Space @lemmy.world Wilshire @lemmy.world 3 wk. ago

Boeing's Starliner successfully docks with space station after challenging rendezvous

www.cbsnews.com Boeing's Starliner successfully docks with space station after challenging rendezvous

The Starliner crew had to work around thruster problems and more helium leaks, but pulled off a successful space station docking.

46 comments

The contrast of this launch versus the starship launch is pretty stark
- I mean, they were both for completely different purposes with mission profiles that aren't even slightly comparable. I think they were both successes in their own ways.
  
  You're right, they are successful in different ways. Starship was successful in a 2024 type of way, while Boeing was successful in a late 60's/1970's sort of way.
  
  Normally I wouldn’t compare them because you’re right, they’re very different in terms of mission, but they just happened to launch within a day of one another. Starliner still seems like an expensive POS when compared to falcon and dragon.
- For real - you can see the plasma literally eating away at one of the fins on the reentry video… and it still worked pretty much fine.
  
  It’s absolutely wild. Go watch it if you haven’t seen it.
- Please explain.
  
  Years long delays and development hell for the Starliner; finally launches with significant but manageable propellant leaks. Meanwhile Starship is making cutting edge leaps and bounds in only its fourth test flight. Starship looks nearly ready to launch payloads.
  
  boeing cant get themselves off the strugglebus. they can barely accomplish what spacex is now considering day to day operations.
- Imo the contrast between Starship and SLS are even starker, but in the opposite direction. I hope I'm wrong (I want as much in space as possible) but SpaceX seems to be running pretty rough and roudy for manned missions rn. They're popping off these experimental rockets like toys with very short turnaround. But to be fair they did the same with Falcon-IX and it's a success now so again I could be wrong.
  
  The alternative being you sit down, put in the time, and resources and have a 100% success rate like SLS. Ofc the catch being it costs like 10x but NASA doesn't have the luxury of televisied launch failures. I'm just REALLY concerned something fails with humans to the moon in it and poof that's that for a another 5 decades. There's a reason extremely valuable launches like human life and the JWST are done on tested platforms like Soyuz and Aireon VI.
  
  That being said yeah the Boeing craft looks even worse rn. I'm surprised they let it even dock with all the issues.
  
  Destructive testing has always been part of every engineering development projects.
  
  When developing new parts it's common to make a lot of test parts and stress them to failure to see how they react.
  
  For innovative design it can take several iterations before finding the right material/design. Each destructive testing is bringing valuable information.
  
  Knowing exactly how a part will fail gives extremely valuable information on how to build a part that will NOT fail and everyone does that including NASA.
  
  SpaceX has just brought this philosophy to whole different level by doing destructive testing on the whole rocket. The best example is that on the last flight they purposefully removed heatshields on some area of the Starship and added sensors in the area to see how it would impact the ship.
  
  The can afford to do that because they focused on building a rocket factory to mass produce starships rather than building a rocket. It means that even if they were not launching it the factory would still produce Starships.
  
  PS: SLS is not 10x the cost of Starship. According to an independent report ( source ) Right now the estimated cost of a Starship launch is estimated around $90 million, one the program is operational the cost of a Starship launch is estimated to be around $10 millions.
  
  A SLS launch is estimated to be around $4.1 billion
  
  So a Starship launch is 40 to 400 time cheaper than a SLS launch
  
  I'm super curious what the public response will be if people die in a SpaceX launch. Will it get as much scrutiny as if it were the NASA shuttle?
  
  SpaceX are popping off these experimental rockets like toys with very short turnaround.
  
  The alternative being you sit down, put in the time, and resources and have a 100% success rate like SLS
  
  https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/when-to-use-agile-vs-waterfall/
Helium Leaks and Propane Leaks? I feel like there is an underlying design flaw in how they're storing fluids.
- Seals and valves are pretty common issues.
  
  not like a simple o-ring could really cause that much damage
  
  /s
  
  They need to add seals to their seals, and valves to their valves.
  If 1 is good, 2 is better!
- Rokect science at the end of the day is just fancy plumbing with a ton of really easy but extremely complex math added to it. Leaks are the one thing that almost every single mission to space has had to dealt with, and helium is one of the hardest substances to contain, second only to hydrogen.
  
  really easy but extremely complex math added to it.
  
  Elaborate. How can math be really easy but extremely complex at the same time?
  
  helium is one of the hardest substances to contain, second only to hydrogen
  
  I think helium is harder to contain. Although hydrogen is lighter atom, it is also a larger atom due to lower nuclear charge (Z effective). Hydrogen is also a diatomic molecule, whereas helium is a single atom. I think the only thing helium has going for it is that it doesn't easily dissolve in and embrittle metals. But helium can fit through any gap hydrogen can.
  
  Rokect science at the end of the day is just fancy plumbing with a ton of really easy but extremely complex math added to it.
  
  One of us went to school for this stuff, and I can tell it wasn't you.
- They shouldn't have built the seals out of cardboard.
- Fluids?
  
  Yee

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