Boeing's Stealth Media Telecon
Keith’s note: Boeing held a media telecon today to discuss the problems they had with a recent test of their Starliner. But instead of making sure that all of the space media had the story, Boeing hand-picked the media who were allowed to participate. NASAWatch was not contacted. This is not surprising since I have been mocking their lame, tone deaf human spaceflight PR campaign of late – so I probably hurt their feelings. My bad.
But they did not contact Space News to participate. That is odd given their long-standing reach across the space industry. As for what was discussed – apparently, based on tweets from those who did participate, there was less detail offered than Irene Klotz from Aviation Week already tweeted yesterday (see below). So I am not certain what the point of the media telecon was today other than to give quotes.
As we approach an era of commercial crew flights paid for by the government it will be interesting to see if companies like Boeing can be as open and transparent as NASA PAO tries to be when there are mishaps, accidents and mistakes. Hand picking news media isn’t the way to do that. Just sayin’
Boeing Starliner launch abort motor leak traced to faulty valves. Four of 8 stuck open following 1.5-sec hot-fire of service module test article June 2. While repair underway, Boeing moving ahead w/ unmanned flight test in 5-6 mos, then launch abort & crew flight tests mid-2019
— Irene Klotz (@Free_Space) August 1, 2018
I’d be very, very surprised if those dates hold.
Getting closer to the deadline. I hope nothing more happens. Probably Not enough time, but what I have been saying since ’12. Convert a Dragon-1 to Crew as backup. The BO abort pack in the Trunk would work if it is strong enough to fly beyond the destruct cloud before opening the parachutes. Use the Shuttle SRM, except 1 segment 1st stage and 1 segment 2nd stage. I would like to call the launcher OmegA-B. Since it would be the same as OmegA, except would use existing segments and could be launched in months instead of years. The safest launcher for Crew and the cheapest. No hold downs needed. Sit it on any pad you like. Use cranes to stack. 1 cargo run to ISS would pay for it since SpaceX charges 140m$ and NG 2X that. New Admin. maybe Bridenstine will see the logic in that plan. He put on quite a favorable performance at the WST hearings. He is either very smart or a good actor.
I saw another article yesterday that said that their pad abort test and first crewed flight have now been pushed down the calendar 6 months. The dates in the article were a little funky…but I think it put their crewed flight at mid-2019.
When aerospace companies try to cherry-pick the space news media like this – starting to follow the (terrible) White House example?– the few reporters actually invited should, at an absolute minimum, ask, for the record, why the others were not invited as well; and publish the response.
I wonder if their PR dept lacks resources (budget, hiring knowledgable people, authority to post media releases and update PR webpage)? Or those who are in the know are reluctant to talk about Starliner (proprietary information, classified details, etc. or engineers have some very difficult problems but don’t have solutions yet) so if don’t know what to say, say nothing as may make matters worst. Problem is the silence leads to conspiracy theories.