The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all
The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all
"The structural inefficiency was a huge deal."
- Boeing's Starliner spacecraft was favored to win a contract worth billions to develop a crew capsule over SpaceX.
- Boeing received $4.2 billion to develop a "commercial crew" transportation system, but ultimately lost the commercial crew space race.
- Boeing struggled to adjust to a fixed-price environment and faced financial pressure and technical challenges in developing Starliner.
Premature to say that they finished. Launch tonight was scrubbed. Even this launch is a test flight. Let’s see how long until NASA approves for regular flights
Launches get scrubbed all the time. You want that to happen when they find a safety issue with a human space flight rated rocket you know.
Heck, half the time, non-human spaceflight launches get scrubbed. I almost never see missions I work on or around get off the ground in the first launch window they get. If they do, it's pure coincidence that all of the safety checks, weather, etc all lined up at the same time for a safe launch.
Thing is, these things are billion dollar projects, even without humans in it, you don't want it blowing up on the launch pad, or having a stuck valve, reaction wheel wig out, or anything else go wrong.
The amount of stuff that has to be right on a rocket is staggering. Makes the safety checks for planes look like childsplay...why? Bcz you're launching a guided bomb essentially and trying to keep it from detonating. That's not easy to do.
Edit: For anybody that wants to retort that SpaceX did the same thing with less money. SpaceX was extremely reckless, and blows up their rockets all the time, they spin out of control, lose control and pitch toward the Ground. (And that last one is recent).
They assume a lot of risk, and their management is fine with it. Wasn't until they put humans in them that they had to get serious and follow all safety stuff.
Nasa is also very much involved in this one, and gets a lot more blowback when a launch doesn't go well, so they are cautious about it. Rightly so.
Yes I agree launches get scrubbed all the time. My point was that Boeing hasn’t crossed the finished line by any measure of complete.
Looking back, they were trying to say they were done as soon as they launched the first uncrewed flight test. Heck even after it didn’t make it to the space station they were still trying to claim success.
Being finished means actually getting NASA to agree to regular operations. That has not happened yet, and it won’t happen until after this mission lands.