I agree that I don't think a decision has been made yet. It feels like management is letting the engineers do their job, do the analysis, and come up with a conclusion and a recommendation. But it just feels like someone else in the process is waving the contingency flag that it is not worth the risk to the crew and there are too many unknowns, which is IMO good for the program.
The Aerospace Industry Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Bad Monkey!
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I know my biggest concern with the launch was that it was surely prone to a Challenger-like case of get-there-itis. There definitely isn't less pressure when the alternative is to strand your astronauts and have them rescued by the competitor.
For the CRJ at least, that started an an evolution/stretch of the Challenger business jet which Bombardier got when they bought Canadair from the Canadian government (Crown corporation that was privatised). So the RJ wasn't a clean sheet design, but one that was iterated on from an existing product.
From my recollection, Bombardier had only done two clean sheet aircraft projects, the Global Express then the C-Series. I don't think any were done on the De Havilland turboprop side either, though at least they're still an ongoing concern now outside of Bombardier, being owned by a Canadian holding company.
Bombardier even had to sell off their train business (to Alstom) & they were one of the biggest in the world, and the recreational vehicle (snowmobiles, ATVs, etc) business too that was the origin of the company. The company is just business jets now.
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I’m torn. On the one hand, Boeing’s policy of Management Infallibility is what got them into this mess, but on the other, fixing the company does seem like it’d take a miracle…
Making matters worse, they've already been wrong in deeming a single leak an isolated issue.
Then they may have been wrong again, if they only expected leaks to arise when it's shaking during launch and their latest leak popped up out of the blue.
It's hard to speculate without knowing anything about the seals that are leaking. Naively I would think that it is all very nicely machined, using the right kind of rubber, and all that, with generous safety margin with regards to forces its supposed to experience vs the forces required to make it leak.
I think perversely the better of a job they done building and designing it the more concerning multiple leaks may be.
I think it's interesting to go back a few pages and re-read some of the points in light of subsequent events. Starting at page 49 or so. Basically asking whether an unexplained leak may be a pre-failure condition, and pushback on that. Except now we are having to have the conversation of whether it's safe to return the crew with the vehicle, which is not the way anyone would have liked that to go. Seems like we'd actually be better off if a few more people at NASA/Boeing had asked that question, rather than a few people in this thread. However it turns out this is clearly a process failure in addition to whatever Boeing fucked up on the vehicle.
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/the-aerospace-industry-discussion-thread.1404287/page-49
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You would think that, but this is the company which didn't bother to test their clock sequence for launch prior to actually launching, couldn't control their thrusters and couldn't even order/install the right grade of tape.
It's Boeing. The neverending string of overpriced fuckups should be expected by now.
If Starliner is toast there’s zero reason to send it down a minute earlier than they have to. Not that they have hope of a solution but it does buy them time.
Also with the presidential debate tonight, I doubt anyone at Boeing or NASA want to be a headline topic any more than they already are.
Also with the presidential debate tonight, I doubt anyone at Boeing or NASA want to be a headline topic any more than they already are.
Boeing has stepped in it again:
Boeing gave a press conference on Tuesday where they explained that the reason the door plug bolts were never installed on the Alaska Airlines plane was a paperwork error, where a bolt installation work order was never created, because the door removing team failed to do the proper paperwork when removing the door.
We all pretty much new it was something like that, but here’s the “stepped in it” part: As a member of the NTSB’s investigative team — a “party” to the investigation in NTSB parlance — Boeing is barred from releasing that kind of factual information and/or analysis prior to the NTSB releasing their report. The NTSB has removed Boeing as a “party” to the investigation and referred the matter to the Justice Department.
The airframe manufacturer is pretty much always brought in as a “party” on investigations of commercial airline incidents, due to their subject-matter expertise. Considering they get brought into such investigations as a regular matter, Boeing really has no excuse for not understanding the rules they operate under when in that role.
Boeing gave a press conference on Tuesday where they explained that the reason the door plug bolts were never installed on the Alaska Airlines plane was a paperwork error, where a bolt installation work order was never created, because the door removing team failed to do the proper paperwork when removing the door.
We all pretty much new it was something like that, but here’s the “stepped in it” part: As a member of the NTSB’s investigative team — a “party” to the investigation in NTSB parlance — Boeing is barred from releasing that kind of factual information and/or analysis prior to the NTSB releasing their report. The NTSB has removed Boeing as a “party” to the investigation and referred the matter to the Justice Department.
The airframe manufacturer is pretty much always brought in as a “party” on investigations of commercial airline incidents, due to their subject-matter expertise. Considering they get brought into such investigations as a regular matter, Boeing really has no excuse for not understanding the rules they operate under when in that role.
Is this some weird 4-D chess maneuver to undermine the NTSB, by pushing them to punish Boeing for their new-found openness and transparency?
To me, it’s an example of a corporate culture that’s so broken that they can’t even give a press conference without violating federal regulations.
Probably not. Being a party to an investigation is being a co-investigator. The statement privilege is related to being a witness/investigatee.
The Air Current is reporting Boeing has been sanctioned but retains party status. https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-...laska-1282-information-during-media-briefing/
ISS astronauts sheltered this morning after a decommissioned Russian sat broke up into “more than 100 pieces.”
A) poor Butch and Suni.
B) acknowledging that my tinfoil hat is in place, how does a satellite break apart into > 100 pieces other than a collision? Further adjusting said hat, there is of course a stochastic nature to space debris, but there’s also a belligerent actor on the world stage that will (seemingly) happily piss in the punch bowl to make everybody else drink piss punch along with them.
"decommissioned" isn't necessarily the same as "inert". Batteries or propellants could potentially pop and cause a release of debris
Malice not required though always possible
By potentially, yes, it has happened. When decommissioning a satellite that can't deorbit, you try to pacify it as much as possible, but you can't always get everything.
A satellite that I decommissioned did break up a couple of years after we killed it.
Thermal runaway on a battery with stored energy, ruptured tanks of propellant, etc.
NTSB rebukes Boeing after top exec discloses detail on Alaska Airlines blowout
The NTSB said it will sanction Boeing after a senior executive disclosed new information on the January incident that's currently under investigation.
www.seattletimes.com
Does decommissioning typically try to deplete the batteries or expend excess propellant to lower the risk? Just curious.
Yes to both of those things. With the propellant you try to use it in oppositely paired thrusters to get the tanks as empty as possible. For the batteries you often disconnect the methods to charge the batteries, and run them as low as possible.
Now, many times the satellites are set up to be robust and not make it so you can't accidently straight up kill them, like blowing off the solar array or something. So usually you can disconnect all but 1 battery or something. And sometimes tanks get isolated such that you can't vent them. Though that design is not common any more, from what I can tell.
Also pretty good to know that with most launch and design partners you can have, a decommissioning plan (with enough testing to make the bean counters happy) is mandatory when launching a satellite. There are even a bunch of standard decommissioning designs, e.g. with cubesats all the paperwork you need for decom is to say 'the darn thing is still in the atmosphere' and they're happy!
Unfortunately, decommission isn't the same as deorbit. Though many new satellites have a deorbit requirement, there are still a lot up there that didn't have that requirement. Anything decommissioned still has a chance of breaking up, in one manner or another (stored energy, impact, etc).
This was a Russian satellite so I'm not sure they designed it to best practices, nor do we know how well they did at trying to safe it vs their expectations
Which is why I thought of it as another failure of culture. No one decides it’s a good idea for an executive to go off script into regulation-breaking territory, just like no one decides it’s a good idea to leave the bolts off of a door plug.No 4D chess, just an exec going off script, with the company immediately acknowledging it shouldn't have happened.NTSB rebukes Boeing after top exec discloses detail on Alaska Airlines blowout
The NTSB said it will sanction Boeing after a senior executive disclosed new information on the January incident that's currently under investigation.
But when your corporate culture becomes “just get it done, careful is over-rated”, then you get people just getting it done, without being careful — whether it’s bolts or ongoing investigations.
When discussing demisability in yet another thread, I had a thought: Why aren't we (well, the Feds) requiring actual demisability tests for these LEO megaconstellations instead of just calculations and estimates? Apparently the estimates for the Dragon 2 trunk were... optimistic (~33 re-entries, debris found 4 separate times.) Conversely Starlink seems to have excellent demisability (~300 re-entries, debris found 0 times)
It wouldn't be that expensive to rideshare with a Starlink launch or something. Just need enough control to have the test satellite come down in a known area with good tracking/optics/etc - maybe some isolated missile range.
It wouldn't be that expensive to rideshare with a Starlink launch or something. Just need enough control to have the test satellite come down in a known area with good tracking/optics/etc - maybe some isolated missile range.
I assume this is the factoring making A220 wings in Ireland and the A350 line(s) that I forget the location of — is Spirit currently building anything else major for Airbus?
e: should have searched first. https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/...rbus-enters-agreement-with-spirit-aerosystems
It makes sense. Before now, the volume of stuff coming from re-entries was low and the cost of testing that way would have been ridiculously high, given the cost of launch and making another satellite copy. Now that we’re talking about thousands of copies of the same satellite and cheap launch, throwing away one (or even a handful) on testing would be a pretty small percentage of program cost. Not to mention that any risk of an individual re-entry gets multiplied by thousands, when analyzing a big constellation as a whole.
EDIT: Given the kinds of numbers we’re dealing with, you could even let a company put up a small test constellation and just do the re-entry test on some of those. Wouldn’t have to be that you’d have to do such a test before any multiple-copy launches were approved. We’d care most about avoiding thousands or tens-of-thousands of copies of not-quite-demising satellite up there. A dozen or even few dozen would still represent a tiny risk, especially if we still make them do a desktop analysis before launching any.
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Plus they're supposed to deorbit at a specified missile range, instead of some random location.
Well, I was thinking maybe you only do a few at the range, while the rest would be used for longer-term testing of whatever new design you’re testing. But since it’s “tens” and not “thousands”, and they still had to do the desktop analysis, represents a very small risk.
Boeing takes plea deal and will plead guilty to fraud in 2018-2019 crashes of 737 MAX jets
Lots to unpack here. On the one hand it's a bit of a sweetheart deal. On the other hand it doesn't exonerate the execs and it only covers the two MAX MCAS-related crashes. A guilty plea would also affect Boeing's status as a defense contractor, but Boeing is effectively too big to fail in the defense space.
Lots to unpack here. On the one hand it's a bit of a sweetheart deal. On the other hand it doesn't exonerate the execs and it only covers the two MAX MCAS-related crashes. A guilty plea would also affect Boeing's status as a defense contractor, but Boeing is effectively too big to fail in the defense space.
Keep in mind that $250 million is in addition to $2.5 billion in fines and victim compensation paid under the original do-not-prosecute deal. I wouldn’t argue if someone said “still not enough”, but $2.75 billion is meaningful money for Boeing. This has not been just a slap on the wrist, as we’ve often seen for big corporations.
IANAL, so I'm just curious, after paying all that to the US, can they still be fined and held liable by other countries' justice and aviation authorities, or are they immune to that now by international agreements?
My thinking is this basically doesn't matter at all money wise, but the impact on Boeing just on the business side has already been sufficient to jeopardize their ability to remain a going concern.
There's FAA-imposed production rate limitations, delayed plans for new airframes to take advantage of open fan engines in the 2030s, and there's been delays to MAX7, MAX10, and 777X. All of these things together mean that even if they can get their head above water on the MAX8/9, they're going to spend the next decade dealing with the knock-on effects.
Not at all. Other regulators have historically outsourced a lot of their work to the FAA but other countries still retain their own aviation authorities.
Given Boeing doesn't appear to be on track to hitting the current FAA-imposed production rate limitations anytime soon, I'm not overly concerned about the punitive aspect of said limitations...
See, this is the problem. Boeing should be able to stay in business with appropriate reforms. It's the executives who need to feel the impact, in order to discourage other members of the MBA class from endangering Americans while investing in stock buybacks. And there's also the small matter of admitting to retaliation against whistleblowers.
It seems that Ariane 6's debut launch has been a mixed bag. Boosters and Vulcain core stage flew nominally, while the upper stage experienced an APU anomaly preventing restart and subsequent de-orbit burn.
Meanwhile, something random I noticed from the on-board video:
Around T+8:30, we got a view of the core stage from the upper stage. It looked like there was pretty substantial charring on the exterior of the core stage. Do we have any sense whether that was lateral heating from the boosters firing, exhaust during their separation, or something else? Is it expected/normal, or an indication of something that could be a problem?
Meanwhile, something random I noticed from the on-board video:
Around T+8:30, we got a view of the core stage from the upper stage. It looked like there was pretty substantial charring on the exterior of the core stage. Do we have any sense whether that was lateral heating from the boosters firing, exhaust during their separation, or something else? Is it expected/normal, or an indication of something that could be a problem?