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ISS NASA Space

Boeing's Starliner Makes 'Picture Perfect' Landing - Without Its Crew (npr.org) 103

Boeing's "beleaguered" Starliner spacecraft "successfully landed in New Mexico just after midnight Eastern time," reports NPR: After Starliner made a picture-perfect landing, Stich told reporters that the spacecraft did well during its return flight. "It was a bullseye landing," he said. "It's really great to get the spacecraft back...." He said while he and others on the team felt happy about the successful landing, "there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would've been the way we had planned it" with astronauts on board when it landed...

Now that Starliner is back on the ground, Boeing and NASA will further analyze the thrusters to see if modifying the spacecraft or how it's flown could keep the thrusters from overheating in the future.

Futurism explains why NASA wanted an uncrewed Starliner flight: While attempting to duplicate the issue at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, engineers eventually found what appeared to be the smoking gun, as SpaceNews' Jeff Foust details in a detailed new breakdown of the timeline. A Teflon seal in a valve known as a "poppet" expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer — a disturbing finding, because it greatly degraded the thrusters' performance.

Worse, without being able to perfectly replicate and analyze the issue in the near vacuum of space, engineers weren't entirely sure how the issue was actually playing out in orbit... While engineers found that the thrusters had returned to a more regular shape after being fired in space, they were worried that similar deformations might take place during prolonged de-orbit firings.

A lot was on the line. Without perfect control over the thrusters, NASA became worried that the spacecraft could careen out of control. "For me, one of the really important factors is that we just don't know how much we can use the thrusters on the way back home before we encounter a problem," NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox said, as quoted by SpaceNews.

Now CBS News reports that "the road ahead is far from clear" for Starliner: The service module was jettisoned as planned before re-entry, burning up in the atmosphere, and engineers will not be able to examine the hardware to pin down exactly what caused the helium leaks and degraded thruster performance during the ship's rendezvous with the station. Instead, they will face more data analysis, tests and potential redesigns expected to delay the next flight, with or without astronauts aboard, to late next year at the earliest.

"Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," Ken Bowersox, space operations director at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. "NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station," Bowersox added. In any case, the successful landing was a shot in the arm for Boeing engineers and managers, who insisted the Starliner could have safely brought Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, agreed that if the crew had been on board "it would have been a safe, successful landing."

Two details about the astronauts now waiting for their February return flight from the International Space Station.
  • NPR reports that "in case the space station suffers an emergency that forces an evacuation before that capsule arrives, the station's crew had to jerry-rig two extra seats in a different SpaceX spacecraft that's currently docked there."
  • Space.com reports that when the uncrewed Starliner returned, "Among the gear that it carried home were the 'Boeing Blue' spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts have no need for them now. "The suits are not compatible," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in Dragon, and vice versa."

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Boeing's Starliner Makes 'Picture Perfect' Landing - Without Its Crew

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  • oh good.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @05:08AM (#64770024)

    It only failed the important part of its mission, then.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Freischutz ( 4776131 )

      It only failed the important part of its mission, then.

      It's interesting how people perceive these space companies differently. If Boeing has trouble with their 'Starliner' everybody ridicules and trash talks them even though they played it safe didn't risk any lives and yet still managed to retrieved the craft in a perfect landing. SpaceX blows up their 'Starship' on the launch pad, Elon then promptly declares it a shining success and if you lift a finger to ask a critical question two dozen Elon cultists appear in a puff of smoke and yell at you about how Spac

      • So you might say... spin makes the world go 'round.

      • Re: oh good.... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by topham ( 32406 )

        There's time to take significant risks, and theres time to have crossed all the Ts and dot all the i; and Boeing seems to skip those steps and put people's lives at risk due to their shoddy QA.

        SpaceX has been performing quite well in comparison; their recent satellite launch failure is very much the exception.

        If it were baseball you'd be bitching about them winning with their competitors getting zero runs because they weren't no hitters.

        • Re: oh good.... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @08:59AM (#64770258)

          There's time to take significant risks, and theres time to have crossed all the Ts and dot all the i; and Boeing seems to skip those steps and put people's lives at risk due to their shoddy QA.

          I think that's difficult to tell. There certainly have been some problems but it's difficult to tell what the expected level is. It's very clear that SpaceX sends up multiple trial system and then measures what happens and fixes not just things that failed but *also* things that came close to failure.

          The mega concerning thing here, at least for Boeing shareholders, was that Boeing has a model that they made which said that the system was safe to use. That model turned out in the end to have given the right answer. Even so, NASA engineers didn't trust it enough to rely on it and pointed out limitations in the model that Boeing hadn't pointed out. Those worries were enough to block the return of the astronauts. That means that Boeing Space division has seriously lost the trust of their main customer. More worryingly, it probably means that Boeing management still hasn't learned from recent problems and wasn't pushing the engineers to be as conservative as they possibly could be.

          • Re: oh good.... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by GFS666 ( 6452674 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @11:05AM (#64770462)

            The mega concerning thing here, at least for Boeing shareholders, was that Boeing has a model that they made which said that the system was safe to use. That model turned out in the end to have given the right answer. Even so, NASA engineers didn't trust it enough to rely on it and pointed out limitations in the model that Boeing hadn't pointed out. Those worries were enough to block the return of the astronauts. That means that Boeing Space division has seriously lost the trust of their main customer. More worryingly, it probably means that Boeing management still hasn't learned from recent problems and wasn't pushing the engineers to be as conservative as they possibly could be.

            I agree totally with your assessment but will put forward the observation that it is a bit worse than what you are stating. NASA and the Boeing Space Division management are not communicating well. This was obvious from the fact that in the meeting to decide whether or not to send the spacecraft home without astronauts Boeing was very very upset with NASA's decision. WAY before that meeting Boeing management should have informally gotten the message of what NASA wanted to do, why they wanted to do it and should have prepared themselves accordingly. The fact that they didn't shows that the Boeing Space Division management is either clueless or arrogant that they think their desired course of action will be followed without question by NASA. They found out otherwise.

            The other thing that will happen now is that since NASA does not trust the Boeing Space Division anymore (which you very correctly pointed out), everything associated with that program from now on, no matter how minor, will be scrutinized massively.

            • I don't know if this is what you were thinking of, but my immediate thought is worse than that. If what you say is true and they were completely surprised, it suggests that they tried to do a run around the engineers, likely got a manager to trust them and say "if that's true we'll make sure it's all accepted" and then when the NASA people talked together, the lessons of the space shuttle meant the engineers did speak up and didn't allow this through.

              If this guess is correct. That sounds even worse for Boei

        • If it were baseball, you'd be complaining that Boeing didn't allow any earned runs, even though they still lost the game. And if you know baseball, you know what I mean...

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ravenshrike ( 808508 )

        When it blew up on the launchpad were there people in it? No? Then it was an acceptable, if annoying, failure state.

        • When it blew up on the launchpad were there people in it? No? Then it was an acceptable, if annoying, failure state.

          That's true only if there was some explicit greater risk they were taking that they wouldn't normally take on a mission with Astronauts, for example flying with new untested components not yet certified for flights with people. Something that's quite likely of course. Otherwise explosions shouldn't be happening.

      • Oh please! Boeing said it was going to beat SpaceX by a mile and trolled them for years. As to Starship blowing up, it's in development and Misk's method is VASTLY different to the rest of the Aerospace industry; They expect things to go wrong: Test-fix-test again. As to critisizing SpaceX, what planet do you live on? They get hammered all the time. Back under your bridge troll.
        • Vastly different to the modern aerospace industry perhaps. He would be perfectly at home among the guys from the 50's to 70's in testing methodology.

          • Re: oh good.... (Score:4, Informative)

            by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @10:51AM (#64770420) Homepage Journal

            Remember the race to the Moon? NASA's plan was to fail fast, iterate, win. Only the Saturn project would make 32 (?) launches.

            SA-502, unmanned Apollo 6, suffered oscillations in boost phase, then the S-II suffered 2 out of five engine failures, requiring a longer burn, and fortuitously the failed engines were spaced so that the remaining three could control ascent, and the S-IVB burned longer also for orbital insertion, but failed to restart. If this were a manned flight, it would abort and the command module would have been separated by the escape tower.

            Apollo 12 SA-507 was struck by lightning twice during ascent, the Service Module suffered a power interruption, but the mau7nch vehicle had no problems. But

            Apollo 13, SA-508, suffered an engine out due to oscillations in the S-II stage, shut the engine down, burned longer, and was successfully placed into orbit. And this mission ultimately showed NASA's remarkable capabilities, back then, to solve problems and, despite not landing on the Moon, returning the crew to Earth. A successful failure, truly perhaps NASA's finest moment.

            The planned Apollo 20 but repurposed as Skylab 1, SA-513, suffered damage to the S-II interstage adapter from a failed shield on the Skylab module, causing the planned separation of Skylab 1 to fail. but the S-II did place the entire assembly into orbit.

            All in all, Saturn was a crowning achievement for NASA. Only now is anything like that being attempted, and Boeing is not meeting that level of success. SpaceX is making good progress. The difference in the approaches to the problem of large payload launches is, IMHO, showing the wisdom and miscalculations clearly.

            NASA cannot claim that STS was such a success either, given the unfortunate failures and loss of life, and the root causes.

        • by dbialac ( 320955 )
          Do you have any idea how many test rockets and landing craft blew up as the US rocket program was started? There was a lot of "Test-fix-test again" going on and Boeing did several on the ground tests and test launches to test and fix the capsule. Apollo 1 incinerated astronauts because of a test-fix-test scenario.
      • STS had *many* "perfect landings". Still was a deathtrap, so your single "perfect landing" isn't the argument you seem to think it is. And as for your comparison, the developmental prototypes currently tested by SpaceX have no people on board. That's why sane people aren't anywhere as concerned about them as they are with Starliner, which was supposed to be already fully operational and problem-free.
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          For some reason with space stuff a single success is usually enough to get something rated for humans.

          With aircraft they have to do much more extensive, repeated testing. It's not an American thing either, the Chinese and Russians are the same.

          • For some reason with space stuff a single success is usually enough to get something rated for humans.

            I'd say this is a gross oversimplification that only a simpleton would make and proceed explain why, but I've got a better idea: If it's so usual, can you give us a few examples?

      • by dbialac ( 320955 )
        I'm no Musk cultist. I hate Teslas. The issue here is that Boeing is paying the consequences for moving to executive managers who are interested in their profits, not their product. Meanwhile, Musk is interested in the product. People are flying the anti-Boeing flag because they're happy with watching Boeing fail because of that move. Many others at other firms have watched as their jobs float away and their companies then fail because of management only being interested in the paycheck.
      • Re: oh good.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @09:43AM (#64770320) Journal
        Starliner and Starship are in different phases of development. It's not a fair comparison. Starship is in a concept phase where anything beyond blowing up on the launchpad is a huge success. Starliner is supposed to be production ready. All of the bugs are resolved and it's expected to operate flawlessly. If you want to compare Boeing to SpaceX, you should compare Starliner to Dragon.
        • They put a live crew on this mission, when anything other than a pad explosion would be success?

          No, they failed to adequately test, hoped they would get away with it, and can take no credit for a successful return other than one out of one recoveries successful. Do you think they can launch again in a year, given the serious issues uncovered?

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Starship is supposed to land astronauts on the moon next year, and then return them to the Lunar Gateway.

          The fact that it is delayed and the commercial passenger they had for a round the moon test flight has pulled out, seems to be largely ignored by SpaceX fans.

          • Starship is supposed to land astronauts on the moon next year, and then return them to the Lunar Gateway.

            The fact that it is delayed and the commercial passenger they had for a round the moon test flight has pulled out, seems to be largely ignored by SpaceX fans.

            Officially the blocker is the Orion crew capsule. [smithsonianmag.com] However, I doubt Starship will be ready for the scheduled September 2026 moon landing.

            ...the main reason for the delay was issues with the valves in Orion’s life support system, Amit Kshatriya, a NASA deputy associate administrator, tells the New York Times’ Kenneth Chang.

        • by antdude ( 79039 )

          It is impossible to get all bugs resolved. All high priority bugs do need to be resolved.

      • It's interesting how people perceive these space companies differently.

        It's interesting how people perceive how the media covers these space companies differently.

        Yes, there are a lot of Musk cultists out there. Yet I have never once since Musk first appeared on behalf of Tesla observed any shortage whatsoever of sneering naysayers who will pounce on the slightest bit of negative news attached to Musk. And if there is none handy they tend to make it up. They will eagerly seek out "experts" who will opine on record about how wrong he is on something or other.

        Personally I'

        • Musk has an impressively good track record when it comes to being wrong about shit he says, even in business.
          Declarations of when things will be done with him are a joke. It's at the point where one wonders why the fuck he keeps doing it.
          Of course that aside, his successes also speak for themselves.

          In fact, if Elon kept his mouth shut and didn't spew bullshit and laughable timelines, the guy would be lot more impressive.

          It's definitely true the guy's got haters who hate him just because, and a cult of
      • But Boeing wanted to take the risk of putting people in Starliner on the way down. NASA overrode their strong objections. SpaceX hasn't proposed risking people that way.

        The fact that Starliner got down successfully (this time) doesn't change the the fact that Boeing wanted to take a risk that neither NASA nor SpaceX found acceptable.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        To be fair, The SpaceX explosions were of unmanned test flights, not flights where they swore blind everything was perfect and ready for manned flight.

        That said, Musk's claims that the Starship tests were smashing successes is laughable.

        • To be fair, The SpaceX explosions were of unmanned test flights, not flights where they swore blind everything was perfect and ready for manned flight.

          That said, Musk's claims that the Starship tests were smashing successes is laughable.

          I'm not really trying to make a case for Boeing having been faultless in the Starliner affari as I am having fun poking holes in Elon Musk's messianic reality distortion field so I have no trouble agreeing with that assessment.

        • Why do you think those SpaceX tests aren't smashing successes? If all test goals are met it is a smashing success. Because it end in destruction of the vehicles doesn't mean it isn't a success, quite the opposite. Also Musk never saud the latest test flights of the Starship/heavybooster where smashing successes, that's what naysayers/Musk haters pretend Musk has said. When doing test flights like SpaceX does, first it to test the main objectives, and then test how much the hardware can take until it breaks.
      • Re:oh good.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @12:11PM (#64770554) Homepage Journal

        While this is to some extent true, standards for what is acceptable are very, very different for manned missions. It's perfectly reasonable to take more risks with *hardware* that you wouldn't with *people* if those risks speed up the program.

        Reportedly Boeing wanted to return Starliner manned, and NASA overruled them. The fact that Starliner arrived safety does *not* vindicate Boeing's position here. NASA never said it was impossible for Starliner to land successfully; it never even said it was *improbable*. NASA's position was that the risks exceeded its standard for a manned flight. Boeing's position was that things would probably be OK.

        You can reasonably argue that NASA's standards for risk were too stringent. That's a matter of opinion, and perhaps the standards should be revised. But if you discard your standard when it comes time to use it, then in fact you're operating without any standards at all. It's like the strike zone in baseball. There are arguments for making it larger and arguments for making it smaller, but the time to change it is not in the middle of a game.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        SpaceX blows up their 'Starship' on the launch pad, Elon then promptly declares it a shining success and if you lift a finger to ask a critical question

        Preamble: Not an Elon cultist, I just work here. With that:
        - This is SpaceX style iteration. Always was. And it works. NASA's been wanting to do this even.
        - No one ever launched a rocket this size or this powerful. Ever. What criticism can you offer that's even remotely constructive? Answer: None. No other success to measure against. You can be an armchair rocket scientist at most. You have no idea what it would even take do this. Nobody has ever done it before.
        - If you must ask a non-constructive critical

      • It only failed the important part of its mission, then.

        It's interesting how people perceive these space companies differently. If Boeing has trouble with their 'Starliner' everybody ridicules and trash talks them even though they played it safe didn't risk any lives and yet still managed to retrieved the craft in a perfect landing.

        They "played it safe" not cos they wanted to. It's cos NASA forced them to. If Boeing had it's way, the 2 astronauts would still be in the Starliner, regardless how many issues it had.

        https://nypost.com/2024/08/30/... [nypost.com]

        Many other sources available.

      • Boeing is not some startup learning how to build systems. Failure on Boeing's part is almost a choice.

        The use of the phrase "perfect" is soothing to the ignorant but without knowing non-catastrophic "imperfect" functions which did not happen this time the word has little meaning.

    • by dbialac ( 320955 )
      I'm sure the astronauts stay at ISS also sets a new record for the longest flight delay. I'd be pretty pissed off if I had an 8 month delay.
      • I had an 8 hour delay (for a 50 minute flight) and was pretty annoyed - I could have driven there in my car. The ISS would be pretty hard to get to in a car though.
  • Here I was hoping to see a door blow out. Can't these people at least have a tire fall off and decimate a small car? Or maybe it might just explode [thedailybeast.com]?
    • by dbialac ( 320955 )
      That had nothing to do with Boeing and everything to do with a mechanic not mounting the tire correctly. But you already knew that.
  • Quote "The station's crew had to jerry-rig two extra seats in a different SpaceX spacecraft that's currently docked there."

    No, no no.

    The correct phrase is "jury rig". There is no phrase "jerry-rig".
  • by Elbelow ( 176227 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @06:01AM (#64770072) Homepage

    CAPCOM: What happens now?

    Butch Wilmore: Well, now, Sunita and I wait until the capsule has landed, and then leap out of the capsule, taking the New Mexicans by surprise. Not only by surprise, but totally unarmed!

    CAPCOM: Who leaps out?

    Butch Wilmore: Erm, Sunita and ... I ... leap out of the capsule, and uh...

    CAPCOM: <facepalms>

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @06:47AM (#64770106)

    In this case, it not blowing up already qualifies. Expectations are really low on this thing.

  • Suit incompatibility (Score:5, Informative)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @07:30AM (#64770150)

    "Among the gear that it carried home were the 'Boeing Blue' spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts have no need for them now. "The suits are not compatible," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in Dragon, and vice versa."

    This sounds like an area to be worked on; although it's probably not an easy fix. I'm not surprised tehy aren't, but it seems NASA should have made that a requirement at the start of the competition.

    • by v1 ( 525388 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @08:21AM (#64770208) Homepage Journal

      NASA is known for making double-extras-sure mistakes don't happen again, so after Apollo 13's "the oxygen scrubbers in the command module are square but the scrubbers in the LEM are round" fiasco, I'm amazed they let this slide.

      There really ought to be a standard for space suit connections that insures they're interoperable. Funny we can push for compatible EV car chargers but not space suits???

      • It seems like we have to learn the same lessons all over again every other generation or so. Not just in technology, either.
      • The trouble is that all the space stuff is bespoke prototypes. So demanding that it be done like the first one locks development into something that is almost guaranteed inferior. Though for something like spacesuits interoperability should have been a design parameter.

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        You'd have figured that they'd have gotten a hint from Marooned [wikipedia.org]. Where a Soviet capsule pulls up alongside a crippled Apollo (Yeah I know. What are the odds?) and hooks up an oxygen supply. Having minimal basic systems be compatible opens up so many possibilities for unanticipated operations that it's probably worthwhile.

        Or just send along a supply of USB-C adapters.

    • but it seems NASA should have made that a requirement at the start of the competition.

      What would be the point of designing something "new" only to be completely hamstrung by forcing compatibility with the "old". That's a great way to stifle development. If anything what NASA should do is chose a new standard suit and adapt all existing systems to them, not the other way around.

      • but it seems NASA should have made that a requirement at the start of the competition.

        What would be the point of designing something "new" only to be completely hamstrung by forcing compatibility with the "old". That's a great way to stifle development. If anything what NASA should do is chose a new standard suit and adapt all existing systems to them, not the other way around.

        I agre, and that was my point. Have a standard new suit design so systems can adapt to tehm, ratehr than each craft have bespoke suits.

  • Not perfect (Score:5, Informative)

    by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @07:36AM (#64770154)

    They landed in the place they were supposed to land and the capsule was intact.
    But: they had issues with the flight computers. One of the three computers failed, and a second had intermittent issues.
    And of course one of the thrusters still wasn't working.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, marketing and PR is not about telling the truth. It is about telling the biggest lie they think they can get away with. Hence a somewhat crappy but successful landing becomes "picture perfect", because the lander did not blow up and the average person cannot tell the difference anyways.

    • Re:Not perfect (Score:5, Informative)

      by serafean ( 4896143 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @10:57AM (#64770442)

      > And of course one of the thrusters still wasn't working.

      No, not "still" it was a completely new failure, of a different engine. (the expected failures were on the service module, this one was on the capsule itself)

      "A couple of fresh technical problems cropped up as Starliner cruised back to Earth. One of 12 control jets on the crew module failed to ignite at any time during Starliner's flight home. These are separate thrusters from the small engines that caused trouble earlier in the Starliner mission. There was also a brief glitch in Starliner's navigation system during reentry."

      source: https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]

  • quality control by Boeing!
  • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @08:56AM (#64770250)
    To redeem itself. The craft is designed to be reusable, right? Boeing could fix it, address the issue, send it BACK up to the ISS, and pick up the astronauts. And get it done BEFORE the scheduled dragon rescue. I doubt they could pull it off, since Boeing hasnt bothered to move fast on anything in over 20 years, but it would certainly be a hell of a turnaround.
  • I understood from early reports that one of the problems was that undocking could only be triggered from insisted inside the spacecraft, not ISS.

  • success (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Saturday September 07, 2024 @10:02AM (#64770336)

    I think this should be celebrated as a success it was a fine landing, there were some technical lessons to learn but the redundancy worked and the results speak for themselves.

    What concerns me more is that I imagine Boeing will now threaten to take their bat and ball and go home unless NASA send them more cash

    I hope the Astronauts all return home safely soon

    • What concerns me more is that I imagine Boeing will now threaten to take their bat and ball and go home unless NASA send them more cash

      And NASA will tell them to go pound sand. This was under a fixed-cost contract, Boeing is responsible for any cost overruns. And if anything, by not delivering a vehicle that can safely take astronauts into space and back, means they're in violation of it.

      What is more likely is Boeing will pay the contract termination fees rather than throwing more hundreds of millions at Starliner.

  • ""Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," "

    Translation: we learned nothing because we don't have the thrusters in hand, but we were under a lot of pressure.

    • They learned a lot, because more things failed on the way down. It only looked good from a safe distance - hence picture perfect.
  • It would have been much harder to characterize the problem from wreckage.
  • If no crew, no problem, then the problem was the crew ðY£

  • There is a much bigger problem with Starliner and it was fully-exposed by this flight... the actual problem is that Boeing is no longer trustworthy in the eyes of NASA.

    1. The helium leaks were known ahead of the launch, but Boeing assured NASA the mission could go ahead anyway. NASA trusted that Boeing had done all the engineering work and fully-understood the problem. Once the mission was underway, it became clear that Boeing did not understand the problem and had not even done some rather basic analysis b

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