Would be clearer to say that its return to flight has been delayed to at least around a year from now.
For the fall/winter 2025 rotation they're going to plan with it being a Crew Dragon flight for now, subject to change depending on how Starliner's fixes go.
They also somewhat misleadingly say that NASA will also rely on Soyuz because of Starliner's unavailability, but that's just about the seat swap arrangement which helps to ensure that both the US and Russia can maintain a continuous presence if either side's vehicles have trouble. IIRC the agreement is expiring and NASA's interested in extending it, but Roscosmos hasn't agreed yet. I say misleading because I think they intended to extend that agreement regardless of Starliner's status.
I'm confused about your "no" here. The comment to which you're replying is clarifying misleading wording, but your comment is an opinion on what should happen.
> No. The ISS is decommissioned in 2030 and Boeing is losing money on the programme. It makes sense for nobody to continue this charade.
There is an important point here that needs to be emphasized. To fix starliner you need to build up personnel familiar with construction, operations, and build/test enough hardware to iterate kinks. This requires investment that Boeing being a publicly traded company cannot do for free (or they will get sued) and NASA is unlikely to pay them to do it. So this is catch 22, they will fix current issues, but given how long it will take, there is a high chance of causing new issues due to loss of essential personnel who would know how to integrate fixes with existing design constraints... so unfortunately charade characterization fits.
Would think that timeline is more likely to be extended than shortened. There will be successor missions, and other space use cases for which derivatives of an astronaut transfer vehicle have value.
The bigger question will be whether it's better for Boeing to take the relatively low cost option of fixing the propulsion system which to some extent is their third party supplier's issue, in a funding environment where operating actual missions is more favourably funded than R&D, or whether that's sunk cost fallacy when SpaceX is clearly ahead of them.
That took long enough. Insane that the gov was entirely silent after this week's starship launch as well...
Even though I'm not an elon fan, pretending to not notice for political reasons (not to mention the insane halving of launches at Vandenberg AFB) is completely insane and damaging to our country.
To what end is the government obligated to "notice" Starship? It's not enough that its FAA works with SpaceX to get launches certified (and coordinate air/sea restrictions, etc.), its NASA has already agreed to fund part of Starship's development (and be its first customer with a historic crewed mission) / routinely flies Falcon missions like Europa Clipper this week, and its DOD is a huge customer? I see no reason for a government agency to do media for an event outside one of their missions.
I wish I had any idea on how to deal with the Elon situation. I genuinely believe SpaceX wouldn't be achieving nearly what it is without him, but he's obviously also going way off the deep end these days and it's uncomfortable to watch one man with that much power getting increasingly unhinged.
It's something I constantly wonder about, I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working hard to flatten society, but I also worry that we need insane people in power sometimes to get stuff done. Starship (hell, even F9) is an astonishing achievement and there's zero chance that innovation would be possible anywhere except SpaceX or another entity with very strong leadership (Valve or Steve Jobs' Apple if they made rockets)
> I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working hard to flatten society.
I'm very curious about this mentality.. Do you beleive that meritocracy leads to better outcomes? Why do you think that the government is better positioned to allocate resources than the people who made the money?
If Elon would have been "Taxed the absolute shit out of" after his sell of Zip 2, he wouldn't have founded paypal. too much tax on the paypal sell, he couldn't invest in Tesla or start SpaceX.
>SpaceX employees say they are relieved Elon Musk is focused on Twitter because there is a calmer work environment at the rocket company
He sounds like that kind of boss we have all had where you actively avoid interacting with him because his ideas will be stupid and get your project off track. I think SpaceX succeeds despite having to deal with current Elon.
One way to read the delay was that the technical teams were working against a deadline clock that started as soon as the vehicle landed, to analyze and propose remedies for the thruster failures and helium leaks. And now they've hit that deadline, having found no good fixes.
I suspect it's more at a program level. Boeing have lost a lot of money on Starliner, may lose a lot more, and already seem lukewarm on continuing with the project. It's actually NASA that's keener on keeping it running, so that they are not entirely dependent on SpaceX for human spaceflight.
Yes, because they're an inferior option to supply launch services to the ISS.
Stop apologizing for a company that let their standards slip and endangered the lives of multiple astronauts not to mention wasting billions of tax payer dollars.
Our current administration is damaging to the country. This anti-Musk insanity started pretty early when Biden invited all EV companies to the EV summit, except Tesla. Which, at that time produced more EVs combined than the rest.
And now people are wondering why Musk doesn't like current administration. What a mystery.
It's not just "the gov". Elon was a controversial figure just last year, but now the entire Internet is giving Musk-related everything a transparent child treatment. It's almost unsettling how fast the hype is going down.
That's Lockheed Martin's unrelated Orion [0] spacecraft (which launches on the SLS orbital rocket, which is contracted primarily to Boeing). It's been under development since 2004; spent $29.4 billion; flown twice without astronauts—in 2014, and in 2022; and still doesn't work [1].
Nope, Starliner is not designed to go beyond low Earth orbit. You might be thinking of the commercial space stations intended to replace the ISS, where, yes, Starliner was proposed as the crew transport for Blue Origin's station.
I've noticed some negative comments about Elon Musk.
However, let's focus on the issues at hand.
Boeing's track record, including Starliner and commercial planes, raises legitimate safety concerns.
It appears they've compromised safety for financial gains. Should we prioritize supporting Starliner despite these issues merely because of personal opinions about Musk?
Readit News
For the fall/winter 2025 rotation they're going to plan with it being a Crew Dragon flight for now, subject to change depending on how Starliner's fixes go.
They also somewhat misleadingly say that NASA will also rely on Soyuz because of Starliner's unavailability, but that's just about the seat swap arrangement which helps to ensure that both the US and Russia can maintain a continuous presence if either side's vehicles have trouble. IIRC the agreement is expiring and NASA's interested in extending it, but Roscosmos hasn't agreed yet. I say misleading because I think they intended to extend that agreement regardless of Starliner's status.
No. The ISS is decommissioned in 2030 and Boeing is losing money on the programme. It makes sense for nobody to continue this charade.
There is an important point here that needs to be emphasized. To fix starliner you need to build up personnel familiar with construction, operations, and build/test enough hardware to iterate kinks. This requires investment that Boeing being a publicly traded company cannot do for free (or they will get sued) and NASA is unlikely to pay them to do it. So this is catch 22, they will fix current issues, but given how long it will take, there is a high chance of causing new issues due to loss of essential personnel who would know how to integrate fixes with existing design constraints... so unfortunately charade characterization fits.
The bigger question will be whether it's better for Boeing to take the relatively low cost option of fixing the propulsion system which to some extent is their third party supplier's issue, in a funding environment where operating actual missions is more favourably funded than R&D, or whether that's sunk cost fallacy when SpaceX is clearly ahead of them.
I think this is a soft cancellation of Starliner. System certification is indefinitely paused.
Even though I'm not an elon fan, pretending to not notice for political reasons (not to mention the insane halving of launches at Vandenberg AFB) is completely insane and damaging to our country.
Edit: Plus, here is NASA Administrator Bill Nelson publicly congratulating SpaceX after the catch anyway: https://x.com/SenBillNelson/status/1845461454977196294
It's something I constantly wonder about, I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working hard to flatten society, but I also worry that we need insane people in power sometimes to get stuff done. Starship (hell, even F9) is an astonishing achievement and there's zero chance that innovation would be possible anywhere except SpaceX or another entity with very strong leadership (Valve or Steve Jobs' Apple if they made rockets)
We wouldn't have SpaceX or Tesla with that policy.
> I genuinely believe SpaceX wouldn't be achieving nearly what it is without him
It simply wouldn't have existed without him and the conventional wisdom would instead be that what he's accomplished is impossible.
> insane people
Musk is the sane one. It's the rest of us that are insane.
I'm very curious about this mentality.. Do you beleive that meritocracy leads to better outcomes? Why do you think that the government is better positioned to allocate resources than the people who made the money?
If Elon would have been "Taxed the absolute shit out of" after his sell of Zip 2, he wouldn't have founded paypal. too much tax on the paypal sell, he couldn't invest in Tesla or start SpaceX.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell#SpaceX
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-employees-elon-musk-f...
>SpaceX employees say they are relieved Elon Musk is focused on Twitter because there is a calmer work environment at the rocket company
He sounds like that kind of boss we have all had where you actively avoid interacting with him because his ideas will be stupid and get your project off track. I think SpaceX succeeds despite having to deal with current Elon.
Stop apologizing for a company that let their standards slip and endangered the lives of multiple astronauts not to mention wasting billions of tax payer dollars.
And now people are wondering why Musk doesn't like current administration. What a mystery.
Why would Tesla have been invited to a summit that was primarily centered around United Auto Workers? Tesla is non-union. “EV” was only a pretext.
The summit didn’t invite any non-US carmakers, who also make EVs. It was an event about UAW. Everyone invited was UAW.
The administration even said as much: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/08/05/white-house-answers-why...
https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2024/10/15/nasa-update...
Is Boeing in the wind.
Twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
"He got the Boeing treatment"
He boeinged. Or he was boeinged.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/nasa-confirms-independ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)
However, let's focus on the issues at hand.
Boeing's track record, including Starliner and commercial planes, raises legitimate safety concerns.
It appears they've compromised safety for financial gains. Should we prioritize supporting Starliner despite these issues merely because of personal opinions about Musk?
Also, isn’t this how capitalism works or supposed to work?