Boeing and NASA call off Starliner crew launch minutes before liftoff | Hacker News Reader

Boeing and NASA call off Starliner crew launch minutes before liftoff

cnbc.com

45 pointsshinryudbz47 comments

Would they scrub a launch if e.g. one if the crew members had diarrhea, or is it limited to technical reasons and weather?

Asking the important questions.

That's a different type of valve

Aren't they quarantined before going up? To limit the possible germs they might bring up with them?

Nothing is guaranteed.

This makes me wonder if they engineer for diarrhea in space or puking all over the controls perhaps. It seems not all unlikely to happen.

There's a quora answer over here from an astronaut who had diarrhea in space:

https://www.quora.com/Has-an-astronaut-ever-had-diarrhea-whi...

Unfortunately it looks like most of the answer is behind a paywall, because it sounds like a good read lol.

Here ya go!

===========

Why yes an astronaut has had diarrhea while on the ISS. And it was me!

Getting diarrhea in outer space was certainly not on my bucket list. It was, however, a normal… and qualified “pain in the rear (see what I did there?!).”

It was early in my 5-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Not sure what brought it on —guessing food— my symptoms began to occur as I was sleeping in the U. S. Lab module. Waking sometime around 2 a.m. Greenwich time (the time zone used for our daily schedules), I knew what was coming. And it was coming fast! I sailed down to the Russian Service Module —the only toilet on the station back in 2007— and entered the tiny enclosed area short of panic, but with very high anxiety.

After quietly closing the sliding door, I fired up the Russian-designed toilet. I was actually grateful for the late hour, as I was hoping this would ensure that my two Russian crewmates (Oleg and Fyodor) would remain asleep… leaving me to my own devices.

Ultimately, I would be successful in my crisis-laden endeavor. After using two of the toilet system’s plastic bags (for collecting the fecal matter), and only one rubber glove, my symptoms subsided for a time. This allowed me the opportunity to quietly clean everything up, power-down the system, and fly back to the U. S. segment. It was there that I quickly broke open the American medical kit. Concealed beneath the module’s floor, under a large “door” adorned with the easily recognizable red cross symbol, I used its table of contents to locate the medication I so desperately needed. Immodium AD was —thank God— available for my use, and I followed the dosage recommendation to the letter. I would never have diarrhea again… in space anyway!

Keep lookin’ up!

Probably not, they’d sub in a standby if the launch window allowed for the time to do it. There’s a prelaunch diet plan but it’s hard to find information on it because the space diet gets all the attention. It’s not too exciting though, it’s mostly just a subset of whatever each astronaut considers comfort food with extra attention to nutrition and food safety.

The Apollo 11 astronauts had steak and eggs for breakfast before the launch.

That's very interesting! My first reaction is one of disbelief because steak and eggs could send someone with IBS running for the loo, but a trip to space likely entails altered energy needs, and a high energy meal loaded with protein would certainly make sense.

As I understand it, any chronic conditions that would impact an astronaut's ability to do their job would disqualify them. There's just too much at stake and too much competition for the spot. IBS isn't explicitly listed as a disqualifier like diabetes or heart disease but I doubt it would fly with NASA, especially since it tends to get worse under stress.

It's more about there being 'low residue '. See https://www.sevenstring.org/threads/sr-71-stories-written-by...

Apollo 8....Frank Borman got vomiting and diarrhea hours into the flight...Alien movie was nothing compared to it...

Depending on the severity - before launch probably, after the launch it's a risk call and they would probably adopt wait and see if it gets better approach. The reason for scrub would not be the diarrhea, but rather not knowing the reason why. Astronauts are placed in isolation / fed high quality and low diarrhea risk food. This mitigates most of normal reasons of why it could happen, so getting proceeding with the mission without understanding what is going on is risky.

Every day that passes the Apollo program looks more amazing. A truly golden generation....

That's the positive spin, but every day that passes makes Boeing look worse and worse. Comically even at this point.

Well, if you ignore the crew that was burned alive on the launch pad....

To be fair, the Apollo program did lose three astronauts on the launch pad.

Still less than the Space Shuttle program.

Apollo had a much much higher tolerance of risk - Apollo 12 did not abort after a lightning strike and total systems reboot (except the engines), Armstrong and Aldrin basically decided they were going to be the first men to land on the moon dead or alive (they actually ignored the fuel out alarm during lunar module descent). Would never happen in todays elf and safety culture.

"Starliner is reusable, with each capsule designed to fly as many as 10 missions."

Now that's an optimistic statement. Do each of the aborted launch attempts count against the tally? If so, this first one is about done. <snicker>

As I see it now, it doesn't look like it is designed to fly at all.

I think that’s 10 reentries for the capsule but the heat shield would have to be inspected and refurbished every time anyway. The rocket goes through a whole process every time a launch is scrubbed to make sure nothing goes wrong from thermal expansion after the cryogenic fuels are pumped back out.

It's complicated (in a way that makes it worse). Capsules need 6 months happy path refurb - "reusable up to 10 times with a six-month turnaround time" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Starliner#Spacecraft_ch... ). This means that some components such as pressure section are qualified for 10 flights, but others are expected to be replaced sooner. The actual refurb will be a lot longer unless they have a lot of flights to dial that in.

The real problem with Boeing is lack of testing / iteration. This is the company that perfected "paperwork milestones" - where they prove that they in theory can do something. This is supposed to be exhaustive, but theoretically validating things scales abysmally with complexity. Originally designed to speed up progress by claiming credit for work done previously this devolved into current state of affairs. I want to emphasize that from maximizing shareholder value which is the mode Boeing operated since the McDonnell Douglas merger I believe this to be a good short and maybe even medium term strategy. This is because of cost plus / a lot of programs get cancelled environment Boeing enjoyed and lower risk of milestone payment delays. AKA, if you test something and you find an issue you risk blowing up schedule now, but paperwork milestones guarantee payments and delay risk of finding out something is wrong. Boeing would have probably keep getting away with this, but new age / more agile aerospace companies showed up. Not only they sucked up all of the talent, but also the only way to survive was to iterate and iterate fast... so they did.

Source: worked in the field for 10 years.

It's not clear why the hold was called, but the launch was scrubbed because the launch window to ISS is relatively narrow.

Well at least this was an issue with the Atlas V instead of Starliner. Progress?

It's a good thing Boeing is part of the Atlas V...er, nevermind

The idea was to make Boeing compete with SpaceX.

SpaceX has already sent multiple crews to the ISS. Boeing is delayed and overbudget. Boeign has had a long series of problems including setting the system clock wrong.

Clearly SpaceX already won, NASA should just pull the plug on Boeing.

Competition is good, unfortunate that NASA picked a know abuser of govt contracting for the competitor.

It takes more than one to compete though. Right now, we have one and only one that actually works, and then some people floundering around taking government funding to do nothing really to justify anything.

NASA has no choice. Boeing is a political requirement.

Northrup would also have been a politically feasible choice.

53 people across 13 launches for SpaceX

The idea wasn't to have them compete. The idea is to have "dissimilar redundancy", so that the US still would have a human-rated launch system with the ability to go to the ISS in case one of them gets grounded for whatever reason.

While that seems prudent, at the same time for how many years have we been beholden to russian launches because we didn’t have an american system at all after the shuttle? Seems like the sky didn’t fall during that time despite only one launch system we had to go to Kazakhstan to borrow. Kind of hard to justify the cost to the tax payer when the benefit they get is effectively zero since no new capabilities are present really: we could launch people to iss before and we can do that now too.

Given today's political climate, that seems extremely risky, especially since Russia has already officially announced the intent to discontinue cooperating with the ISS program

And besides, the purpose of aerospace spending on human spaceflight isn't just for the purpose of human spaceflight, but also for related capabilities.

Right, I forget we still burn billions on that nuclear arsenal capable of glassing the planet in a half hour should some 75 year olds in dc decide that is prudent.

Yes but before you get too snarky, we also do other things like provide free navigation services and weather forecasts.

The cost, politically and otherwise of relying on the Russians now is much higher than it was 15 years ago.

And in any case Russia's entire space program is at risk of going under given the budget issues they're going to be dealing with.

Yes, also referred to as “Assured Access.”

By contrast, Marcus Wandt of Sweden:

* Nov 2022 - Chosen as reserve ESA astronaut

* Jun 2023 - Chosen for Ax-3 mission using SpaceX Crew Dragon

* Jan 2024 - Flies to ISS

> Clearly SpaceX already won, NASA should just pull the plug on Boeing.

That would cost NASA a lot more money than continuing.

The contract is task order based. Boeing (and SpaceX) get paid for reaching some milestones, but mostly for launching the actual operational missions, of which Boeing is currently contracted for 6. Boeing had to front the development money for the system, and then gets paid back when they actually fly. This is in contrast with the traditional cost+ contracting, where Boeing just tallies costs and gets paid that plus a fixed profit margin.

At this point, Boeing has reached all the milestones and gotten paid for them, but hasn't flown any of the operational missions, and has spent billions more than they've been paid to develop the system. If NASA cancels now without a clear reason listed in the contract, Boeing has a clean case for contract violation against them, and can sue for the spent development money. Delays are not an appropriate reason, so long as Boeing isn't unduly endangering the crew they can just keep trying. But they are not getting paid any money from NASA for any of this, every day that the program continues but they are not launching the actual paid 6 missions, they are just wasting their own money.

It's sort of like a game of chicken in that respect...

I guess Boeing would have to do the math and figure out that paying SpaceX for 6 ISS missions is a cheaper way of fulfilling the contract?

They don't even have to do that. As I understand it, they freely have the option to keep the money paid for them so far and just inform NASA that they are not flying the 6 operational missions, and shut it down.

The reason not to do that is that as stated above, most of the money in the contract is in those operational missions. Even if the contract will lose them money in total, if they think it will cost less to complete starting from right now than what those 6 pay out, it will make economical sense to keep trying.

Thanks for the clarification here. Now it makes more sense.

Why aren't delays an appropriate reason? Is that explicitly in the contracts?

> The idea was to make Boeing compete with SpaceX.

Not quite. Results aside, the idea is that the government wants multiple sources for access to orbit. This isn't so much about competition but rather about having options. I have no idea if there are other political elements to this at all.

And so, ULA gets funding because they represent that other potential option. They can be as inefficient and slow as they want because, in a sense, their metric is to exist as backup. And, for backup to exist, you have to fund it not just to have things designed and built. You have to use these things despite cost and performance issues for readiness considerations.

Conceptually, it makes sense. The execution, in my opinion, is seriously lacking in many ways.

Boeing was supposed to be the safe pick and spaceX the risky one that might not pan out.

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