Updates Boeing's CST-100 Starliner

Thunder Chicken

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Totally agree. That attitude was responsible for Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger, and Columbia.

As far as the SpaceX thing, I’d rather ride a vehicle might have some thrusters fail over one that has a tendency to blow up unexpectedly… just sayin’. Difference is, SpaceX is a much smaller company than Boeing, and can move and react much faster. So they fixed their (much more serious) issue quietly and got back to flying.
My sense is exactly the opposite: SpaceX had their failure on the test stand, which is exactly where you want to catch the flaw. Nobody was hurt. They diagnosed it, fixed it, tested it on the stand again, and flight tested it before putting crew on it. That is how the process is supposed to work.

I really wonder at the level of testing that is being done by Boeing, and I have doubts that they have effectively fixed the issues with the engineering culture and afford to invest the time, money, and effort into producing a safe spacecraft. Boeing has lots of competition for building spacecraft these days, and they aren't the engineering organization that they were decades ago. It may be that they have improved, but after OFT-1 they have a PR battle to fight to get their reputation back, and the thruster issue on OFT-2, minor or not, isn't helping.
 

Max-Q

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My sense is exactly the opposite: SpaceX had their failure on the test stand, which is exactly where you want to catch the flaw. Nobody was hurt. They diagnosed it, fixed it, tested it on the stand again, and flight tested it before putting crew on it. That is how the process is supposed to work.
I think you misunderstood my comment. I was in no way criticizing SpaceX, I think they have an amazing product that I would fly any day. I was simply comparing the severity of the issues and the length of time it took to fix them.

On the Boeing thing, I wonder if it a situation where the engineering folks are being overridden by management. I can’t see a bunch of geeky engineering types overlooking obvious stuff like software testing and thrusters…
 
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Sbb1413

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Finally, Starliner successfully docks with the ISS after three years of frustration and pandemic! Now Boeing should fix their bestselling aircraft.
 

N_Molson

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Finally, Starliner successfully docks with the ISS after three years of frustration and pandemic! Now Boeing should fix their bestselling aircraft.

I'm not really sure this is really on-topic. That flight was a success.
 

Sbb1413

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I'm not really sure this is really on-topic. That flight was a success.
I have seen a slew of bad news from Boeing since 2021, both in spaceflight and in aviation. So I was pretty much skeptic towards the company. Anyway, I'm pretty glad to see the company bouncing back.
 

N_Molson

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I have seen a slew of bad news from Boeing since 2021, both in spaceflight and in aviation. So I was pretty much skeptic towards the company. Anyway, I'm pretty glad to see the company bouncing back.

Again we're a bit off-topic but brands like Ford or Boeing are "too big to fail". They are too much part of the US industrial history and more than companies are symbols. :)
 

Urwumpe

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Again we're a bit off-topic but brands like Ford or Boeing are "too big to fail". They are too much part of the US industrial history and more than companies are symbols. :)

If the 2008 crisis showed anything at all, then it is that too big to fail doesn't exist. What psychopaths call "We are too big to fail", means actually: "Our customers are too depending on us for letting us down." A classic market failure, sorry for the off-topic into economics. Really, the more economics I studied in my life, the more I get sympathies for communism, not because I think it works or even is a valid scientific economic theory at all (Maybe I do turn into a Yanis Varoufakis). I hate how much energy is invested into turning human problems into economic problems, so that the society can keep on worshipping halfbrained billionaires, whose only success in life was being born rich.

Boeing can and will fail. Not by the classic ways as a smaller company will. It can fail by endangering the political system of the USA, like Lehmann brothers did. If there is a single Boeing manager reading this, I hope he gets the warning and makes Boeing a better company instead of paying technical debts with the good deeds of the past. I don't want to let things become that dire, that there could be a world after Boeing in my lifetime. It would also harm the rest of the aerospace industry, which can include us, the Orbiter community.
 

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Really, the more economics I studied in my life, the more I get sympathies for communism, not because I think it works or even is a valid scientific economic theory at all (Maybe I do turn into a Yanis Varoufakis).

I agree with that.

Boeing can and will fail. Not by the classic ways as a smaller company will. It can fail by endangering the political system of the USA, like Lehmann brothers did.

My idea is indeed that companies like Boeing have an "ideological value". They are supposed to prove that the system works and sustains itself. If they go down the system can likely capsize, I agree. But precisely I think that a lot of people have been more than a little bit scared by Lehmann, and even that very liberal countries like USA are ready for more interventionnism. Which might be even worse, actually.
 

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Really, the more economics I studied in my life, the more I get sympathies for communism, not because I think it works or even is a valid scientific economic theory at all (Maybe I do turn into a Yanis Varoufakis).
Doesn't work, but the reflection about distribution/inequality is essentially correct. ;)
 

Urwumpe

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Doesn't work, but the reflection about distribution/inequality is essentially correct. ;)

Exactly the analysis of Marx in the first volume of his Magnum Opus was painfully on the spot, even in modern times, and is IMHO one of the best economic texts in history. Its the classizist contributions by Engels in the following volumes and the wrong conclusions that he drew from this*, that turned this great start into the disaster called communism - and which made "Das Kapital" pretty much annoying to read to the end. You get such a great start and then it got lifted out of the water and stranded. Pretty much the opposite of LOTR, which starts annoyingly slow and first defines the world, before it really picks up action inside this world (in the books).

* Even a onetrack mind like Heinlein noticed that something was not working out in the forth Volume of "Das Kapital", which Engels authored alone based on the notes of Marx.
 

llarian

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You want cogent political philosophy from a Scifi writer?
 

Urwumpe

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You want cogent political philosophy from a Scifi writer?

Well, in this special case: Hell no! :ROFLMAO:

Generally, I don't see a point in expecting that experts in political philosophies will come up with something new or visionary. The impossible will always be created by the dreamers and naive. Those who don't know to fail yet. And if this dream convinces some of those experts, they will come up with a less crude philosophy, that will become less impossible. And when most people are convinced of this dream, the political theory has become political reality.

But, maybe we are just misunderstanding each other there, so here my point of view: Heinlein wasn't really a political genius or especially secretive of his own believes in his works - he made his figures speak for him and if a figure didn't want to fit into his views, he punished it so long until it realized that its creator was right. And he also wasn't a subtle writer at all.

And still: Heinlein noticed pretty correctly in Starship Troopers, where Engels took the wrong turn. Of course, he still got it wrong himself in the end. But he noticed the weak spot. And little surprising, the weak spot actually is the connecting thread in all of Engels later works. What Engels saw as liberation of the working class, was actually its enslavement by the capitalist class:

Yeah, this one's for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed


The same egalitarian idea of Engels, that skills and special knowledge shouldn't be mandatory for a job and people should never be considered better or more valuable by others only because of the skills and knowledge they have gained in the past, actually was making the workers just an expendable and easily replaceable resource for the owning percent of the world. And with improving technology, even the lower management is today endangered of getting their jobs streamlined. Followed by middle management and eventually the upper management - until the point, that there will be only owners and owned.

There is no difference in communist and capitalist vision there and both are a working class hell. In both cases, we will never own anything. Not even our job. The only difference will be who owns our lives and who will profit from our lost pride.
 

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You know your spacecraft is in trouble when the update thread turns into a discussion of communism vs capitalism...
picard-double-facepalm-gif-writereditorproblems-lynseyg.gif
 

Urwumpe

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You know your spacecraft is in trouble when the update thread turns into a discussion of communism vs capitalism...

Come on, Q didn't even appear yet.

playing-the-trumpet-q-star-trek.gif
 
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MaxBuzz

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a great example is the comparison of modern Russia and modern China the two countries are a cross between capitalism and communism
China is not exactly communism
Russia is not quite capitalism
 

4throck

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You know your spacecraft is in trouble when the update thread turns into a discussion of communism vs capitalism...
Well, the Commercial Crew Program is about extending capitalism into space, so I think the discussion is justified ;) Starliner and Crew Dragon have revitalized Human Spaceflight by making it part of business.
 

N_Molson

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Starliner and Crew Dragon have revitalized Human Spaceflight by making it part of business.

I don't know, it seems still very "artificial" to me... there's no real destination to carry people to. The ISS is a state-funded project and will soon be no more, and not only because of international politics, it is just getting very old. Looks like nations will try to make their own things, probably reviving stuff like Skylab or Salyut at best... The Moon landing thing is... very optimistic at best. I doubt anything really significant will happen before 2030. Maybe a lunar flyby at the very best.
 
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