19 replies on “Starliner Has Left Earth – But Not For Long”

  1. Be careful or you will get on Boeing’s naughty list for pointing out the lack of women in the control room…

  3. Starliner malfunctioned after separation, but is stable in “a” orbit, not the final orbit needed to reach Station. Press conference at 9 am.

  5. Likely they will continue the flight as an orbital test, duration TBD maybe they will mention the new plan in the press conference but my guess is much of it is still being worked out. Virtually impossible they will go to ISS, even if they have enough fuel (doubtful) the ISS managers will in no way allow this particular capsule with apparently some type of attitude control problems to get anywhere near the station much less dock.

    Based on the sparse commentary it sounds like they couldn’t get the spacecraft into the correct attitude in time for the orbit insertion burn so the burn was delayed, resulting in an off-nominal but stable orbit. Could be a software problem in the routine used for that maneuver, or some other problem that can be quickly identified and corrected. However even so it seems unlikely they will proceed with CFT as the next test flight and will probably do another uncrewed flight, which means a big delay for CFT probably a year. Doubt if we will fund out much in the press conference about impact on the CFT schedule but that is my opinion on where this is heading.

    1. What is it with Boeing and software lately? Seems like there is a recurring theme here.

  6. A basic flight software error. How was this not discovered during testing? It would look like NO IV&V (or effective IV&V) for this spacecraft and incomplete system level testing by Boeing. What clock you use is a basic element of software and would be key to any software test. It can be fixed, but the quality of Boeing code is in question. Did NASA S&MA have an opportunity to review this code and test result?

  7. Sounding like either the spacecraft’s master clock was mis-calibrated or the automatic events script had the wrong event times. Either way, this isn’t a good look on Boeing and drops the ball right back in a very surprised SpaceX’s court.

  8. So Boeing says the clock was off….. A reporter asked if it had a backup, and they gave a non answer. In short an automation failure. I’m curious if there is more than one clock. If they disagree Boeing may not have thought to include such a scenario in their code. This may yet be linked to issues raised with the 737, bad internal controls.

  9. The big question is if they understand the problem well enough to land it safely at WSMR. That will need a lot more precision than a ocean landing.

    If they do land at WSMR they will probably let crew fly the next flight, at least that is the impression I got from the news conference. It hope the pressure to have access to ISS isn’t creating the same “Go Fever” that caused the Apollo 1 and Challenger accidents.

    1. Right now, anything that requires precision timing must be suspect for this spacecraft. I’d insist on at least a few monitored timed manoeuvres to be sure of exactly what is wrong with the event timer and how to work around it.

      1. I wonder if they are looking at an ocean landing as a backup. My guess would be off of San Diego as there is probably a LPD, LSD or LHD available to do the recovery. Not sure what they could use in the Atlantic off of Florida since it’s a long way from the Norfolk base.

        1. The priority for the mission at this point is landing at White Sands because that is one of the major test objectives. Even the mission duration is now driven by the priority to land at White Sands.
          Unless there would be a risk to the surrounding population they will do everything they can to land there.

  10. This sucks. Even though it appears to me Boeing is scamming the taxpayers for billions with the SLS, I really wanted the Starliner to be 100% successful. It’s hard for me to believe it is a software issue as that thing should have run a thousand times by now.

  11. Well, according to that highly reliable source, a Space News comment from someone who was watching the press conference, it was “MET failure in a launch parameter file”. AKA someone at Boeing entered a wrong Mission Elapsed Time for the Starliner circularization burn, and nobody at Boeing or NASA caught the error.

    So we have significant QC problems on the last two major Starliner tests – the absent drogue connector on the parachute, and now this.

  12. In the press conference the subject of CFT did come up and as expected there was no real comment on that, which is understandable as it is very early in figuring out what went wrong. Early indications are the mission clock got out of sync somehow causing the orbital insertion burn to not occur at the scheduled time. Oddly the thrusters thought the burn was taking place so they used up a lot of RCS fuel trying to keep fine attitude control. Compounding the problem, when they tried sending a command to manually initiate the burn the capsule was unfortunately in between TDRS satellites at the moment so that delayed the burn even further.

    There was a suggestion that if astronauts had been on board they possibly would have been able to manually initiate the burn and continue on to a successful ISS docking. However I think that’s highly unlikely, not that they technically couldn’t do it, but the whole purpose of the suborbital insertion is so that if there are any problems you simply don’t do the orbit insertion burn and then renter at perigee. I would think the safety rules when a crew is on board would dictate that if they were having these type of unexplained problems with the automated control system shortly after launch that a decision would have been made to not perform the burn and get back on the ground and then figure it out.

    Back to the CFT question, it was specifically asked whether uncrewed docking is a requirement prior to CFT. The answer was no it is not a requirement. But there was no direct answer to the question whether there will be another uncrewed flight prior to CFT, other than Bridenstine said he would not rule out doing CFT without having done a prior uncrewed docking. Bridenstine then made an analogy to Shuttle, pointing out that the Shuttle docked for the first time to ISS with crew onboard. Then again that was partly because one of the major safety issues with the Shuttle was that it was not capable of uncrewed test flights.

    I’m sticking with my opinion that CFT is delayed until after another uncrewed flight. I will certainly be glad if I am proven wrong, but I would be very surprised if they proceed next with CFT.

    1. Wonder if Boeing will be given more money to make another attempt as the Atlas V is not a cheap launch vehicle, especially with the boosters and modified second stage needed for the mass of Starliner. If they do a second unscrew flight test it will push the crew flight well down the road.

  13. The capsule is landing back in White Sands, NM on Sunday. Boeing preserved the landing location by aborting the ISS visit. Like someone else said before, the ISS wants nothing to do with malfunctioning spacecrafts coming even close to it.

  14. I wonder why, with like 10 TDRS satellites in orbit, they could not open up a comm link in reasonable time? (like immediately) Sounds like poor planning for a new spacecraft just entering orbit for the first time. That should have been one of the back-ups. Boeing indicated there was video of the spacecraft entering orbit, taken by the last stage of the Atlas and it confirmed the wildly firing thrusters using up fuel. I wonder why they have not shown the video? Interesting that NASA has to have a hand in operating the Boeing spacecraft. I don’t think Space X works that way.

Comments are closed.