashing IMO. A 6 month delay is a disgrace. I don't disagree with it because the facts are the facts but this scenario really tells you about the state of affairs regarding space.

At least safety culture is OK in NASA because their not telling him to jump out of the window for good publicity.


Congress finally got the egg on their face from years of budget slashing NASA. Now the USA looks like a clueless joe with his cat stuck in a tree. I get the same feeling about buildings, we can build them tall, but we can't get people out when they catch on fire. It makes all these achievements feel like stunts because they do not work right.

People already rage after getting a flight delay for 6 hours lol

[magic]

What "we"?

It's Elon Musk whose ambition is to drive his Tesla on Mars and it's US gov and its beloved contractors who stranded their cat on a tree.

Myself, I look at all of that and I'm not going anywhere

[coppercone2]

its like alot of people that seemed to be getting serious about it

[wraper]

This really high lights the effects of all that NASA budget slashing IMO. A 6 month delay is a disgrace. I don't disagree with it because the facts are the facts but this scenario really tells you about the state of affairs regarding space.

If astronauts are OK to remain at ISS, then it's ok to extend their mission. Astronaut is not some passionless job you get just to earn the money. As of NASA budget, Boeing received almost 2x the money for Starliner compared to SpaceX. And look what a dumpster fire it became while SpaceX's dragon is safely doing its job for years. SLS is an utter money waster built on 50 year old technology. So it's more about spending the money wisely rather than insufficient money as such.

[tszaboo]

Not a surprise. The way Boeing does engineering is not working well at all, it's a fail. The fiasco with the valves, changing contractor then the lawsuit over stolen IP showed it's all about the money.

The spacesuits being incompatible between SpaceX and Starliner's is interesting. They're too big to use so they'll have to send up extra SpaceX suits that fit I guess but I thought they are custom fitted.

I also got my Kerbals stranded a few times. But then again, I just slapped some rocket parts together and launched it at another planet, and told them good luck. Hopefully I didn't forget to place RCS or parachutes on it. The stranded ones, if they got lucky, I even sent them a rescue mission that got there years later. If they didn't , then they are the residents of the first colony or space station.
Apparently Boeing has the same rocket engineering skills as me.

[coppice]

This really high lights the effects of all that NASA budget slashing IMO.

How do the current problems have anything to do with budget slashing? Its not the size of the budget, but how poorly its used that causes these problems. A small budget just means you do less things. It doesn't make you do them badly. That's a choice. A bad choice. Often a rather corrupt choice.

[coppercone2]

I seriously doubt its just contained to one or the other thing, I think in general it has a chilling effect, which I saw many times for similar cost savings initiatives. Once the budget goes down there is all sorts of un-written interactions and suggestions that start to occur within a organization to generally make everything more shitty. For the people directly effected its a mandate, for the peripheral people, its like a strong suggestion, with the promise that heat will reach you if you spend too much, and it ends up changing "far reaching" policies that eventually have a negative effect on performance.

People start to get scared that "their project is next" and they need to maintain a low profile (on the spreadsheet).


I find usually the base level low cost research stuff is not effected (i.e. lab tools budget) but the things that make a difference are (expensive equipment that is "nice to have" (making a big improvement in the labs) ). That is on the smallest scale that I saw. Also headcount, you might keep your tools but suddenly hiring becomes difficult.


I would bet a large sum of money on people feeling that their life got more difficult and progress is stunted whenever an organization takes a big hit like that.


ALso people start second guessing themselves, they had a good plan to begin with to do something, then people start getting hit, and they end up rethinking everything for no reason with the idea that it might somehow please the people demanding budget cuts.

I don't know of anyone that is totally oblivious and unaffected by a nearby thing related to them being shut down. Its like threatening your employment or the possibly of a project or even job shift that you probobly don't want. Did you ever get reassigned? No one is happy about that, they work to avoid it. You get used to doing a job and thinking about something and you wanna finish. Unless its one of those people thats been being constantly reshuffled every 6 months and their used to that (canceled projects engineering specialist, aka NOMAD)

Come on, everyone knows this, it would probobly make a top 10 most watched sitcoms if someone studied some cases and made a show about the shenanigans that occur with project budgets and the ramifications of canceling stuff... its the reason why your boss is probobly equivalent to a politician

[floobydust]

"Under the terms of a fixed-price contract, a company is responsible for paying for any expenses above a certain price ceiling. Boeing is locked into fixed price agreements a host of major aircraft programs, such as the KC-46 tanker, MQ-25 tanker drone, T-7A trainer jet and the VC-25B". {Starliner is also a fixed-price program}.
KC-46A Pegasus refueler $4.9 billion contract Boeing’s tanker losses top $7 billion
"The Air Force and Boeing are in varying stages of resolving seven Category 1 deficiencies." "...now dealing with seven issues that could result in significant damage to the air vehicle or death of an operator".
VC-25B Air Force One $3.9 billion contract more than $1.1B in overruns and then there is the T-7A trainer.
Starliner $4.2B contract, plus extra $300M in 2019, $1.5B in overruns. The "prototype" test flight is a failure, I don't see Boeing getting paid much.

At what point do people realize Boeing is a failure? It's all fine because greed and corruption are fabulous, people collect a paycheque, some kickbacks too and Wall Street reaps benefits...

I feel bad for the engineers because you can't design anything decent in a corrupt, diseased environment. It's something everyone here needs to realize, instead of struggling to get work done when there is no support and then getting flogged for it being late.
Then the engineers take the blame for the failures- not the management or exec that created the hot, steaming turd.

[coppice]

"Under the terms of a fixed-price contract, a company is responsible for paying for any expenses above a certain price ceiling. Boeing is locked into fixed price agreements a host of major aircraft programs, such as the KC-46 tanker, MQ-25 tanker drone, T-7A trainer jet and the VC-25B". {Starliner is also a fixed-price program}.
KC-46A Pegasus refueler $4.9 billion contract Boeing’s tanker losses top $7 billion
"The Air Force and Boeing are in varying stages of resolving seven Category 1 deficiencies." "...now dealing with seven issues that could result in significant damage to the air vehicle or death of an operator".
VC-25B Air Force One $3.9 billion contract more than $1.1B in overruns and then there is the T-7A trainer.
Starliner $4.2B contract, plus extra $300M in 2019, $1.5B in overruns. The "prototype" test flight is a failure, I don't see Boeing getting paid much.

At what point do people realize Boeing is a failure? It's all fine because greed and corruption are fabulous, people collect a paycheque, some kickbacks too and Wall Street reaps benefits...

I feel bad for the engineers because you can't design anything decent in a corrupt, diseased environment. It's something everyone here needs to realize, instead of struggling to get work done when there is no support and then getting flogged for it being late.
Then the engineers take the blame for the failures- not the management or exec that created the hot, steaming turd.

The trick with fixed price used to be as follows. I don't know if things are still working like this.

You negotiate and sign a fixed priced deal for some major defence system with the Department of Defence, Ministry of Defence, or whatever its called in the appropriate region. This is not the end user, though. That will be some army, navy or air force. You now start working on that actual service, pointing out all the shortcomings in what has been ordered, and how for some extra cash it could be so much better. They then pressure the department/ministry about how changing threats and circumstances mean they now need all these extra bells and whistles, and can't defend the country without them. Now, you've opened the door to increasing the price. Rinse, repeat, and soon you've worked the bill up way beyond the originally signed contract price.

[wraper]

^Boeing was used to cost-plus contracts where the more inefficient you are, the more you get paid. Literally rewards wasting resources and being late. Looks like they became too complacent and forgot how to do things properly.

[tom66]

This really stings for Boeing.  Remember when the joke was that every Airbus flew on Boeing wings? Well, soon it’ll be Boeing astronauts catching a lift on SpaceX wings.

Apparently NASA has sacked their commercial crew director Phil McAlister, because he strongly disagreed with this decision.  Perhaps he really bet his career on Boeing managing it.

[Psi]

I'm really happy they made the right decision and didn't pander to Boeing.

Well.. other than making the announcement to match up with closed stock markets. That bit kind of annoys me a little, but it's possible it was a coincidence.

[floobydust]

Boeing stock price unaffected, when the project losses come I suppose it will then flinch. Just pound out more 737 Max lol.

One advantage to outsourcing is you can pull the plug and dump a project with less in-house losses. The engineering team, test equipment, test facilities in the old days a corporation would grow that and develop the expertise. Ending a program back then would be a blood bath.
But today, it's a jumbled "pick up the phone, order thruster valves!" mentality. "catalogue engineering" as I call it. Dumping a vendor is no pain.

I can't see Boeing has any reason to stay in space or work with NASA. Can the Starliner autonomous firmware be installed and work? This isn't over yet.

[wraper]

^Boeing and Lockheed Martin are actually looking to sell their 50:50 stakes in ULA.

[SiliconWizard]

My feeling is that Boeing isn't quite done surprising us. Not necessarily in a good way.

[tom66]

^Boeing and Lockheed Martin are actually looking to sell their 50:50 stakes in ULA.

ULA has no practical plan to implement reusability on Centaur*...  How do you imagine they will cope with SpaceX undercutting them by 2/3rds?  I just wonder who would actually buy them, because they'd need to have a serious turn-around plan to compete with new space.

*They have said they plan in the 'future' to use Centaurs that are already left in space, but have not even begun to engineer a system that could actually get close to demonstrating this.

[wraper]

^Boeing and Lockheed Martin are actually looking to sell their 50:50 stakes in ULA.

ULA has no practical plan to implement reusability on Centaur*...  How do you imagine they will cope with SpaceX undercutting them by 2/3rds?  I just wonder who would actually buy them, because they'd need to have a serious turn-around plan to compete with new space.

*They have said they plan in the 'future' to use Centaurs that are already left in space, but have not even begun to engineer a system that could actually get close to demonstrating this.

Amazon, just to not buy from Elon. https://www.ulalaunch.com/about/news/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-contract-with-united-launch-alliance-for-38-project-kuiper-launches-on-vulcan-centaur

Amazon Signs Contract with United Launch Alliance for 38 Project Kuiper Launches on Vulcan Centaur

[coppice]

^Boeing and Lockheed Martin are actually looking to sell their 50:50 stakes in ULA.

ULA has no practical plan to implement reusability on Centaur*...  How do you imagine they will cope with SpaceX undercutting them by 2/3rds?  I just wonder who would actually buy them, because they'd need to have a serious turn-around plan to compete with new space.

*They have said they plan in the 'future' to use Centaurs that are already left in space, but have not even begun to engineer a system that could actually get close to demonstrating this.

I don't see anyone buying ULA for their products or technology. It would have to be for their order book and cosy positions with government agencies

[iMo]

..The trick with fixed price used to be as follows. I don't know if things are still working like this.

You negotiate and sign a fixed priced deal for some major defence system with the Department of Defence, Ministry of Defence, or whatever its called in the appropriate region. This is not the end user, though. That will be some army, navy or air force. You now start working on that actual service, pointing out all the shortcomings in what has been ordered, and how for some extra cash it could be so much better. They then pressure the department/ministry about how changing threats and circumstances mean they now need all these extra bells and whistles, and can't defend the country without them. Now, you've opened the door to increasing the price. Rinse, repeat, and soon you've worked the bill up way beyond the originally signed contract price.

Such overruns are usually the result of bad project planning. A quality program/project managers know well how to write and negotiate a fixed-priced contract.
With FP contracts you need to have a pretty detailed specifications for the project, those specs agreed and signed by the customer.
With such precise specs any costs related to ANY changes (against those specs) are charged on top of the FP contract price and paid by the customer (process called "change management").

The problem today is the customers want to sign a FP contract, but delivered by the Agile methodology - and that does not work, of course.
One of the reasons with introduction of Agile methodology is you will not need a pretty detailed specs for the resulting product (you are creating the detailed product specs "on the fly" during the project), thus good for smaller products where the "time to market" is important (so similar to the "Time and Material contracts" from the past, fully safe for the vendor).

With large GOV projects there is typically not such a need, so you may spend significant time with detailed spec preparation (and get the final specs and the final price signed by the customer before the detailed design and implementation phases) and then go with the FP contract which will be quite safe for the vendor, imho.
The customer buys the "analysis phase" only (with the detailed spec as the result, might be an expensive exercise), based on the result of that phase the final price is quoted (a "Waterfall methodology" I would always prefer with GOV customers and larger project).