NASA, Boeing to Provide Outcome of Starliner Orbital Flight Test Reviews
“NASA and Boeing will host a media teleconference at 11 a.m. EST Friday, March 6, to discuss the outcome of the joint independent review team investigation into the primary issues detected during the company’s uncrewed Orbital Flight Test in December as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Participants in the briefing will be:
– Douglas Loverro, associate administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate
– Jim Chilton, senior vice president at Boeing Space and Launch
– Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program
– John Mulholland, vice president and manager of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner Program”
Listen live

Boeing Statement on Independent Review Team Recommendations for the Starliner Orbital Flight Test Anomalies
“We accept and appreciate the recommendations of the jointly led NASA-Boeing Independent Review Team (IRT) as well as suggestions from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel following Starliner’s Orbital Flight Test (OFT). Their insights are invaluable to the Commercial Crew Program and we will work with NASA to comprehensively apply their recommendations.
– Regarding the Mission Elapsed Timer anomaly, the IRT believes they found root cause and provided a number of recommendations and corrective actions.
– The IRT also investigated a valve mapping software issue, which was diagnosed and fixed in flight. That error in the software would have resulted in an incorrect thruster separation and disposal burn. What would have resulted from that is unclear.
– The IRT is also making significant progress on understanding the command dropouts encountered during the mission and is further investigating methods to make the Starliner communications system more robust on future missions.”
Keith’s note: To date none of these Starliner briefings have revealed good news – for Boeing – or NASA. Boeing made a lot of mistakes – and NASA let them and/or did not notice. The IRT report is certain to flesh out the bad news we’ve already heard and, if the trend continues, will reveal more issues with Starliner. NASA has to decide how Boeing will fix all of the problems that have been identified before they fly Starliner again. The big question is whether there will be people on board the next Starliner flight – or not. NASA may require Boeing to re-do the initial flight without a crew on board. If they do there is a big question as to who pays for the launch which could easily exceed $100 million.
– Boeing’s Starliner Transparency Is Still Cloudy, earlier post
– Starliner’s Clock Was Really Really Wrong, earlier post
– Boeing’s Starliner Mission Flops Due To A Broken Clock, earlier post
– Boeing Starliner Pad Abort Test Was Technically A Success – But …, earlier post
– Boeing’s 737/Starliner/SLS Problem Strategy: Blame The Media, earlier post

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

17 replies on “Starliner Review Team Report Press Conference Today”

  1. …and whether diva Boeing decides to just take their ball and go home if NASA won’t pay for the extra demo flight.

    1. The Federal government is big and spends lots of money. There has to be a s*** list somewhere Boeing could be put on for deconsideration on contracts.

      1. Officially and legally, I’m not sure about that. But proposal reviews, even technical ones, aren’t entirely unbiased. If a reviewer doesn’t like the proposal, but for reasons he isn’t supposed to consider, he might spend hours and hours finding every articulable flaw he can and make a big deal about it. If he likes it, again for reasons he isn’t supposed to consider, he might point out a few flaws but say they are fairly minor. That’s why they always have review panels. With a large number of reviewers, those individual biases would, ideally, average out. But, at some point, that’s not going to help. A sufficiently bad record is going to mean the whole panel will view your proposals with a very skeptical eye.

      2. Seriously? Boeing? Even if there was such a black list, it would have a built in filter. Either that or they would have to keep re-sending it as someone else with access to the list and a private, mutual back-scratching agreement would keep deleting them from the list late at night.

  2. Boeing has been given enough money. So sick and tired of arrogance of legacy space – and it is arrogance. News flash:

    Boeing of 2020 is not the Boeing of 2000 or 1980. For all of the technical advancements Boeing is nothing more than leech on the NASA budget (some would say defense budget too).

    1. Preach it, Brother… As I said in another post: just watch Boeing at least try to leverage their political influence to bypass the reflight and maybe even grab from SpaceX the plum assignment of first Crewed flight from KSC since STS-135…

      1. I don’t think that’s possible at this point. They’ll still be doing their software review while Behknen and Hurley ride to the ISS on Dragon.
        Meanwhile, SpaceX feeds us fan boys and fan girls by bringing us all ever closer to a “Space Odyssey” world…

        https://www.theverge.com/pl…

        1. I did say Boeing would *try* to throw their weight around – doesn’t mean I think they’ll actually succeed.

          1. From the twitter feeds it seems there is no decision on making Boeing do a second flight. So I expect you are right, they are indeed trying to avoid it. But given the long laundry list of things to fix it’s hard to imagine them not having to do it over.

  3. I think that the key point will be whether NASA will say something like: “We have full confidence in Boeing and Starliner and are pushing forward at top speed.” That means that they’re looking the other way and moving onto OFT-2, hoping that the systematic problems inside Boeing just go away if they’re identified and left in the company’s hands to resolve.

    My preferred outcome: OFT-1 has to be redone from page 1 and, this time, NASA and independent engineering teams will watchdog every step, especially with software.

    1. I don’t think they should go that far. It goes against the whole point of commercial crew (and cargo and lunar payload.) The idea is that NASA does _not_ watch over the service provider at every step. NASA should simply say they will not pay Boeing to fly astronauts until they have delivered a satisfactory vehicle. If that means Boeing doesn’t get paid for the next century, fine. That’s why NASA selected two companies; just in case one of them couldn’t deliver.

      I’d rather not repeat what happened in the 1990s with planetary science missions. When Goldin started pushing his “cheaper, faster, better” idea, there was a lot of criticism. Regardless, I think it was universally understood that it could not work without accepting a higher failure rate for robotic missions. And quite a few people said that was acceptable. Then there were a few failures, and everyone started back peddling. Let’s not do that with the idea of NASA buying commercial services.

  4. I’m hoping they finally admit that Boeing is going to have to refly the uncrewed demo mission on their own dime. Every time someone asks about reflying that demo mission, neither Boeing nor NASA will give a straight answer, even though it’s obvious to any sane outside observer that a reflight is clearly necessary.

    1. I agree, but to be fair, avoiding or denying the obvious until the very last possible moment is SOP for any large organization, when “the obvious” involves incurring a large expense.

      Basically, if there’s even a 0.001% chance they can save hundreds of millions of dollars, they want to keep that chance alive and not shut it down by giving in before all the options play out. So it’s actually a rational play.

      You could argue that in this case it’s not rational, because they’re taking a huge hit to their reputation by dragging out the obvious, but let’s be honest – their reputation is so besieged right now that another massive dent isn’t going to lower the value that much more.

    2. I think NASA’s position is technically correct. Working within the constraints of the contract can involve some convoluted language and logic, but no one wants to get into renegotiating a contract. If the contract doesn’t let NASA unilaterally require a OFT-2 (reflight), they can’t order Boeing to do one. Today, NASA said that the review found 61 problems, and that Boeing has to come up with a plan to fix them and convince NASA that they really are fixed. That’s much more likely to be within the scope of the contract. Of course, someone at NASA may have quietly and privately told Boeing that a plan involving an OFT-2 would be convincing and there’s almost zero chance that a plan without one would convince anyone. That’s the sort of hair splitting contract lawyers make a living on.

  5. I know one person who would NOT fly on that thing without a 100% successful re-fly of OFT-1: ME, even if they gave this old man a free seat and I could pass the physical! OTOH, If offered and the physical thing wasn’t a problem, I’d be on my way to a CrewDragpn slot! (At almost 78, I am NOT a nutcase…I would just be prudent about which spacecraft would be relatively safe in which to fly!)
    To paraphrase an old saying concerning Boeing: I told Wilbur and I told Orville and I’m telling you… without further end-to-end testing, that thing better NOT get off the ground!

  6. only in Boeing would a $100m (possible) error look good … compared to an actual >$20B error

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