Boeing rejects claims NASA crew 'stranded' by spacecraft | Hacker News Reader

Boeing rejects claims NASA crew 'stranded' by spacecraft

ft.com

34 pointsbookofjoe29 comments

I don't think we have enough information to say whether or not the crew is stranded, but I think we DO have enough information to be suspicious of anything that Boeing says.

https://archive.ph/P6l8e

This makes sense:

> However, it was decided to spend more time assessing the causes, as they affected the service module which would not return to earth. This data would be lost on return so “we are taking time to understand the issues further,” Boeing said.

Actually that doesn’t make sense to me - why would the telemetry vanish? I get wanting more data, but I don’t understand how it would be lost.

They want more telemetry events before telemetry events stop due to reentry

The leaks in question are on the service module of the Starliner spacecraft. This is a separate part of the spacecraft that is jettisoned before the main spacecraft reenters the atmosphere. Therefore, the service module, where all the leaks are that they want to understand better, would burn up in the atmosphere, and be destroyed.

I get wanting more data, but I don’t understand how it would be lost.

If the craft burns up on re-entry due to many possible factors (Angle of descent, speed of descent, uncontrollable trajectory, etc, etc) any evidence of faulty components would be 'disappeared'.

Not everything in a spacecraft is instrumented. They're poking around to figure out what went wrong before they lose the chance. Space is hard and sometimes things don't work. More information is good, especially when you get it basically for free.

This story is incredibly sensationalized because it's fashionable and gets clicks right now to spam anything even slightly negative about Boeing.

It’s in outer space, so no way to store the data in real-time in the cloud.

Just download it /s

Beam me down, scotty!

They might not be stranded, but Boeing has no reputation to use as defence in this blame game.

They arent stranded, they are just resting!

If they can't come back, that's pretty much the definition of stranded.

They're not stranded then, because they can come back with other spacecraft.

? There's no other spacecraft there now with spare seats. NASA could arrange to send a Dragon up, but at a pretty fearsome cost. (Crew dragon missions are something like $300 million. There's one scheduled, and paid for, to launch fairly soon, but with no spare capacity -- if they wanted to use that for Butch and Suni's ride down, they'd need to bump two of the currently scheduled crew for that mission off.)

Can't they send up one of the space x ones?

Dragon is SpaceX.

https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/dragon/

There's one scheduled, and paid for, to launch fairly soon, but with no spare capacity

Stupid question of the day, can we not just force jam a bunch of astronauts into it?

The police complain if you have people riding on your lap in a car. Imagine what NASA thinks of that for a space pod.

There's no way the NASA flight director wants to deal with the paperwork for elevated vital data of those whose laps were occupied: "Sir, the whole craft was vibrating, not to mention these flight suits are ...restricting..."

Weight is probably a big one.

Slowing things down requires energy (or the dispersion of energy) and that amount of energy is directly related to the weight.

Plus breathing gases, waste management, and any other required consumables.

Yes absolutely. SpaceX Dragon is cleared to seat up to, I believe, four extra astronauts in an emergency.

Isn't there a Dragon docked at the ISS right now?

That Dragon came with it's own crew, not empty.

However, in emergency situations, the Dragon capsule can seat up to, I believe, four extra astronauts, and there are only two on Starliner.

They're not stranded. Just today, they took shelter in the Starliner in case something went catastrophically wrong with the satellite debris the station passed through. They were ready to go home on it immediately. They are already cleared to leave on Starliner in an emergency. But since there is no emergency, they are continuing to look at the thruster data.

No one knows if the thrusters will work reliably enough - either manually or under software control - to enable a safe descent.

It's not a binary. It's about probabilities. And the probabilities are looking ambiguous at best.

  Next up: "Boeing rejects gravity".-
  PS. Which they'd, by the way, wish they could, I am sure ...

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

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