Boeing's Starliner

[cubinator]

That's a pretty fast back away, I wonder if they're in a hurry to get it away from the station or if that's the normal trajectory.

[darthgently]

Fore thrusters only for the back off burns, what thrusters are used for the deorbit burn?

[tater]

 

[tater]

Entry interface is 03:44 zulu (9:44 local here in Mountain time). Coming from SW, so maybe peeps in AZ (or Mexico!) might see it.

[PakledHostage]

The livestream just started.

[satnet]

4 hours ago, cubinator said:

That's a pretty fast back away, I wonder if they're in a hurry to get it away from the station or if that's the normal trajectory.

If I recall correctly they said in the press conference they were going to use a trajectory that was faster than normal, but planned and programmed before launch.

[tater]

People at MCC are tired (per a person at MCC, lol). Said that Boeing should've catered MCC as an act of atonement

 

"go for deorbit burn"

Upper left video on the MCC screen is from the WB 57, BTW (on NASA livestream).

Edited September 7, 2024 by tater

[tater]

Nominal SM sep

[tater]

Almost over Baja.

[tater]

Saw it!

[PakledHostage]

Watching it come down, I can't help but think "Is this really the state of the art, 62 years after Friendship 7?" We really need to move beyond capsules. 

[cubinator]

4 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

Watching it come down, I can't help but think "Is this really the state of the art, 62 years after Friendship 7?" We really need to move beyond capsules. 

I find it quite elegant. Sure, parachute deployment needs to happen in just the right way, but no complicated control systems or delicate piloting, and it just comes down nice and slow. Glad to see this one back on the ground intact.

Edited September 7, 2024 by cubinator

[darthgently]

Excellent video quality.   Here is a mains full deploy to heat shield jettison clip.  The bird checking out what's happening prior to heat shield jettison is a cool happenstance.   Boeing didn't deserve all the predictions of certain return failure, but NASA made the right call.  We don't need casualties, ever, but right now seems like a particularly bad time culturally to risk and lose great people

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxRHT70MKKc592tC8wrZBDFyRJpCL2DBoE?si=eYLeb91eMziAfrKc

Apparently the forum software doesn't recognize clips to expand or I did something wrong

Edited September 7, 2024 by darthgently

[Terwin]

6 hours ago, darthgently said:

 We don't need casualties, ever,

Capsules are a perfectly legitimate approach for launching or landing small amounts of cargo or passengers using a minimum of resources.

They can even be used for high-velocity direct transfers between habitats.  Emergency escape capsules from ISS is a good example.

The main-stay of manned flight should have moved beyond capsules by this point, of course.

 

[tater]

7 hours ago, darthgently said:

We don't need casualties, ever, but right now seems like a particularly bad time culturally to risk and lose great people

The designed safety minimum for Commercial Crew is a 1:270 chance of loss of crew (all mission). That's about 30X annual driving risk of death per flight.

EDIT: CCV return risk (reentry to landing) is set at no worse than 1:500, so ~15X annual driving risk.

Just pointing that out as a reality check.

Edited September 7, 2024 by tater

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, Terwin said:

Capsules are a perfectly legitimate approach for launching or landing small amounts of cargo or passengers using a minimum of resources.

They can even be used for high-velocity direct transfers between habitats.  Emergency escape capsules from ISS is a good example.

The main-stay of manned flight should have moved beyond capsules by this point, of course.

 

Er, I wrote casualties, not capsules

2 hours ago, tater said:

The designed safety minimum for Commercial Crew is a 1:270 chance of loss of crew (all mission). That's about 30X annual driving risk of death per flight.

EDIT: CCV return risk (reentry to landing) is set at no worse than 1:500, so ~15X annual driving risk.

Just pointing that out as a reality check.

Understood, but when there is a known overheating issue with the thrusters it alters the equation.  If one knows a car A has upper control arms that are more likely to fail and car B doesn't have that issue then the risk when using car A is greater than when using car B.  Both are risky on the highway, but one can make an informed decision

[mikegarrison]

So it landed just fine, and apparently Boeing was right about it being quite safe.

[tater]

33 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

So it landed just fine, and apparently Boeing was right about it being quite safe.

I was told a number of people at Johnson thought crew should be aboard (from friend at JSC, last night, he was live-texting to me from MCC). Friend didn't give me any guestimate of the % that thought so, but in reference to Berger saying opinion was a coin flip, he said that seemed to roughly describe what he was seeing.

Edited September 7, 2024 by tater

[mikegarrison]

Obviously nothing is "perfectly safe", and (less obviously) just surviving something doesn't make it safe. I have climbed mountains solo, for example, and am still alive. That doesn't necessarily mean it was safe, or even that it met the 1/270 odds that supposedly NASA requires.

However, Boeing (and apparently some of NASA) thought the capsule met the required safety. Nothing we saw in this landing seems to have indicated otherwise.

Hopefully nothing goes wrong with the ISS or with Dragon that ends up making this a terrible decision for Butch and Suni.

Meanwhile, I still believe that the "program risk" is very real, and that Boeing's commitment to Starliner is almost certainly on very thin ice right now, no matter what NASA or Boeing are saying about it publicly. To the extent that this was a test of NASA's determination to have two equally acceptable options for ISS access, I would say that the test failed. Right now it is clear that NASA only trusts Dragon. It's hard to see many reasons why Boeing should remain committed to continuing with Starliner.

Edited September 7, 2024 by mikegarrison

[RCgothic]

Hypothetically it could come back safe 99 times out of 100 and still not meet human spaceflight safety criterion. 

Just because it came back safe this time doesn't mean astronauts should have been aboard.

Clearly there was division over whether it was "good enough" or not, and we're not particularly well placed on the outside to second guess.

[Meecrob]

On 9/7/2024 at 2:55 PM, mikegarrison said:

 

Hows it going Mikey G? What have you been up to lately?

[mikegarrison]

4 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Hows it going Mikey G? What have you been up to lately?

I am retired, and (for example) I spent most of the last few days reading an entire series of novels.

[Meecrob]

Cool! Which novels?

[mikegarrison]

1 minute ago, Meecrob said:

Cool! Which novels?

It's not really on topic, but for politeness. Lee and Miller's Liaden series.

[Meecrob]

1 minute ago, mikegarrison said:

It's not really on topic, but for politeness. Lee and Miller's Liaden series.

Sorry, gotta keep it on topic. And thanks, I'll have to check them out!