She broke barriers at NASA and contributed to its earliest space missions as a rocket scientist, mathematician and computer programmer.

Annie Easley was a member of the team at NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland (now the Glenn Research Center) given the critical task of fixing the Centaur’s design. Unlike most people working on the project, she was not an engineer. She hadn’t even finished college. But she was an excellent mathematician and computer programmer who was adept at solving problems.

The Department of Defense had concluded that the Centaur would not be ready for at least several more years, a critical setback for the country.

But 18 months later, on Nov. 27, 1963, the redesigned rocket system successfully blasted into space. It was the beginning of a new era in spaceflight, and Easley’s calculations had been vital to the mission. //

Easley had been hired in 1955 to work at Lewis as a human computer — one of a group of gifted women who calculated and solved complex mathematical problems before there were mechanical computers powerful enough to do the work.

The 2016 book and film “Hidden Figures” memorialized the work of some of these pioneers. Like the women depicted in that history, Easley was Black and had to overcome obstacles to succeed, but she did not let that stop her.

“When people have their biases and prejudices, yes, I am aware. My head is not in the sand,” she said in a 2001 oral history interview for NASA. “But my thing is, if I can’t work with you, I will work around you.”

The agency tasked government labs, research institutions, and commercial companies to come up with better ideas to bring home the roughly 30 sealed sample tubes carried aboard the Perseverance rover. NASA deposited 10 sealed tubes on the surface of Mars a couple of years ago as insurance in case Perseverance dies before the arrival of a retrieval mission.

"We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back," Nelson said. //

"It has been more than two years since NASA paused work on MSR," the Planetary Society said. "It is time to commit to a path forward to ensure the return of the samples already being collected by the Perseverance rover.

"We urge the incoming Trump administration to expedite a decision on a path forward for this ambitious project, and for Congress to provide the funding necessary to ensure the return of these priceless samples from the Martian surface."
China says it is developing its own mission to bring Mars rocks back to Earth. Named Tianwen-3, the mission could launch as soon as 2028 and return samples to Earth by 2031. While NASA's plan would bring back carefully curated samples from an expansive environment that may have once harbored life, China's mission will scoop up rocks and soil near its landing site.

"They’re just going to have a mission to grab and go—go to a landing site of their choosing, grab a sample and go," Nelson said. "That does not give you a comprehensive look for the scientific community. So you cannot compare the two missions. Now, will people say that there’s a race? Of course, people will say that, but it’s two totally different missions."

Still, Nelson said he wants NASA to be first. He said he has not had detailed conversations with Trump's NASA transition team.

The first human mission to land on the Moon is one of the only NASA mission patches that does not include the names of the crew members, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. This was a deliberate choice by the crew, who wanted the world to understand they were traveling to the Moon for all of humanity.

Another NASA astronaut, Jim Lovell, suggested the bald eagle could be the focus of the patch. Collins traced the eagle from a National Geographic children's magazine, and an olive branch was added as a symbol of the mission's peaceful intent.

The result is a clear symbol of the United States leading humanity to another world. It is simple and powerful. //

With the space shuttle, astronauts and patch artists had to get more creative because the vehicle flew so frequently—eventually launching 135 times. Some of my favorite patches from these flights came fairly early on in the program.

As it turns out, designing shuttle mission patches was a bonding exercise for crews after their assignments. Often one of the less experienced crew members would be given leadership of the project.

"During the Shuttle era, designing a mission emblem was one of the first tasks assigned to a newly formed crew of astronauts," Flag Research Quarterly reports. "Within NASA, creation of the patch design was considered to be an important team-building exercise. The crew understood that they were not just designing a patch to wear on their flight suits, but that they were also creating a symbol for everyone who was working on the flight."

In some cases the crews commissioned a well-known graphic designer or space artist to help them with their patch designs. More typically they worked with a graphic designer on staff at the Johnson Space Center to finalize the design. //

In recent years, some of the most creative patch designs have come from SpaceX and its crewed spaceflights aboard the Dragon vehicle. Because of the spacecraft's name, the missions have often played off the Dragon motif, making for some striking designs.

There is a dedicated community of patch collectors out there, and some of them were disappointed that SpaceX stopped designing patches for each individual Starlink mission a few years ago. However, I would say that buying two or three patches a week would have gotten pretty expensive, pretty fast—not to mention the challenge designers would face in making unique patches for each flight.

If you read this far and want to know my preference, I am not much of a patch collector, as much as I admire the effort and artistry that goes into each design. I have only ever bought one patch, the one designed for the Falcon 1 rocket's fourth flight. The patch isn't beautiful, but it's got some nice touches, including lights for both Kwajalein and Omelek islands, where the company launched its first rockets. Also, it was the first time the company included a shamrock on the patch, and that proved fortuitous, as the successful launch in 2008 saved the company. It has become a trademark of SpaceX patches ever since.

Almost no one ever writes about the Parker Solar Probe anymore.

Sure, the spacecraft got some attention when it launched. It is, after all, the fastest moving object that humans have ever built. At its maximum speed, goosed by the gravitational pull of the Sun, the probe reaches a velocity of 430,000 miles per hour, or more than one-sixth of 1 percent the speed of light. That kind of speed would get you from New York City to Tokyo in less than a minute. //

However, the smallish probe—it masses less than a metric ton, and its scientific payload is only about 110 pounds (50 kg)—is about to make its star turn. Quite literally. On Christmas Eve, the Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the Sun. It will come within just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) of the solar surface, flying into the solar atmosphere for the first time.

Yeah, it's going to get pretty hot. Scientists estimate that the probe's heat shield will endure temperatures in excess of 2,500° Fahrenheit (1,371° C) on Christmas Eve, which is pretty much the polar opposite of the North Pole. //

I spoke with the chief of science at NASA, Nicky Fox, to understand why the probe is being tortured so. Before moving to NASA headquarters, Fox was the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, and she explained that scientists really want to understand the origins of the solar wind.

This is the stream of charged particles that emanate from the Sun's outermost layer, the corona. Scientists have been wondering about this particular mystery for longer than half a century, Fox explained.

"Quite simply, we want to find the birthplace of the solar wind," she said.

Way back in the 1950s, before we had satellites or spacecraft to measure the Sun's properties, Parker predicted the existence of this solar wind. The scientific community was pretty skeptical about this idea—many ridiculed Parker, in fact—until the Mariner 2 mission started measuring the solar wind in 1962.

As the scientific community began to embrace Parker's theory, they wanted to know more about the solar wind, which is such a fundamental constituent of the entire Solar System. Although the solar wind is invisible to the naked eye, when you see an aurora on Earth, that's the solar wind interacting with Earth's magnetosphere in a particularly violent way.

Only it is expensive to build a spacecraft that can get to the Sun. And really difficult, too.

Now, you might naively think that it's the easiest thing in the world to send a spacecraft to the Sun. After all, it's this big and massive object in the sky, and it's got a huge gravitational field. Things should want to go there because of this attraction, and you ought to be able to toss any old thing into the sky, and it will go toward the Sun. The problem is that you don't actually want your spacecraft to fly into the Sun or be going so fast that it passes the Sun and keeps moving. So you've got to have a pretty powerful rocket to get your spacecraft in just the right orbit. //

But you can't get around the fact that to observe the origin of the solar wind, you've got to get inside the corona. Fox explained that it's like trying to understand a forest by looking in from the outside. One actually needs to go into the forest and find a clearing. However, we can't really stay inside the forest very long—because it's on fire.

So, the Parker Solar Probe had to be robust enough to get near the Sun and then back into the coldness of space. Therein lies another challenge. The spacecraft is going from this incredibly hot environment into a cold one and then back again multiple times.

"If you think about just heating and cooling any kind of material, they either go brittle and crumble, or they may go like elastic with a continual change of property," Fox said. "Obviously, with a spacecraft like this, you can't have it making a major property change. You also need something that's lightweight, and you need something that's durable."

The science instruments had to be hardened as well. As the probe flies into the Sun there's an instrument known as a Faraday cup that hangs out to measure ion and electron fluxes from the solar wind. Unique technologies were needed. The cup itself is made from sheets of Titanium-Zirconium-Molybdenum, with a melting point of about 4,260° Fahrenheit (2,349° C). Another challenge came from the electronic wiring, as normal cables would melt. So, a team at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory grew sapphire crystal tubes in which to suspend the wiring, and made the wires from niobium.

Taking stock of spaceflight one-quarter of the way through the 2000s. //

2. Ingenuity flies on Mars
   Almost everyone reading this article remembers the seven minutes of terror associated with the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2012. A similar thing happened nine years later when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars (this time, with some amazing video of the dynamic experience). Yet as cool as these landings were, and as impressive as the capabilities of Curiosity and Perseverance are, a tiny payload named Ingenuity carried by Perseverance stole the show on Mars. //

3. Falcon Heavy launch, dual rocket landing
   By popular demand, this mission in February 2018 ranks in the top spot. The visuals were irresistible. The rocket launch itself was impressive, with the combination of 27 Merlin rocket engines generating a brightness that one almost had to look away from. Then the twin boosters separated and returned to Earth, landing like a pair of synchronized swimmers. Finally, there was the arresting view of a cherry red Tesla (and Starman) flying away from Earth in the general direction of Mars.

It was a spectacle that understandably captured the public’s attention. But the new rocket was more than a spectacle. By designing, building, and launching the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX demonstrated that a private company could independently fund and fly the largest and most powerful rocket in the world. This showed that commercial, heavy-lift rockets were possible. By providing competition to the Delta IV Heavy, the Falcon Heavy saved the US government billions. It's likely that the US government will never design and develop a rocket ever again.

Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars.

In short, the helicopter's on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features in the relatively smooth surface of Mars to determine its position, so when it touched down, it did so moving horizontally. This caused the vehicle to tumble, snapping off all four of the helicopter's blades.

It is not easy to conduct a forensic analysis like this on Mars, which is typically about 100 million miles from Earth. Ingenuity carried no black box on board, so investigators have had to piece together their findings from limited data and imagery.

"While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with," said Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a news release. //

Amazingly, the vehicle was able to recharge somewhat with its solar panels and is continuing to communicate about once a week with the Perseverance rover that brought it to Mars in February 2021. This will last a little while longer before the rover and helicopter lose line-of-sight communications.

The remarkable success of Ingenuity has prompted NASA engineers to already begin planning for possible follow-on missions, including a larger "Mars Chopper" that could carry scientific instruments to study areas inaccessible to rovers.

The Voyager probes have entered a new phase of operations. As recent events have shown, keeping the venerable spacecraft running is challenging as the end of their mission nears.

As with much of the Voyager team nowadays, Kareem Badaruddin, a 30-year veteran of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), divides his time between the twin Voyager spacecraft and other flight projects. He describes himself as a supervisor of chief engineers but leaped at the chance to fill the role on the Voyager project. //

With physical hardware long gone, the team has an array of simulators. "We have a very clear understanding of the hardware," said Badaruddin. "We know exactly what the circuitry is, what the computers are, and where the software runs."

And the software? It's complicated.

There have been so many tweaks and changes over the years that working out the exact revision of every part of Voyager's code is tricky. "It's usually easier to just get a memory readout from the spacecraft to find out what's on there," said Badaruddin.

We're sure there are more than a few engineers on Earth who are not entirely sure what their systems are running. The challenge for the Voyager team is that the spacecraft are nearing the half-century mark, as is the documentation. //

The Voyager spacecraft are unlikely to survive another decade. The power will eventually dwindle to the point where operations will be impossible. High data rates (relatively speaking – Voyager's high data rate is 1.4 kilobits per second) will only be supported by the current Deep Space Network (DSN) until 2027 or 2028. After that, some more creativity will be needed to operate Voyager 1's digital tape recorder.

Badaruddin speculates that shutting off another heater (the Bay One heater) used for the computers would free up power for the recorder, according to the thermal model, but it'll be a delicate balancing act. //

Badaruddin hopes to stick with the mission until the final transmission from the spacecraft.

"I love Voyager. I love this work. I love what I'm doing. It's so cool. It just feels like I've got the best job at JPL." ®. //

The Farthest
The Farthest is an excellent documentary on Voyager produced by a friend of mine, Clare Stronge.

Watch it here - https://youtu.be/1g6uFe3vZE0?si=BIQR-GjLt1E2a4Xh

thinkreal Ars Praetorian
22y
573
I’m still boggled by the contrast of approaches to engineering. How long have the Orion team been wringing hands over heat shield tiles after some anomalous but not disastrous effects? SpaceX - “let’s rip off a couple thousand tiles and see how the steel holds up, next year we want to try some new hardware somewhere around there” //

AverageDutchGuy Ars Scholae Palatinae
5y
822
Super3DPC said:
3 things that surprise me on this flight:

1. How routine it feels. I no longer hurry to catch the launch live. I wait until the whole thing is over and skip the video forward a few times. 6 launches this and it's almost boring already. I'm just too spoiled.
2. After re-entry we can see parts of Starship stainless steel change color to have rainbow tint. Can those skin be reuse without changing them? Rainbow tint on stainless means excessive oxidation IIRC.
3. I thought they'd use RCS to reorient Starship before engine relight. I mean the whole point of relight test is to make sure Starship can re-enter the atmosphere right? Can't do re-enter atmosphere without RCS reorienting Starship before re-entry burn right?

Rainbow discoloration on stainless just means a (thin) oxidation film has happened (and the color can be a nice indicator of what temperature was reached (for the dark purple to dark blue observed on the ship it would be between 450 to 600 degrees centigrade respectively, with bright blue being reached around 540) If it didn't deform I see no reason why it would have to be replaced, unless excessive tempering would occur in the likely cold-rolled skin material and ultimate strength was impacted.

Edit to add: heat range given is accurate for AISI304, since Starship uses (iirc) AISI 301 it might be slightly off. Source: https://bssa.org.uk/bssa_articles/heat-tint-temper-colours-on-stainless-steel-surface-heated-in-air/. //

Endymio Smack-Fu Master, in training
2m
53
jeremyp66 said:
Reusable spacecraft have been done before.

None anywhere near this size and scale.

jeremyp66 said:
for perspective, the sixth launch of Saturn V put two men on the Moon.

At a cost of several percent of the nation's total GDP: roughly $290 billion in 2024 dollars. Musk is doing it for a little over 1% of this.

jeremyp66 said:
OK so let's stop pretending that SpaceX is doing this "privately". Starship is substantially funded by the US tax payers. Starship is part of Artemis.

No, more precisely, the preexisting Starship concept is being used in Artemis, among many other things. That's how Musk was able to underbid the competition. His original Artemis bid was ~$2.8B: competitors ranged from $4B to $10B, for proposals which were less competent and flexible as well. All the Artemis funds are only about a third of Starship's R&D costs alone, not even counting the operational costs of the moon mission itself. //

Endymio Smack-Fu Master, in training
2m
53
MagicDot said:
Another very small step forward, almost matching the achievements of 1962.

Saturn V put 2 men on the moon -- by throwing away the vast majority of the hardware used to get there. Starship will place 100 on the moon, plus cargo, at a cost of ~1% of Saturn V ... and keep all that pricey hardware to boot.

MagicDot said:
That definitely is an acid test...and Elon is clearly on acid to think he's pulling that off in his lifetime.

Interesting. I recall the exact thing said about Tesla's ability to compete against entrenched automakers, or their ability to manufacture their own batteries at scale, or SpaceX's ability to manufacture reusable rockets or launch a 6000+ satellite constellation.

NASA spent millions on DEI and ‘Environmental Justice’ grants while laying off real scientists doing actual research and innovation. //

In an exclusive report, the UK Daily Mail says NASA staffers want President-Elect Donald Trump’s co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk to ‘clean house’, as insiders reveal the agency squandered millions of taxpayer money on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. //

Paula | November 18, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Democrats fear Elon Musk. And for good reason. He’s half Einstein and half honey badger.

NASA uncovers 50 ‘areas of concern’ including leaks and cracks on the 25-year-old space station. //

Over the past two decades, the ISS has been a hub for groundbreaking scientific research. The microgravity environment has enabled significant advancements in studying diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, asthma, and heart disease. The unique conditions allow researchers to observe cellular and molecular changes impossible on Earth.

Without the interference of Earth’s gravity, Alzheimer’s researchers have studied protein clusters that can cause neurodegenerative diseases. Cancer researchers studied the growth of endothelial cells on the space station.

Endothelial cells help supply blood in the body, and tumors need that blood to form. Space station-grown cells grow better than those on Earth and can help test new cancer treatments.

Why do this in space? Studying cells, organoids, and protein clusters without the influence of gravity – or even the forces of container walls – can help researchers get a clearer understanding of their properties, behaviors, and responses to treatments.

Bloomberg calls for cancellation of the SLS rocket. In an op-ed that is critical of NASA's Artemis Program, billionaire Michael Bloomberg—the founder of Bloomberg News and a former US Presidential candidate—called for cancellation of the Space Launch System rocket. "Each launch will likely cost at least $4 billion, quadruple initial estimates," Bloomberg wrote. "This exceeds private-sector costs many times over, yet it can launch only about once every two years and—unlike SpaceX’s rockets—can’t be reused."

The space suits worn during SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission are a sci-fi reimagining of NASA’s classic marshmallow suits. There’s a good reason why they look so different.

"It was a bullseye landing,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program. “The entry in particular has been darn near flawless.”

Still, he acknowledged that certain new issues had come to light, including the failure of a new thruster and the temporary loss of the guidance system.

He added it was too early to talk about whether Starliner’s next flight, scheduled for August next year, would be crewed, instead stressing NASA needed time to analyze the data they had gathered and assess what changes were required to both the design of the ship and the way it is flown.

Rocky debris caused by a NASA mission could create the first human-made meteor shower.

In Sept. 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroids Redirect Test (DART) intentionally collided with a tiny moonlet named Dimorphos, which orbited the asteroid Didymos, to test its asteroid deflection technology.

Scientists believe the crash produced over 2 million pounds of rocks and dust — and a new study suggests fragments of Dimorphos could land around Earth and Mars in 10 to 30 years, and the meteor showers could last for up to a century.

Boeing has has a long string of aviation disasters to its credit which many attribute to Boeing's embrace of DEI to the detriment of engineering excellence.

NASA is also pushing DEI inside its engineering operations. In fact, "diversity statements" determine if programs sink or swim: see Biden-Harris admin requires 'corrupt' DEI 'ideological litmus test' on NASA innovation funding, scientists say | Fox News.

What might make up a "white supremacy culture?" //

Hmm, it seems to me that a heaping doses of "perfectionism," "either/or thinking," "objectivity," "quantity over quality," and "sense of urgency" are all things that would have helped Boeing avoid this fiasco. Perhaps a little "worship of the written word" could have come in handy when building a freakin computer clock or choosing non-flammable components. Or some solid "power hoarding," instead of "group groping" when making decisions.

The irony of alleged "white supremacy culture" containing so many of the elements that would have prevented this fiasco is just too much to bear.

It's unlikely Boeing can fly all six of its Starliner missions before retirement of the ISS in 2030. //

Ten years ago next month, NASA announced that Boeing, one of the agency's most experienced contractors, won the lion's share of government money available to end the agency's sole reliance on Russia to ferry its astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit.

At the time, Boeing won $4.2 billion from NASA to complete the development of the Starliner spacecraft and fly a minimum of two, and potentially up to six, operational crew flights to rotate crews between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX won a $2.6 billion contract for essentially the same scope of work.

A decade later, the Starliner program finds itself at a crossroads after Boeing learned it will not complete the spacecraft's first Crew Flight Test with astronauts onboard. NASA formally decided Saturday that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched on the Starliner capsule on June 5, will instead return to Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Put simply, NASA isn't confident enough in Boeing's spacecraft after it suffered multiple thruster failures and helium leaks on the way to the ISS. //

On Saturday, senior NASA leaders decided it wasn't worth the risk. The two astronauts, who originally planned for an eight-day stay at the station, will now spend eight months on the orbiting research lab until they come back to Earth with SpaceX. //

So why did NASA and Boeing engineers reach different conclusions? "I think we’re looking at the data, and we view the data and the uncertainty that’s there differently than Boeing does," said Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator and the agency's most senior civil servant. "It’s not a matter of trust. It’s our technical expertise and our experience that we have to balance. We balance risk across everything, not just Starliner."

The people at the top of NASA's decision-making tree have either flown in space before or had front-row seats to the calamitous decision NASA made in 2003 to not seek more data on the condition of Space Shuttle Columbia's left wing after the impact of a block of foam from the shuttle's fuel tank during launch. //

Now, it seems that culture may truly have changed. With SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft available to give Wilmore and Williams a ride home, the decision was relatively straightforward. Ken Bowersox, head of NASA's space operations mission directorate, said the managers polled for their opinion all supported bringing the Starliner spacecraft back to Earth without anyone onboard.

However, NASA and Boeing need to answer for how the Starliner program got to this point. //

SpaceX, which NASA has tapped to rescue the Starliner crew, has now launched eight operational long-duration crew missions to the International Space Station to date, plus an initial piloted test flight of the Dragon spacecraft in 2020 and several more fully private human spaceflight missions. SpaceX has finished all of its work in its initial commercial crew contract with NASA and is now working off of an extended contract to carry the program through 2030, the planned retirement date for the ISS. //

Right now, the prime route is through SpaceX. NASA continues to fly one astronaut on each Russian Soyuz spacecraft in exchange for a seat for a Russian cosmonaut on each SpaceX crew mission. //

Assuming the investigation doesn't uncover any additional problems and NASA and Boeing return Starliner to flight with astronauts in 2026, there will not be enough time left in the space station's remaining life—as it stands today—for Starliner to fly all six of its contracted missions at a rate of one per year. It's difficult to imagine a scenario where NASA elects to fly astronauts to the space station exclusively on Starliner, given SpaceX's track record of success and the fact that NASA is already paying SpaceX for crew missions through the end of this decade.

Notably, NASA has only given Boeing the "Authority To Proceed" for three of the six potential operational Starliner missions. This milestone, known as ATP, is a decision point in contracting lingo where the customer—in this case, NASA—places a firm order for a deliverable. NASA has previously said it awards these task orders about two to three years prior to a mission's launch.

The commercial crew contracts are structured as Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) agreements, where NASA can order individual missions from SpaceX and Boeing as needed. If SpaceX keeps performing well and the space station is actually decommissioned in 2030, it may turn out that NASA officials decide they just don't need more than three operational flights of Starliner. //

Lone Striker Smack-Fu Master, in training
7y
62

accdc said:
Thank you Stephen, and Eric, for your fantastic coverage of this issue.

Here’s what I (as a layman with little technical expertise) don’t get:

How does SpaceX make it look so easy, and Boeing make it look so, well, ridiculous?

SpaceX designs, manufactures and integrates most components themselves. In Boeing's case, the thruster manufacturer is Aerojet. In order to make changes or redesign the components, there is a huge bureaucratic barrier in place. They have to jump through extraordinary hoops, not only engineers but also procurement, legal, and any number of departments. In SpaceX's case, it's a walk down the corridor to talk to engineers to discuss the problem and design the fix.

Boeing is also in the dark ages in terms of software development (my field.) SpaceX has a more Silicon Valley/Agile software design methodology where you make many, faster, smaller changes and test them extensively with small unit tests all the way through to hardware-in-the-middle testing to ensure things work as intended. Every tiny change gets rigorously tested to ensure there are no defects or regressions. Boeing's ancient software development process was one of the primary factors in their first Orbital Flight Test failure where they nearly lost the vehicle twice due to software bugs with the mission clock and reentry procedures.

Boeing relies partially on paperwork to validate their spacecraft (whether it's contracts with sub-contractors or studies in place of actual testing) and they've lost the engineers and the engineering culture from the early spaceflight era. //

HiWayne! Smack-Fu Master, in training
1y
50
Ten years they’ve been tinkering with Starliner. That’s crazy. The first crewed Mercury flight and Apollo 15 spanned ten years.
Yeah I know, I know. NASA had an insane budget back then, but damn. Boeing had the benefit of half a century of spaceflight experience and they’re struggling this much to get to LEO. //

Dachshund Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
4y
110

accdc said:
Thank you Stephen, and Eric, for your fantastic coverage of this issue.

Here’s what I (as a layman with little technical expertise) don’t get:

How does SpaceX make it look so easy, and Boeing make it look so, well, ridiculous?

Having worked for or with these companies as an engineer, the most concise explanation I have is culture.

Boeings culture is not technically focused, nor mission focused. Boeings culture is Boeing focused with a particular emphasis on shareholders. The overwhelming majority of managers I’ve worked with at Boeing view engineers as a plug and play commodity and are woefully ignorant of the general subject matter they manage. Many I know at Boeing have an exceptionally difficult time taking responsibility for mistakes that Boeing makes. Whether it’s commercial planes or crew capsules, it’s somebody else’s fault and Boeing knew best. Hubris is rampant across Boeing. What’s fascinating there is that there isn’t a damn thing worth being proud of in recent years, but the cognitive dissonance remains strong.

SpaceX culture is mission focused. Their managers tend to understand what it is they are managing. Their workforce is rather young, however, they test things and are willing to publicly fail in a way that Boeing and others will not stomach. When SpaceX does fail, they tend to take full responsibility, learn from the issue and solve the problem.

SpaceX is more or less doing what NACA and subsequently NASA did in their infancy. It’s nothing new, but it’s a major difference as compared to what NASA and its ecosystem have evolved to since those early years. //

Malmesbury Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
3m
341

TLStetler said:
A big part of the problem is Boeing put too many thrusters in too small a space and operated them at a duty cycle which caused everything to overheat. Said overheating caused vapor lock in the propellant lines, and Teflon seals to soften and swell.

On the other hand, if you've seen images of Dragon with the aeroshell off the thrusters are distributed spatially, not crowded together. Plumbing and control lines are not near the throats of said thrusters.

This is not even rocket science, any decent Hot Rodder knows not to place propellant/fuel lines etc. in a "hot box."

The problems are inherent in the development methods and company structures.

SpaceX insources - mostly because of cost, but also control. There are, deliberately, few barriers between the engineers working on various parts of the system.

The Boeing/Aerojet relationship is a key counter example - because of a arguments over money they started treating each other as the enemy.

Boeing is attempting to design to perfection, then test. If anything goes wrong at the test stage, they are actually in interactive hardware development. Without the hardware, or low cost basis to do the large number of physical tests required. SpaceX assumed they are in iterative development from the start.

ridley
So to be able to use their spacesuits they need to fit a square peg into a round hole?

Best give Mr Lovell a call. //

Avoiding standard docking and space suit adapters seems like a good way of wasting money and time
The thing that most surprises me about this whole mess is why NASA would ever consider that having a different design of docking adapter and space suit for each type of American vehicle that is to dock with the ISS was a good idea..

That the Soviet G2S vehicles would use different docking adapters and space suit connectors is expected: the two parts of the original ISS design were always intended to use differing docking ports and space suit connectors from the get-go.

However, it beggars belief that NASA would not have specfied a common set of docking adapters for all American spacecraft as well as common space suit interface(s), if only to save costs and re-implementation effort by basing these interfaces on than the well-tested Shuttle docking and space suit connectors. AFAIK those never caused problems throughout their useful life. //

Re: Avoiding standard space suit adapters seems like a good way of wasting money and time

No, giving money to SpaceX was seen as a good way of wasting money and time.

REMEMBER: when this all started, Boeing was the shoo-in, and that goofy SpaceX startup was the complete waste of time and money.

Nobody expected SpaceX to actually ever reach Station.

It never entered anyone's mind that SpaceX would eventually have to rescue a Boeing crew.

The American docking adapters ARE standard.

https://www.internationaldockingstandard.com/

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/meet-the-international-docking-adapter/

American spacecraft, INCLUDING Shuttle, either dock to this, or are berthed by the robot arm to a standard pressure door, which allows larger cargo. //

Re: other good ways of wasting money and time
To ensure SLS block 1 would launch by 2016 congress decided to use an upper stage (Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage) based on Centaur which has been flying since the 60s. The wimpy ICPS massively restricts SLS capabilities so a new Exploration Upper Stage was ordered for SLS block 1B. SLS is assembled on a mobile launch platform in the vertical assembly building and the rocket and platform are carried out together to the launch site by the crawler/transporter. The MLP includes a tower to fill the core stage and upper stage with propellants. The solid rocket boosters have grown an extra segment each since the space shuttle so the combined mass of SLS and MLP are now sufficient damage the crawler transporter's tracks and they path the travel to the launch site. EUS is longer than ICPS so the propellant connections are at a different height. A whole new MLP is required otherwise SLS block 1B would be delayed because modifications to MLP1 would not be able to start until after Artemis III.

Clearly this situation is untenable. What if MLP2 was completed before EUS? Boeing would look bad for delaying Artemis IV. The solution was simple: do not decide what height the propellant connections will be at until the last possible minute. Bechtel cannot start design of MLP2 without that. Moving the connections also moves the fans that blow hydrogen leaks away before the concentration gets big enough for an explosion. Designing the MLP for a choice of connection heights is also tricky. The platform must be optimized for mass so it does not go much further over the limits of the crawler transporter.

If Boeing and SpaceX had to agree on a flight suit connector US astronauts would now have a choice of rides to the ISS: Soyuz or Shenzou.

Believe it or not there is a worse solution. NASA could decide the shape of the flight suit connectors. Congress would then have an opportunity to help like they did with SLS. Giving Boeing and SpaceX the freedom to work independently of congress (and each other) saves a huge amount of time and money. It also means a flight suit design issue does not ground both crew transport systems at the same time.

The space agency also confirmed key elements exclusively reported by Ars over the last week, chiefly that NASA has quietly been working for weeks with SpaceX on a potential rescue mission for Wilmore and Williams, that the Crew-9 mission launch has been delayed to September 24 to account for this possibility, and that Starliner is unable to undock autonomously with the current software configuration on the vehicle. //

FabioLx Seniorius Lurkius
6y
10
Subscriptor++
Makes you think that maybe, just maybe, they found issues in the autonomous software back in 2022, but didn't tell anyone because they weren't visible if you couldn't get access to detailed data, and they were banking on not needing it anymore. //

Ajax81611 Smack-Fu Master, in training
3y
50
Subscriptor
NASA's rules for human space flight require less than a 1 in 270 chance of LOM, LOC, or serious injury to the crew. I wish someone had asked, "What is the current risk level assessment? One in what number?" //

Ajax81611 Smack-Fu Master, in training
3y
50
Subscriptor
Why on Earth (pun?) would you on a TEST flight not leave in BOTH options, manual or automated return? I can't fathom that. If the answer is, "this spacecraft isn't capable of that," then I have a bunch of other questions. ///

Quite probably the hardware is different and they would need to test that integration before having confidence in the autonomous mode

BadSuperblock Ars Praefectus
15y
3,125

rbtr4bp said:
I think there is an argument that SpaceX, as a new and agile company with something to prove, is going to do things better. People who are willing to accept more risk are attracted to the new "startup" and willing to work harder for the same or less money because of the adventure and excitement.
...

No, it doesn’t necessarily follow that this incompetence was a consequence of "maturing." It is not a foregone conclusion. For one thing, what is your definition of "mature"? We think of technology companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Intel to be "mature" because they are now going on 40 years old. Well, since Boeing was founded in 1916, by the time they were 50 years old in 1966, Boeing was taking some of the biggest, most rewarding, and most admired engineering risks and innovations of their entire history: Projects like components for the Apollo moon program, and the absolutely revolutionary and widely loved 747 airliner. This company, half a century old, was creating these exciting, "startup" quality projects. At that time, they were more "mature" than the companies we now call mature, but they had not lost their innovative spirit, engineering discipline, and quality control.

It is generally agreed that the root cause of the Boeing malaise was not the age of the company, but the decision of one CEO and board to allow McDonnell Douglas management to take over Boeing, instituting the changes that poisoned the company. In other words, it was not a rot from within, but a culture change imposed by outsiders.

"Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods." //

Boeing announced another financial charge Wednesday for its troubled Starliner commercial crew program, bringing the company's total losses on Starliner to $1.6 billion. //

These losses have generally been caused by schedule delays and additional work to solve problems on Starliner. When NASA awarded Boeing a $4.2 billion contract to complete development of the Starliner spacecraft a decade ago, the aerospace contractor projected the capsule would be ready to fly astronauts by the end of 2017.

It turns out the Crew Flight Test didn't launch until June 5, 2024. //

When NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX to develop the Starliner and Crew Dragon spacecraft for astronaut missions, the agency signed fixed-price agreements with each contractor. These fixed-price contracts mean the contractors, not the government, are responsible for paying for cost overruns. //

It's instructive to compare these costs with those of SpaceX's Crew Dragon program, which started flying astronauts in 2020. All of NASA's contracts with SpaceX for a similar scope of work on the Crew Dragon program totaled more than $3.1 billion, but any expenses paid by SpaceX are unknown because it is a privately held company.

SpaceX has completed all six of its original crew flights for NASA, while Boeing is at least a year away from starting operational service with Starliner. In light of Boeing's delays, NASA extended SpaceX's commercial crew contract to cover eight additional round-trip flights to the space station through the end of the 2020s. //

cyberfunk Ars Scholae Palatinae
12y
824
Blaming fixed price contracts is rich. They're basically admitting incompetence by blaming the cost structure they agreed to.. either because they agreed to it, or because they can't properly estimate cost and deliver quality product on budget. Either way they look like idiots. I'm glad they're holding the bag this time and not the taxpayer. //

BigFire Ars Scholae Palatinae
3y
985
SpaceX will not bid on Cost Plus contracts because the company isn't setup with the kind of extra layers of auditing to justifying everything that will trigger the cost overrun payments. Frankly Boeing Space isn't setup to do anything other than Cost Plus (witness ISS and SLS center core). Nevermind the same ballpark, they're not even playing the same sports, quoting Jules Winnfield from Pulp fiction. //

Dachshund Smack-Fu Master, in training
4y
99
You could see this shift happening within Boeing a little over two decades ago. I had the privilege of learning from some of the last grey beards whose work had given Boeing their stellar reputation before they retired. Those grey beards were worn thin and got zero respect from the hot shot, tassel loafer MBAs hustling them to do things “better, faster, cheaper”.

Internally we knew it was all going to hell, we just weren’t sure when the public would see it for themselves. I thank the space exploration Gods for SpaceX - if it weren’t for them Boeing and every other crook company could keep playing the “space is hard” card and the cost plus buffet open. //

Transmission Integrity Seniorius Lurkius
5y
8
Subscriptor

RickVS said:
The bean counters deserve this. If instead of shareholder value they had focused on top-notch engineering, they probably would have already flown crew to the ISS at least a couple of times.

And as a result it would probably have been cheaper/profitable. //