NASA safety panel has lingering doubts about Boeing Starliner quality control

[tn1911]

https://spacenews.com/nasa-safety-panel-has-lingering-doubts-about-boeing-starliner-quality-control/


While the safety panel was critical of Boeing’s work on commercial crew, it praised SpaceX for the success so far of its Demo-2 Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station. “NASA and SpaceX are most certainly to be congratulated for the Demo-2 launch,” McErlean said.

Shut it down and give the money to Musk... if he had the money that Boeing has wasted on this train wreck we'd be on Mars by now.

[Grand58742]

Interesting as I've never heard of a Gulf splashdown target area. I mean, I'd bet there were contingency operations for such a thing, but all the ones I knew of NASA used were in the Atlantic and Pacific.


That mission, he acknowledged, is not yet over, with NASA planning a splashdown off the Florida coast Aug. 2, depending on weather conditions. McErlean noted that this spacecraft has a “very limited wind margin” that will complicate the landing. As a result, NASA now has identified seven locations off the Florida coast, up from three originally identified. They are located offshore from Cape Canaveral, Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, Panama City, Pensacola, Tallahassee and Tampa.

[Grand58742]

Shut it down and give the money to Musk... if he had the money that Boeing has wasted on this train wreck we'd be on Mars by now.

The problem is the money has already been spent. Or likely has.

I agree in principle, but at the same time, NASA wanted multiple options for the Commercial Crew program and they went with Boeing since (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/gao-denies-sierra-nevada-protest-of-nasa-contract/2015/01/05/68e70970-94f7-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html):


NASA “recognized Boeing’s higher price but also considered Boeing’s proposal to be the strongest of all three proposals in terms of technical approach, management approach and past performance, and to offer the crew transportation system with most utility and highest value to the government.”

I'd be curious what Sierra Nevada could have done with the same budget as SpaceX with the manned Dream Chaser concept.

[The Dumb Gun Collector]

NASA “recognized Boeing’s higher price but also considered Boeing’s proposal to be the strongest of all three proposals in terms of technical approach, management approach and past performance,

More like they recognized that the Boeing gravy train would probably take care of everyone involved. I'm suprised they haven't assassinated Musk.

[Diamondback]

More like they recognized that the Boeing gravy train would probably take care of everyone involved. I'm suprised they haven't assassinated Musk.

Too high-visibility a target. If anything happens to him, the Cui Bono becomes WAY too obvious... JFK Redux.

[morbidbattlecry]

Dammit Boeing when do I get my Big F*****G Rocket :sad:

[Belmont31R]

That article doesn't go far enough. They were outright complaining they can't keep up with the SpaceX launch schedule and products being sent up.

Boeing has had decades to get out in front of both passenger travel and space flight. Zero ****s given if they can't keep up.

My only worry is their lobbyists going to work to handicap SpaceX to regulate launches and contracts so suddenly Boeing is the only company who can meet some stupid rule set.

They'll be bankrupt soon enough one way or another with all the cancelled contracts and no one is going to be buying jets for a long time with entire fleets parked right now.

[TehLlama]

There's still a non-trivial amount of blame I'll put towards NASA on this one - when you're in a monopsony arrangement where contracting drives not only the product but the organizational composition of every servicing contractor, you can't then go and complain as the government buying entity that your contractor is ill-equipped to solve problems you've been aware of the entire time.

Comes down to the tendency for government programs to be failure-adverse (not actually risk-adverse, but always biased towards lowest perceived risk of high-visibility failures), and the result is that they spend hundreds of millions of dollars simulating something and trying to analyze for potential failures, when it costs tens of millions of dollars to go run a test... within a few tests you've gotten it pretty well sorted out, and learned countless things you couldn't have imagined you'd learn from spending a decade of computer hours in FEA software... but NASA has been writing cost+ contracts for decades, adding extra oversight, then wondering why the only missions they can afford to run are the lowest cost ones where their own risk management framework tells them it's acceptable to fail part of the time.

[Grand58742]

Apparently, NASA thought Boeing was "trustworthy" enough to not have to check so closely on things they probably should have:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1tsU3Se6GM

[duece71]

Trustworthy enough? Before or after the 737 Max debacle? Ok, space flight is a different animal compared to atmospheric flight, but the body count was kind of large with the 737 Max.

[Slater]

Nowadays, apparently military contracts are helping keep Boeing afloat.

[Grand58742]

Nowadays, apparently military contracts are helping keep Boeing afloat.

I'd say government contracts overall.

They seriously need to do some soul searching over everything that's happened in the last five years or so.