NASA Chief Classifies Starliner Flight As 'Type A' Mishap, Says Agency Made Mistakes (arstechnica.com) 44
NASA has officially classified Boeing Starliner's 2024 crewed flight as a "Type A" mishap, acknowledging serious technical failures and leadership shortcomings that nearly left astronauts unable to safely return. Administrator Jared Isaacman released (PDF) a 311-page internal report citing flawed decision-making and cultural issues, with the next Starliner flight now planned as uncrewed pending major fixes. Ars Technica reports: As part of the announcement, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman sent an agency-wide letter that recognized the shortcomings of both Starliner's developer, Boeing, as well as the space agency itself. Starliner flew under the auspices of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, in which the agency procures astronaut transportation services to the International Space Station. "We are taking ownership of our shortcomings," Isaacman said.
"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware," Isaacman wrote in his letter to the NASA workforce. "It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight." Isaacman said there would be "leadership accountability" as a result of the decisions surrounding the Starliner program, but did not say which actions would be taken.
"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware," Isaacman wrote in his letter to the NASA workforce. "It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight." Isaacman said there would be "leadership accountability" as a result of the decisions surrounding the Starliner program, but did not say which actions would be taken.
Re:Disaster that classists caused (Score:2, Insightful)
classism breeds corruption which produces incompetency
Re: Disaster program (Score:3)
Not really - thankfully, itâ(TM)s not a cost plus program. Itâ(TM)s a fixed price contract, so the tax payer will (eventually) get what they paid for, at the price they were meant to pay. Boeing is the one getting screwed by their own incompetence.
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Sounds like a really bad strategy if you want to save money. C suite executives should be more than capable of understanding that cost cutting to the point at which they risk not meeting the acceptance criteria for the contract is not a good way to run a company. Apparently even SpaceX's moron in chief could understand this, and they were able to deliver under roughly the same contract terms. Your argument is effectively "if you contract with people who are trying to rip you off, they'll try to rip you o
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True, we could have spent that money on more bombs for Gaza
Not another Challenger incident (Score:3, Insightful)
At least they identified the decision-making problems before another Challenger incident. When the prevailing attitude is "it looks good on paper. What could go wrong?" without real-world testing of the hardware in actual space environments, they are signalling they are willing to accept mistakes and fix them later.
Not the way manned missions should be tested. Accept the cost of many test flights in actual space with proposed modifications before putting astronauts on board.
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At least they identified the decision-making problems before another Challenger incident.
As they said, "shortcomings that nearly left astronauts unable to safely return", it would probably be more akin to Columbia than Challenger. Just sayin' ...
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Not really either. The astronauts were stuck on the ISS, which is designed for long-term occupation. As long as they can get (unmanned) supply missions, they can remain there indefinitely. The Space Shuttle was not designed to remain in space for an extended time, nor to be resupplied in orbit, meaning that being unable to safely return to Earth is a very difficult situation to deal with.
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If you were paying attention at the time, you would have known that their successful docking at the ISS was, in fact, influenced by chance and luck as much as engineering and system performance. I haven't read this incident reporting, but it became evident that the failures on approach posed a real danger to the ISS.
Inexcusable management failures. This ought to stop, the Shuttle program was sufficient warning that space is hard, but bad decisions are inexcusable.
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I wonder how much of this is due to funding problems. They are under pressure to get Americans on the moon before China lands people there around 2030, but to accelerate the programme and do it safely requires money.
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They each, separately, require money. Doing both at once may well be impossible.
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Not the way manned missions should be tested. Accept the cost of many test flights in actual space with proposed modifications before putting astronauts on board.
A very Agile way of working.
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They got lucky is what happened.
> Essentially, Wilmore could not fully control Starliner any longer. But simply abandoning the docking attempt was not a palatable solution. Just as the thrusters were needed to control the vehicle during the docking process, they were also necessary to position Starliner for its deorbit burn and reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.
https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]
Realy close to losing the Starliner crew. They essentially rebooted the thrusters mid-flight, and got very luc
Boing has a culture incompatible with human flight (Score:4, Informative)
>> a culture incompatible with human spaceflight.
Yep. Boing has already unlocked that achievement for normal planes, now they are trying hard in the spaceflight.
it's called "Boeing" for a reason (Score:3, Funny)
It's called "Boeing" for a reason.
That's the sound generated at the exact moment the plane touches the ground.
At least it generated a lot of jobs (Score:2)
or a least I was told so.
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All Old Space projects generate a lot of jobs - all those people making jewelry for the now incredibly rich manager's wives.
Too true (Score:5, Interesting)
"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware," Isaacman wrote in his letter to the NASA workforce. "It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight."
No shit. It took an outsider to point out to the Artemis program that not a single one of them had ever read "SP-287 What Made Apollo a Success?" and so effectively used none of the knowledge and experience built up over the decade-plus of the Apollo program.
The helium leak (Score:5, Insightful)
A helium leak was reported prior to launch, yet they proceeded with the mission because it was “minor”. Then, it became a major issue and they were forced to scrap the mission. Do I have it right?
The old NASA made occasional mistakes, but they had a culture of must-not-fail; each team had to prove their subsystem was nominal before the mission could proceed. Their dedication was legendary.
Politicization, DEI, and the general decline in American technical standards and work ethic have ruined Boeing and NASA.
Re: The helium leak (Score:1, Flamebait)
Show us on a picture of NASA where DEI touched you
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Any image from this failed Starliner mission might serve.
If you demand physical evidence, you're shortchanging yourself. But I understand your concern. The root causes of this failed mission, management decisions, is influence greatly by selection of the management team. If they are chosen for primary qualifications other than knowledge, skill, and experience, well that's a problem, distinguished only by severity. And in this example, little decisions have big consequences. Diverting attention and resources
Re: The helium leak (Score:1)
I don't believe that anyone in leadership at NASA was chosen for DEI reasons, but I could easily believe some were chosen for political reasons.
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You're saying DEI isn't political?
DEI is decency. It's only made political by people who oppose decency politically.
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You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Diversity in promotions and hiring has lowered standards throughout corporate America as well as in government.
An example: a manufacturing company in the western U.S. needed to replace a mechanical engineer who was leaving. Hiring manager located an excellent candidate, but could not get sign-off to hire, because the candidate was a white male. He was told, “That would hurt our POC metrics.” The departing ME was a south Asian with dark s
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An example: a manufacturing company in the western U.S.
This company has no name, huh? womp womp
Boeing Corporation has aggressively pursued the hiring of underrepresented minorities
Boeing was ruined by replacing engineers in leadership with bean counters. womp womp
NASA same. Whistleblowers and general staff inside the agency have been complaining that the previous leadership was overly focused on racial equity and gender bias training and similar wastes of time.
lol anti-DEI whistleblowers.
You're hilarious.
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DEI is decency. It's only made political by people who oppose decency politically.
You donâ(TM)t even know what youâ(TM)re talking about.
I know that the people attacking DEI are mostly white supremacists who want to preserve their positions of privilege. The remainder are nonwhites who have internalized white supremacy.
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B.S.
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"Sure, we'll hire Jose... as long as he can show us that he can fix the leak somewhere in the fuel lines on this engine that's sitting on the table, using only this box of parts."
(Jose grabs a burger off the table and slaps it over what he thinks is the leak, and tapes it in place with some duct tape)
"Good job, Jose... you just prevented the engine from having any thrust, and just killed everyone on the mission." (SpaceX Director turns to DEI person) "And, we're supposed to hire him?"
Hiring on merit is ho
From The Department Of No Fucking Shit (Score:2)
We all knew that the moment that they said it would take months, rather than days, for the astronauts to return.
Boeing space flight is an absurdly expensive display of incompetence. Artemis should have been scrapped years ago.
It's still not too late.
Leadership (Score:3)
poor decision making (Score:1)
I saw the valves fail in the test lab years ago. Rather than understand the failure, the blamed the test lab and changed the test criteria. The real world isn't so kind.
artemis (Score:2)
Next class A coming up: Artemis. This is not your grandfather's NASA.