Boeing Starliner Orbital Demonstration Mission

[Yazata]

The Orbital Flight Test 2 mission set for Friday July 30 has been postponed due to all the excitement on the Space Station this morning.

https://twitter.com/BoeingSpace/status/1...8751206400

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2021...2-mission/

https://starlinerupdates.com/starliner-l...on-events/

[Yazata]

The Orbital Flight Test 2 mission is now scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday Aug 3) at 1:20 PM EDT.

ULA photo

[Image: E7yRc2rXEA0EpSr?format=jpg&name=4096x4096]

[Yazata]

Tuesday's flight was scrubbed due to improper propulsion valve position indications for Starliner. (The technical readouts on the control room screens weren't right.)

https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/20...3-attempt/

The flight was pushed back to Wednesday August 4, but this morning they decided to stand down from today's attempt and instead will be removing the rocket from the pad and rolling it back to its Cape Canaveral hanger. They still don't seem to have any knowledge about why the valve indicators have been giving them the wrong readings, but if they can't trust the information on the control screens, they can't fly.

The problems appear to be with the Starliner capsule itself and not with the ULA rocket. (Poor Boeing, they just can't catch a break.)

There's no estimation now on when Starliner will try again. There's talk about later in the week, but it sounds more like hope than actual plans at this point.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/20...h-attempt/

https://twitter.com/BoeingSpace/status/1...9301263368

[C C]

Worse than determination to become America's version of Roscosmos, since the latter can at least still get something up and has the excuse of being poverty-stricken. Boeing's culture crisis and its horde of problems in recent years might substitute for a condition of destitution and hardship, though.

[Yazata]

Worse than determination to become America's version of Roscosmos, since the latter can at least still get something up and has the excuse of being poverty-stricken. Boeing's culture crisis and its horde of problems in recent years might substitute for a condition of destitution and hardship, though.

I felt like saying something sarcastic about Boeing, but it wouldn't be right. You don't kick a man when he's down.

I really do want to see Starliner succeed. It's a good capsule and it's valuable to have dissimilar redundancy so that American human access to space isn't entirely dependent on Crew Dragons. (What would happen if the Dragons were grounded and there's no plan-B?)

[Yazata]

Starliner remains atop its rocket inside the VIF (Vertical Integration Facility).

Boeing Space says:

"Starliner teams restored functionality to more propulsion system valves this weekend. Work continues at the Ulalaunch Vertical Integration Facility on the remaining affected valves."

https://twitter.com/BoeingSpace/status/1...6854522894

It actually sounds worse than it did last week. Then it sounded like bad control panel readings. Today it sounds like the readings were accurate and no less than 13 valves failed to open when commanded. That's a serious failure.

They say that they hope to fly in August, but still have to demontrate that the valves work reliably and provide the Commercial Crew Program with a thorough explanation of the root cause of why this happened. It will never pass a flight readiness review unless they do.

https://starlinerupdates.com/boeing-adva...-facility/

Boeing Space photo

[Image: E8Wvt7gXoAcluIm?format=jpg&name=large]

[Image: E8WvtkuXEAA-Bx3?format=jpg&name=4096x4096]

[C C]

[...] It actually sounds worse than it did last week. Then it sounded like bad control panel readings. Today it sounds like the readings were accurate and no less than 13 valves failed to open when commanded. That's a serious failure.

They say that they hope to fly in August, but still have to demontrate that the valves work reliably and provide the Commercial Crew Program with a thorough explanation of the root cause of why this happened. It will never pass a flight readiness review unless they do...

The negative effects of that merger with McDonnell Douglas well over 20 years ago just keep increasing in intensity rather diminishing. Even though the latter was the one in dire straits due to incompetence, it was their executives who ironically wound up in control of Boeing.

The almost 80-year old engineering culture that had guided and set the standards for Boeing was brushed aside for the bean counter mentality. They've basically transformed into their "waning into slipshod status" rival of the past.

EDIT: That said, I hope they finally do succeed somewhere down the line.

[Yazata]

Latest word is that they have 9 of the 13 valves unstuck and supposedly working normally. Four still remain unresponsive. They still haven't isolated the cause of the problem. Apparently they have been cycling electrical commands to the valves and heating them to free them up. (They still have to work in space, where thermal extremes are much larger, so nasa's unlikely to be persuaded the problem's gone.)

So... word has gone out in the last few hours alerting mainstream media that there will be a press conference tomorrow at 1 PM EDT Friday Aug 13 (friday the 13th!) Audio will be streamed on nasa live. Present will be Kathy Lueders, head of human spaceflight at nasa, Steve Stich, head of the Commercial Crew program (Kathy's old job) and John Vollmer, Boeing VP and Program Manager for Starliner. (Very much in the hot seat, glad I'm not him.)

Rumor is that Starliner is unlikely to launch in August. And... if it can't launch in August, all the Space Station docking ports are booked up through the end of the year. Suggesting that Starliner's unmanned demo flight won't fly until 2022. That's just talk at this point, but there it is...

https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-news...c4f8b6a7c2

https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status...1977466883

Eric Berger of Ars Technica was saying this morning that big news on OFT-2 was about to come out as soon as Thursday afternoon. (Turns out to be essentially correct, except Friday.) He thinks the big news is that it ain't flying in August.

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1...5500014597

But... here's an interesting report from Emre Kelly of Florida Today who has sources at Cape Canaveral. He says that Boeing and ULA have told their people at the Cape to prepare for an OFT-2 launch 6 AM EDT on August 19.

https://twitter.com/EmreKelly/status/142...6347735049

So there are conflicting rumors out there. I personally suspect that August 19 was just an interim target while they worked on the valve thing, but it's increasingly clear it ain't gonna happen and that's what tomorrow's press conference is about.

[Yazata]

Today's announcement is that Starliner will be removed from the blameless ULA Atlas rocket that it's sitting atop in ULA's Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral and will be returning to the Boeing factory so the the final four valves can be sorted out and the cause for the whole problem discovered.

This means that any launch soon is off the table and a 2021 launch is looking less and less likely.

Boeing says, "We'll continue to work the issue from the Starliner factory and have decided to stand down for this launch window to make way for other national priority missions."

I suspect that it wasn't all Boeing's decision. ULA probably said 'Look, you need to fly this thing or get it out of our VIF, we've got other rockets that we're contracted to launch.'

https://starlinerupdates.com/starliner-r...lve-issue/

[C C]

It's too bad that NASA doesn't have the money to contract Blue Origin into its commercial crew program with the other two.

Because even though Blue Origin would be starting "far" behind Boeing and SpaceX... I wouldn't entirely rule it out that Blue Origin could still accomplish a crewed docking with ISS before Starliner did it...

Even without a tragic accident on the part of the latter causing Boeing a delay of five years or more before NASA's scrutiny gave them the okay again.

That sounds insane, that Boeing would still be struggling that many years from now with its gremlins, long enough for Blue Origin to catch up with a tested docking capsule of its own. But I'm not sure it has completely impossible status anymore.

As slowed-down by internal bureaucracy as Bezos' company is these days, I doubt it's as severe as being run by the kind of executives that Boeing is saddled with.