It’s a Boeing … you ain’t going

It’s astonishing to believe that when the money was being dished out for NASA’s next generation crew capsule to get astronauts to the ISS, Boeing put together a proposal that demanded the entire project budget be given to them. Instead, and thankfully, they got more than $4bn while the upstarts at SpaceX got a little over half as much.

Now, having finally managed to get astronauts to the ISS aboard a Boeing spacecraft, NASA has been forced to admit what most of us have suspected for weeks … they don’t trust the Starliner to get them home again in one piece.

The test pilots will have to wait it out in space until next February when the next SpaceX capsule with spare seats for them is due to return to Earth.

What the heck has gone wrong at Boeing? From aircraft that crash themselves and aircraft that jettison bits of their fuselage to a space capsule that can’t tell the time and leaks gas like your uncle Derek after Christmas dinner, it’s all gone horribly wrong.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy47w9yndpo

[Halcyon]

It is clear that Boeing have been in the headlines and that they have had one problem after another.....Door falling off of Flight 1282 Alaska Airlines 737 Max, 2 Fatal crashes linked to MCAS on the 737 Max, etc.


It seems that the bean counters were too much in control and the engineers and designers got left behind.
For example using the old 737 fuselage instead of redesigning and just sticking bigger engines and tweaking software.....All so that they could get it flying quicker as pilots would not need to retrain for a new type rating.

Airbus don't even need to advertise at the moment as everyone is turning their orders to them. At the recent July Farnborough airshow Airbus had 164 orders compared to Boeing having 96 orders.

Boeing have had great aircraft in the past. The 737NG and 777 workhorse have been very succesful, it just seems to be more recent times where money seems to take priority, such as cutting corners.

More problems now with the new 777:
https://aviationweek.com/air-transpo...h-boeing-777-9

As if things couldn’t get worse, Starliner’s audio system is now making what can only be described as cursèd sounds.

https://x.com/cmdr_hadfield/status/1...56-Kgau3lzowJw

Its returned to Earth, empty.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx29wzk4r19o

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft has completed its journey back to Earth - but the astronauts it was supposed to be carrying remain behind on the International Space Station.

In the event, all its manoeuvring thrusters worked correctly on the return leg. NASA had assessed a 95% chance of mission success, but a 1-in-50 failure rate is unacceptable on a crewed flight. By the end of the programme, the Space Shuttle’s failure rate was 1 in 68. They don’t like those odds in Houston and have become highly sceptical of engineers blithely telling them everything will be fine, especially when those engineers work for third party contractors.

Boeing seems to have been left with some major butthurt though. They refused to send anyone to the post-flight press conference and in their press statement they were almost non-committal about even continuing to develop Starliner. I can see NASA wanting to continue it because the Commercial Crew Programme was meant to build in resilience and const effectiveness which ideally means more than one supplier. But Boeing is starting to lose money hand over fist on Starliner and if they suspect rectifying its persistent problems is going to leave them further out of pocket they may want to cut and run.

NASA might yet be rescued by Sierra Nevada Corp’s Dream Chaser space plane which it continued to develop despite NASA dumping it out of the commercial crew programme. The vehicle has been developed as a robot cargo vessel and should start visiting the ISS later this year. SNC is continuing to develop a crewed version of the vehicle.