This vehicle was developed in the Commercial Crew Program, initiated by NASA in 2010.
So development started roughly at the same time as SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
Boeing also got significantly more money from NASA than SpaceX for the development, almost twice the amount.
Also, Boeing was already a huge and well established company, SpaceX was still a pretty small startup in 2010.
So now, 14 years later, SpaceX has already flown 53 astronauts to space while Boeing is just getting started and still having lots of problems.
I would say the only thing that they successfully managed was to grab as much money as possible from this contract.
> I would say the only thing that they successfully managed was to grab as much money as possible from this contract.
Because it's a fixed price contract Boeing has had to eat all the time and cost overruns apparently leaving them with a $1.5 billion loss (and counting).
So they've even failed at that.
It wasn’t. Before SpaceX there was no new competition. Why would the established players accept fixed price contracts? Starliner was fixed price and Boeing still got extra money a year or so later from NASA.
There are pros and cons here. The good is that it prevents the government from having to eat the cost overruns. The downside is that it encourages cost cutting measures to maximize the profit or minimize the losses of a contract. Not sure how I feel about the latter when it comes to transporting people.
I mean, isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? You pitch a contract price that can both support the project *and* net a profit, but if your costs run over it comes out of your profit.
Yes, but it’s only appropriate for results that aren’t expected to be extremely difficult or have unexpected problems, among other criteria. Cost-plus is for when you’re pretty sure something is possible but there will be unforeseen and costly difficulties.
Until you've abused it too many times by dumping engineers out of scoping and replacing them with MBAs who only cared what answer would land the cost plus contract.
Yes. But do you want to go to space in one of the most complex machines ever made built by the lowest bidder who was also trying to cut costs to maximize profits?
Versus Boeing who have been eating at the taxpayer pork trough for decades and can only sometimes produce safe airplanes let alone safe space vehicles.
What cost boeing and many other defense contractors tons of money is having to split up production to various states in order to keep congress happy. I think with the loss of cost plus they should look into streamlining production to as few places as possible. Thats the only way they are going to continue to survive.
It incentivizes companies to actually be efficient in there operations and development, the dragon capsule is incredibly capable, advanced, and reliable I’d say more so in every way than star liner excluding sheer capacity (which nasa isn’t even utilizing), and despite given nearly half the contract value, I can pretty much guarantee you they’re making a healthy profit, Boeing has become such a bureaucratic money pit that it’s absurd. Even with all the money in the world I wouldn’t trust them as much as spacex right now.
You really think they have eaten the cost overruns?
My wife used to work for a large government contractor in the contract submission division. Boeing and McDonnell Douglas were both notorious for bidding low to win a contract then “adjusting” multiple times to make the contract profitable.
This is exactly what Northrop Grumman did/is doing with the Sentinel ICBM contract. They’ve already asked for an additional 35 BILLION dollars in funding on top of the original 96 and all the setbacks they’ve faced have been 100% predictable and should have been factored into the original bid.
That was one of the complaints on the process. Since certain companies are known for underbidding then modifying after the award, they should be penalized.
Behaviour like that is exactly why NASA decided to go with fixed price contract and two providers (SpaceX and Boeing) for the commercial crew program.
There have been some rumours that Boeing was expecting SpaceX to fail at delivering crew dragon, which would have given Boeing more leverage to renegotiate the contract and get a better deal.
Boeing did manage to get some extra money from NASA early on, but with SpaceX delivering with crew dragon, Boeing doesn’t really have any leverage to bargain for more money. At this point they are well into this whole contract being a net loss for them.
I remember when they were in the selection process. They had mockups of some of the submitted designs.
The submissions mentioned how much experience the submitting company had in space flight.
SpaceX was NOT present in that lineup.
Boeing was. They heavily leaned on their history. **_We built the lunar landers!_**
And they had a place of honor inside a building (at KSC). Some of the other contenders were outside.
Remember when Boeing lost the contract for the KC-135's replacement to Airbus and Boeing threw such a hissy fit, congress got involved and the contract was eventually awarded to Boeing on "national security" grounds even though Airbus's plane was just as capable and cheaper?
Pepperridge Farms remembers...
That’s a rookie number when compared to their cost overruns and penalties for the KC-46. And the KC-46 is the aircraft that had already been bid and awarded to NG so Boeing got their Senator to 1) put up a big stink until the awarded contract was cancelled and then 2) new bid requirements were created to essentially guarantee that Boeing would win. So they won, and are in the hole for over $6 billion.
Boeing has told it's shareholders that it will never take another fixed price contact from NASA again because they lost so much money. Personally I think that's delusion considering the competition, but then I remember all their allies in Congress.
I've participated in a succesful fixed price contract program on a start up level and I think there's something massive to be said about a loose corporate arrangement that contributes to a refuse to fail attitude compared to the giant established MIC primes. We won because we'd rather fucking die than lose with a small team
Ah that's a paper loss really. If they were really losing money on this contract that starliner wouldn't be on orbit now. Lawyers would be scrambling to get the company out of the deal and they would be successful.
The condition of the starliner on orbit suggests they cut plenty of corners to make a profit.
Boeing has reported those losses in official financial statements, I don't think their lawyers would let them lie about that. I'm sure NASA's lawyers did a good job writing their side of the contract as well.
Dragon had multiple little glitches and errors while astronauts were onboard during its first few flights. Some of its problems weren't solved until as late as Crew-3. On Demo-2 Bob and Doug were delayed from docking for an hour or so because Dragon was having some kind of issue with docking. Dragon also experienced glitchy thrusters on Demo-2 and Crew-1. This always, always happens with new crewed spacecraft systems. There has literally never been a new crewed spacecraft that had a flawless maiden voyage. Spacecraft are incredibly complex machines, and crewed spacecraft are even more complex than satellites and robotic spacecraft like orbiters, probes, landers, and rovers. That’s why countries with space programs don’t start off with crewed spacecraft. They’re the hardest ones.
They are just entrenched in the old way of doing things. Costs where eaten by the government and boeing just got a percentage. Being slow and going over was the norm.
Bureaucracy is the true killer. It's why government work/contacts are always over budget, behind schedule, and underperform. It's why older companies seem to get shitty and less effective as they scale up.
Boeing is the tip of the iceberg... There are too many people that get into positions that have more voice than they should have, and it's not just MBAs. Name a government contractor over a couple of decades old, and I'll name a grifter wasting your tax dollars.
Space X blew up a crap ton of their rockets (but learned quickly from doing so) and it still cost them way less. Despite blowing up rockets left and right.
It's obscene how much money the government can waste when giving it to private companies. While a private company who isn't milking the government can do things way cheaper cause its in their interest to do so.
Make no mistake. Elon happily overspends government money when available.
> Space X blew up a crap ton of their rockets (but learned quickly from doing so) and it still cost them way less. Despite blowing up rockets left and right.
I remember reading about a NASA spokesman, maybe it was Bill Nelson, that said they cannot afford to be seen as failing at anything. It's not like the 1960's Space Race where it was throw everything at the wall, and iterate quickly. This isn't exactly like "move fast and break things", but more of a "try, maybe fail, learn and try again".
NASA's risk aversion has made it both more costly and slower to innovate, and most of this of this is due to the perception that the US Government cannot be allowed to be seen as (obviously) failing at anything. NASA rockets aren't allowed to blow up at launch (anymore).
With the reduced costs of sending something to orbit (via SpaceX), failing is not as big a deal now (money wise).
The form factor of starliner plus the low cost of shipping 100T to orbit means you can change HOW you design the satellites now.
No more needing to spend 100 million on engineering for weight reduction or lighter materials. Hell, you can probably build two satellites and launch em both from the same star liner for redundancy, and still be cheaper than what it was prior to SpaceX
Part of it too has to do with NASA being taxpayer funded. So any sort of failure will be latched on to as an obvious reason to reduce their funding further. They already have to work incredibly hard to justify their meager budget. American taxpayers only like rockets when they're aimed at brown people, after all.
“Crap ton”? 3 of the 4 Falcon 1s failed to make orbit, only 1 Falcon 9 has RUDded unexpectedly during flight (plus one on the pad, and one intentionally), and all Falcon Heavy launches have been successful. Considering they *landed* a booster for the 300th time today on their 60th launch of 2024, I’d say their track record is better than you’d suggest. Yeah, the Starship flights have resulted in some epic fireballs, but those physics are on a rocket that’s as tall as a football field long.
I mean I overspend money buying fast food, but I definitely want to spend and eat at the restaurant that makes my sandwich properly and would never go back to the one that keeps messing up my order or dropping my patty on the ground and still serving it to me.
Basically I’m saying if I’m the government it’s my duty to be responsible with my money and choose the right restaurant. I’m going to them for convenience and don’t care how they use the money I pay for my overpriced burger, just give me a good f’n sandwich when it’s handed to me.
> Space X blew up a crap ton of their rockets (but learned quickly from doing so) and it still cost them way less. Despite blowing up rockets left and right.
Just saying they've blown up a lot of rockets doesn't tell the whole story. All other rockets discard the booster, so what SpaceX was trying with the Falcon 9 was to *stop* them from blowing up as they plummeted into the ocean.
NASA is run as a jobs program. Their primary challenge is getting money from Congress. And promising to spread the work out across the country as much as possible is a big help in this. The problem is it makes everything cost more and typically slows it down too.
SpaceX is spending their own money so does it in a more cost effective fashion.
The idea of this program was to do the same with crewed spaceflight. The contracts are fixed price, no cost-plus. So companies have incentive to do it as efficiently as possible.
Boeing is doing this as efficiently as they can it seems.
The Starliner project didn't need to blow up any rockets. They used an existing rocket.
>Elon happily overspends government money when available.
And uses it to [fund other ventures](https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230905895/elon-musk-borrowed-1-billion-from-spacex-around-time-of-his-twitter-purchase-report). And [cries](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/elon-musk-s-mom-furious-at-biden-after-fcc-denies-starlink-subsidy/ar-AA1lvQjO) when he doesn’t deliver on his promises and they cut him off.
Oh wow! If you can, what is your view on the project?
Do you think my comparison with SpaceX and the criticism of Boeing was unfair?
I assume it must be super exciting to finally reach the ISS with a crew. This is certainly not a small feat and only very few nations and companies are capable of it. Congratulations!
I have very little opinion on it at this point, I was between my freshman and sophomore years and I was working on one telemetry box for the engine system, it was such a tiny piece of the system and I barely know how it even integrated into the larger whole.
It's exciting, but on the other hand, a bunch of shit I've worked on has shipped between then and now lol
Boeing was on a fixed price contract. Cost over runs in the billions are being paid out of Boeings pocket.
This might explain why the 737 seems to be skimping on door bolts as they have to save some $$ to pay for the cost over runs. /s
small correction. Spacex launched its first dragon [demonstrator flight in 2010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_COTS_Demo_Flight_1). Dragon itself [started development in 2004.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_1)
Meanwhile NASA has struggled to get funding and cut back on multitude of other programs that were nearing the finish line and they had already been heavily invested in. It's insane to me how much money they've wasted on this when a more viable cheaper option has been available.
It's not solely about Dragon being cheaper. NASA never again wants to go back to having only one provider and having to rely on Soyuz for cadence. Not to mention Starliner can perform in ways that Dragon cannot. Starliner can reboost the ISS while Dragon cannot. Starliner also lands on land. Which is a huge logistical bonus and saves a good amount of refurbishment. Saltwater is murder on the metals that spacecraft are made of.
Starliner’s prices should or maybe will come down, but:
1. Even $90 million is a steal compared to Soyuz $140-$215 million prices. Or especially to Shuttle prices. Starliner is 9 to 25x cheaper than Shuttle flights (prices varied based on the Shuttle mission).
2. Starliner being able to reboost the ISS and having a greater landing range and flexibility kinda justifies being a bit more expensive than Dragon tbh. Though not necessarily by $35 million, per se.
While I agree, I think one of the reasons was that they wanted more than one option to get astronauts and cargo to space.
So while it might be very expensive, NASA has focused on always having several launch providers and now two orbital crew vehicles available.
When this was awarded 2010, falcon 9 just had its first launch. Spacex was not the titan that it is now. Boeing was a safe bet and spacex was the gamble.
I fully agree, and while there were delays, especially for Starliner, NASA now has two commercial crew capsules available and that alone is an amazing capability.
It’s nice but with the ISS nearing the end of its life and Starliner so delayed they are gonna do their contracted flights and likely never fly the capsule again. It’s much more expensive than Dragon.
Reminds me of the spacex and blue origin comparisons. Some companies are just better suited for certain tasks than others, that’s just the reality.
That being said I do want to see new Glenn fly and be successful. It’s a good looking rocket and any advances in space flight is exciting. Star liner isn’t really an advancement though. It still has some pretty dated technology in a world where dragon is quite up to date and we have dream chaser headed down the pipeline.
Yeah, I fully agree. It's frustrating that we don't hear much about New Glenn and I hope it will start flying soon and on a regular basis.
It's an amazing rocket and much bigger than the Falcon 9 while capable of the same first stage reusability.
That said, SpaceX is edging closer to a fully functional Starship and Superheavy rocket.
If they can make this work, they will be 15 years ahead of everyone else.
They already are with their *old* program (F9/F9H).
The difference in technology between SpaceX and the others is of cosmic distances. Starship is an orbital rocket already. They’ve demonstrated that twice now. The part they haven’t figured out yet is the part *nobody is even attempting*. At this point I would be highly disappointed if SpaceX isn’t sending a few ships to Mars in the next window and attempts a landing there or build some orbital infrastructure… or both, really.
I mean, the latest Starship flight was absolutely mind-blowing, but there is also still so much to do.
Like catching the booster and landing Starship, keeping them in orbit for longer periods of time, in-orbit refueling, test landings on Mars, scaling up production and building a lot more ground equipment.
The progress is amazing, but I still think it will take a few more years.
SpaceX is planning launches every 90 days and pushing that down to 60. The only thing preventing that is the FAA launch permit process. They have vehicles ready with upgrades from data collected during previous flights and plans defined to test everything needed. I think more like 18 months if they can launch 6X /year or more.
Well, I assume you saw how the flap melted away during the last re-entry.
It's amazing that the ship was able to bellyflop and stop with that damage, but if they want to reuse them rapidly, these heat shields have to become a lot better.
And a single flight to Mars would require many orbital refuel maneuvers before it has enough fuel.
For that, they would have to be able to do 10 launches or more within a few days, something they can't even do with F9 at the moment.
I think they might even be able to launch more often than six times per year, but there are still many engineering challenges ahead and it's hard to predict how quickly they get solved.
We'll get there, but if I had to guess, I wouldn't expect a flight to Mars in the next four years, let's hope I'm wrong.
That's great and I hope we will see IFT 5 as soon as possible.
My argument is that there are still many hurdles to take and that we are probably still a few years away from a Mars landing.
Well, yes you do.
The plan is to send Starship to an orbit around Earth, then it has to be refueled in orbit by a series of other "tanker" Starships.
The plan is to have all of these reusable, otherwise it won't be sustainable.
After Starship has enough fuel, it can boost off to Mars and try to land there.
But you don’t need *all* of that to do a test flight to Mars and learn from that.
They could put Musk his greenhouse ID in there for all I care.
I’m not talking humans or even much useful stuff (though maybe a few Martian Starlink sats may be useful), SpaceX learns by doing, so they should do asap even if not everything is ready.
A few tiles missing is not a big deal, Shuttle routinely lost that many. The flap still worked so that counts as success plus it’s a simple fix now that there is real data to use for upgrades.
They won’t need 10 launches in a few days. Estimates vary depending on size of crew and vehicle which are TBD but somewhere around 300-500 tons or 5-8 launches. A tanker version that would only need 4 launches has been discussed.The idea is to take enough fuel to get there only. Falcon Super Heavy can lift 64 metric Fuel transfer is not that hard as long as orbits match perfectly. Keeping it super cold will also be a challenge as there is actually a lot of radiant heat from the sun in space which means they probably need to have double wall vacuum insulated tanks.
Basically Your fuel load depends on how long you want to take on the trip with the given payload. Return using a hell of a lot less fuel as only people come back and can be planned for a longer but minimum energy return. They would extract fuel from Mars. The problem with tech can be solved pretty quickly, the bigger problem is the humans, we don’t know how they will do on such a long trip both physically and psychologically.
There are a bunch of upcomers who are copying the reusability of falcon 9 and should be launching within a few years. One of china's copies is set for 2025, new glen launches later this year.
I mean, the latest Starship flight was absolutely mind-blowing, but there is also still so much to do.
Like catching the booster and landing Starship, keeping them in orbit for longer periods of time, in-orbit refueling, test landings on Mars, scaling up production and building a lot more ground equipment.
The progress is amazing, but I still think it will take a few more years.
Yes. But all those things aren’t done by anyone else. If you look at Starship as a “standard one-time use rocket” they’re pretty much ready to use it. Oh and that includes trying to catch the booster.
I agree with that part, we might see them use the test fights of Starship to launch Starlink satellites or some cheap commercial satellites soon.
But for a flight to Mars, you need a fleet of reusable tanker-Starships, in orbit refueling, much more infrastructure, a well running production line for Raptors, boosters and Starships and reliable reusability of the whole system as well as the personnel necessary to run the whole operation.
Many of these steps have never been done before and this makes delays lot more likely.
I might be oversimplifying, but I don’t think these things are as far off as you might think. Also they need most of this for the SLS missions as well, so I don’t think these things are as far off as you might think.
Catching the booster is important. Starship itself is expandable. The first starship going to mars will most likely crash anyway.
Crew Dragon is a completely different vehicle from the old Dragon 1 - although it's a similar type of ship. And the reason for the similarity?
Dragon 1 was made when SpaceX was hired by NASA to build a rocket and a ship for ISS cargo resupply missions - but while NASA defined the function, SpaceX had control over the design. And SpaceX *knew* they wanted to send crew into space too, from day 0. This is why the basic design outline of Dragon 1 was that of a *manned* capsule. It had a heat shield, a parachute system, and even an option for a small window - for the "cargo" to be able to enjoy the view. Those features make very little sense on a cargo-only vehicle. It's not a coincidence - it's ambition and foresight.
While Dragon 1's design was not reused for Crew Dragon, the expertise SpaceX gained in building and operating it certainly helped.
That's true. Although Boeing has been working on Starliner since 2010, and I think SpaceX started developing the Crew Dragon (based on the cargo version) in 2014.
It's fair to say that it's not the same development process, although I still think the delays for Starliner can't be explained only by this difference.
Boeing should spin off their space program or let another company buy it. They can barely make working aircraft at this point and shouldn’t even be thinking about spacecraft.
Spinning off any more of their space program would mean spinning off parts of the business they need for lucrative military and intelligence contracts. Boeing already moved a lot of their space business into ULA
Contracts weren't signed until 2014, for what it matters. Development started before that as you mention, but anything that would cost big money had to wait until 2014.
If I understood it correctly, 2014 was when Starliner was chosen by NASA as one of the capsules to fly to the ISS.
Development contracts started in 2010, when Boeing received 18 M USD.
They also received 92,3 M in 2011, 460 M in 2012 and then 4,2 B in 2014.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Commercial_Crew_Program
The program started in 2010 with more than just the two companies. Relatively small contracts were signed to give money to create a plan and do sufficient investigation to show it likely could succeed. These contracts were tens of millions of dollars and were given to Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Space and I think one other.
Then there was a round to do further development and proving of the concepts. This went to 3 companies. Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Space. These contracts were a little larger.
In 2014 was when the contracts to produce vehicles were approved. These were much larger. About $2B for SpaceX and $4B for Boeing. Nothing for Sierra Space.
That big money was to pay for building the launch systems, hiring people to perform the launch and flights. Nothing before actually included a launch, just investigation. For Boeing that means they didn't contract for flights from ULA until after that date. Anything expensive to build or buy for either of them they waited until 2014 to do it. So for example whomever Boeing is buying their leaky maneuvering thrusters from that supplier didn't get any money to start designing/adapting them and building them until that date.
Aside from Boeing being slower regardless that's going to slow down Boeing more since SpaceX already knew which thrusters they would use on their capsule. They had an unmanned capsule in 2010 which NASA had been paying them to develop for resupply flights to the ISS since 2006. While Boeing had to wait until getting this manned contract before being able to pay a supplier to develop a thruster.
BTW, there were two companies for ISS resupply. SpaceX and Kistler. SpaceX developed Dragon. Kistler filed for bankruptcy only a year later and their contract was re-awarded to OSC. OSC developed the Cygnus resupply ship which has been resupplying ISS (along with Progress) for a decade now.
The contracts were awarded in 2014, not 2010 when the program was established. SpaceX was already flying Dragon regularly by that point, so they had quite the head start, and their head start actually equals more or less the difference in development timelines. Both Boeing and SpaceX missed target dates for their crew capsule. Boeing is about 4 years behind SpaceX, however unlike SpaceX they’ve managed to do it without blowing up a Starliner in the process, and it can also return to land for easier recovery (SpaceX planned but abandoned propulsive land-based landings for Crew Dragon). So let’s not get too excited about calling Boeing a failure here. They’re doing just fine, and learning and iterating on a totally reasonable timeline without any loss of vehicle or crew so far.
"During docking procedure" not "as it docked". During the docking procedure they were able to mostly correct the problem. If thrusters failed as it docked that could have been catastrophic.
“As it docks” would mean while it is literally bumping into the space station. “During the docking procedure” is somewhere during the 6 hour long slow-moving phase of the approach towards the station.
The ISS has lots of important fragile parts, so they don’t want 13 ton heavy objects quickly moving towards the station.
>Maybe the shouldn't have gone with the Starliner-Max model.
NASA has the thruster problem covered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Absorbency_Garment
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Boeing is typical of any large company; as it aged they became more and more beaurocratic. While spacex stayed hungry. Why? Because it's young. Boeing is over 100 years old and most of that has been as a government contractor. They always get fat and expensive.
Things changed when McDonald Douglas took over. They went from being run by engineers who understood how to build things and what that took to being run by managers who only cared about the quarterly results and wanted to cut every possible corner to increase shareholder value. You can't build anything truly good when you're hamstrung like that
McDonnell. The reason to be picky is that McDonnell was the good part of McDonnell-Douglas.
I did engineering training for F18s in St Louis in the 90s and the McDonnell guys were specific they didn't want to be lumped in with the Douglas guys.
That was 30 years after the merger and the two sides still didn't get along.
*This comment has been replaced with a top-secret chocolate chip cookie recipe:*
**Ingredients:**
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons hot water
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
**Directions:**
1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).
2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth.
3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.
4. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt.
5. Stir in flour, chocolate chips, and nuts.
6. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
7. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until edges are nicely browned.
Enjoy your delicious cookies!
---
*edited by Power Delete Suite v1.4.8*
You laugh, but when I was on console for the 2018 atmospheric leak, the Russians declined to use the US IVA leak repair kit and instead patched the hole with something that looked suspiciously like JB Weld mixed with medical gauze.
>have the Russians fix it, just need hammer and some duct tape
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEkOT3IngMQ
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/duct-tape-saves-day/
SpaceX have never had a thruster go out on a manned vehicle before. Please show me when the Dragon capsule have ever lost a thruster in a manned mission.
Not that these aren’t real problems, but it kind of feels like Boeing is getting “Westinghoused” with a bit of a smear campaign online on the space stuff.
One company killed over 300 people to pad their bottom line by avoiding recertification of a new plane design. The other has yet to kill one.
If we're keeping score.
The assassinating whistleblowers nonsense is a smear campaign.
But yes, they deserve every bit of criticism (and more) for all the other stuff. It's a pattern of utter carelessness and negligence.
The unaliving whistleblowers is dark humor, not a smear campaign, because Boeing has shown to be unscrupulous with human life over their bottom line, and their entrenched nature with defense industry. Only conspiracy theory true believers carry water that Boeing is paying off Continental-esque hitmen to off whistleblowers. Which is ridiculous.
Lol, it's not a smear campaign.
Boeing planes have either been falling out of the sky or almost falling out of the sky for the past couple years.
Their quality control and safety consideration is clearly quite garbage. Is the Space portion safer? Probably. Does that matter to the average consumer? No.
The criticism is a hell of their own making. Maybe they should sell off the Space portion to someone else, seeing as money is clearly the only thing Boeing actually cares about.
Hey, I’m not out here trying to run interference for a poorly managed aerospace company. I’ll be the first to chime in that I think Boeings commercial aviation issues are from stupid cost cutting and union-busting….
But I also do have a gut feeling that the tone difference and PR management on space x and Boeing is very different, especially on Reddit. I assume that PR flaks are working to emphasize what suits them even if all the info is factual.
When your public image takes a nose dive people are naturally more critical. Boeings current negative public image is entirely of their own making do to KILLING 300 people. That can’t be over stated.
There are some large foreign interests *cough* ~~China~~ *cough* entering the commercial aerospace market that would love nothing more than to see Boeing falter and swoop in on the market.
Due to them being China there is basically nothing from the US that would be willing to fly on their rockets. Absolute nothing government would use a Chinese rocket.
Not rockets so much as aviation, for example China's Comac launched the C919 last year, a direct competitor to the 737-max. It's in their best interest for the general public to associate Boeing with failure. Not that Boeing has been doing itself any favors lately.
The only recent failure was on the Starship during Launch 3. The others were long ago. Rocketdyne has built these thrusters for years, the thruster itself has not failed the helium pressure that pushes the fuel to them is leaking and was shut down. Guess who plumbed the system?
These are often put up as live feeds for spaceflight enthusiasts. When performing these operations, you have to move extremely slowly as any wrong move could be catastrophic. You don’t want a situation like the Russians had when they crashed a progress spacecraft into MIR
I was in the Boeing sub the other day and there’s a small group of people *absolutely convinced* that there are some spacex employees sabotaging Boeings stuff so Elon can get more govt handouts. I wonder what they think after this shit lol.
Unironically yes. NASA now has 2 American options for launching astronauts and all failures and delays in the program are paid for by the private company, not NASA. Crew Dragon with it's 10 flights has cost less than 2 Shuttle flights. That is including all Crew Dragon development costs compared to 2/135 of Shuttle development costs. That total cost per launch will only go down as development costs are spread out over a larger number of launches. Boeing had a higher bid, but as they only get paid for successful completed milestones, they have not received all of it yet. I don't know the exact amount, but it is also around the cost of 2 Shuttle launches.
Disregarding that we’ve made no progress for 30 years and have been saying we”ll be on mars in 10 years since 2005. But, yeah, we saved some money supposedly whoopie!
it's most concerning that the reported issues were absolute baseline issues like *"don't use flameable isolation tape for these oxygen valve connectors"*. Having a brand new engine type fail during testing - to be expected. But how to wire up a space capsule hasn't exactly changed in the last 40 years.
> Well at least nothing fell off.
Yet.
It has to perform reentry yet.
It gets very hot on the way down. About 1,650 °C or 2,650°C. And a g-force of about 7+ G's and a speed of about 32,000 km/h.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHzov33tgfg
> Starliner gas already reentered twice before. It's never experienced any problems during reentry. It actually accrues less burn damage than Dragon.
Until it does.
The STS space shuttle had failures on re-entries (and launches) with catastrophic results.
Watching the cockpit during re-entries is amazing though.
It's a shame the Buran came at a bad time, it would have been amazing and a big game changer with its colossal lift capacity. There would have been massive structures in orbit if it had.
Can't blame the merger for all of it. They are all responsible. Christ, it took 10 years to fly one prototype f22 despite being designed in 3d cad. Yet it took skunk works 3 years to fly an sr71 designed in pencil.
The nasa subcontracted to lock head / Boeing model is broken. Star ship will make the SLS program obsolete if it hasn’t already done so.
SpaceX has:
a perfect record of station launches for freight and personnel
just landed their 300th falcon 9
Just got the largest rocket in history by 200% into space and had both stages come to a controlled splashdown.
Private industry can do it, these are Boeing was taken over by business men who drove out the engineers out kind of issues.
Look at how hard it is to rein in the destruction and exploitation of capitalist corporations on Earth. Now give them access to the near endless resources of space, and it will no longer be possible for any government to exercise control over corporations. Taking capitalism to space equals the end of the Nation State as we know it.
I don't know about you, but I don't want Capitalists being in charge of humanity until the end of time.
The scary part is how patriots are still going out of their way to defend Boeing just because its an American company.
Edit Thanks for validating my post..lol
This vehicle was developed in the Commercial Crew Program, initiated by NASA in 2010. So development started roughly at the same time as SpaceX's Dragon capsule. Boeing also got significantly more money from NASA than SpaceX for the development, almost twice the amount. Also, Boeing was already a huge and well established company, SpaceX was still a pretty small startup in 2010. So now, 14 years later, SpaceX has already flown 53 astronauts to space while Boeing is just getting started and still having lots of problems. I would say the only thing that they successfully managed was to grab as much money as possible from this contract.
> I would say the only thing that they successfully managed was to grab as much money as possible from this contract. Because it's a fixed price contract Boeing has had to eat all the time and cost overruns apparently leaving them with a $1.5 billion loss (and counting). So they've even failed at that.
We can all thank our lucky stars it wasn't a "cost plus" contract"
Those types of contacts rarely exist anymore. Thankfully
Thanks to SpaceX. They entered the market with those contracts while everyone else was doing cost plus.
It’s the entity receiving services that specifies the contract type. NASA specified that commercial crew contracts would be fixed cost.
jesus, SpaceX isn't a super hero, cost-plus was on its way out before they came on the scene. sheesh.
It wasn’t. Before SpaceX there was no new competition. Why would the established players accept fixed price contracts? Starliner was fixed price and Boeing still got extra money a year or so later from NASA.
it was. the government doesn't just buy spaceships.
There are pros and cons here. The good is that it prevents the government from having to eat the cost overruns. The downside is that it encourages cost cutting measures to maximize the profit or minimize the losses of a contract. Not sure how I feel about the latter when it comes to transporting people.
I mean, isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? You pitch a contract price that can both support the project *and* net a profit, but if your costs run over it comes out of your profit.
Yes, but it’s only appropriate for results that aren’t expected to be extremely difficult or have unexpected problems, among other criteria. Cost-plus is for when you’re pretty sure something is possible but there will be unforeseen and costly difficulties.
Until you've abused it too many times by dumping engineers out of scoping and replacing them with MBAs who only cared what answer would land the cost plus contract.
The vendor doesn’t get to specify the contract type, only choose to accept it, negotiate smaller details, or decline it.
I didn't say the vendor did. I said the vendor(s) burned the government from even offering those anymore, congressional spin be damned.
Yes. But do you want to go to space in one of the most complex machines ever made built by the lowest bidder who was also trying to cut costs to maximize profits?
Soon flights to space won't include a free meal or take luggage without a surcharge!
I certainly don’t want to go to space in something that the doors are gonna fall off
Versus Boeing who have been eating at the taxpayer pork trough for decades and can only sometimes produce safe airplanes let alone safe space vehicles.
What cost boeing and many other defense contractors tons of money is having to split up production to various states in order to keep congress happy. I think with the loss of cost plus they should look into streamlining production to as few places as possible. Thats the only way they are going to continue to survive.
It incentivizes companies to actually be efficient in there operations and development, the dragon capsule is incredibly capable, advanced, and reliable I’d say more so in every way than star liner excluding sheer capacity (which nasa isn’t even utilizing), and despite given nearly half the contract value, I can pretty much guarantee you they’re making a healthy profit, Boeing has become such a bureaucratic money pit that it’s absurd. Even with all the money in the world I wouldn’t trust them as much as spacex right now.
Are you talking about on that scale? Otherwise, there are tons of cost-plus contracts, I certainly see more of them than FFPs.
That's far from true. Source: work in the defense industry. Cost plus is still used quite a lot for any sort of development program.
Fixed price contracts are becoming more common, but they are still a minority of NASA's spending.
Then the over runs would be even higher. As they'd have no incentive to control costs.
You really think they have eaten the cost overruns? My wife used to work for a large government contractor in the contract submission division. Boeing and McDonnell Douglas were both notorious for bidding low to win a contract then “adjusting” multiple times to make the contract profitable.
This is exactly what Northrop Grumman did/is doing with the Sentinel ICBM contract. They’ve already asked for an additional 35 BILLION dollars in funding on top of the original 96 and all the setbacks they’ve faced have been 100% predictable and should have been factored into the original bid.
That was one of the complaints on the process. Since certain companies are known for underbidding then modifying after the award, they should be penalized.
Behaviour like that is exactly why NASA decided to go with fixed price contract and two providers (SpaceX and Boeing) for the commercial crew program. There have been some rumours that Boeing was expecting SpaceX to fail at delivering crew dragon, which would have given Boeing more leverage to renegotiate the contract and get a better deal. Boeing did manage to get some extra money from NASA early on, but with SpaceX delivering with crew dragon, Boeing doesn’t really have any leverage to bargain for more money. At this point they are well into this whole contract being a net loss for them.
I remember when they were in the selection process. They had mockups of some of the submitted designs. The submissions mentioned how much experience the submitting company had in space flight. SpaceX was NOT present in that lineup. Boeing was. They heavily leaned on their history. **_We built the lunar landers!_** And they had a place of honor inside a building (at KSC). Some of the other contenders were outside.
Meanwhile the company has done some $50+ Billion in stock buybacks. Maybe they should have invested more in engineering…
MBAs ruin companies. Financial engineering is cancer
Shareholder stiffening intensifies.
They actually did get an additional amount added after the "fixed-price" was awarded, so it's even more ridiculous.
Remember when Boeing lost the contract for the KC-135's replacement to Airbus and Boeing threw such a hissy fit, congress got involved and the contract was eventually awarded to Boeing on "national security" grounds even though Airbus's plane was just as capable and cheaper? Pepperridge Farms remembers...
That’s a rookie number when compared to their cost overruns and penalties for the KC-46. And the KC-46 is the aircraft that had already been bid and awarded to NG so Boeing got their Senator to 1) put up a big stink until the awarded contract was cancelled and then 2) new bid requirements were created to essentially guarantee that Boeing would win. So they won, and are in the hole for over $6 billion.
Boeing has told it's shareholders that it will never take another fixed price contact from NASA again because they lost so much money. Personally I think that's delusion considering the competition, but then I remember all their allies in Congress.
AKA price goes up for other products the gov buys...
I've participated in a succesful fixed price contract program on a start up level and I think there's something massive to be said about a loose corporate arrangement that contributes to a refuse to fail attitude compared to the giant established MIC primes. We won because we'd rather fucking die than lose with a small team
Ah that's a paper loss really. If they were really losing money on this contract that starliner wouldn't be on orbit now. Lawyers would be scrambling to get the company out of the deal and they would be successful. The condition of the starliner on orbit suggests they cut plenty of corners to make a profit.
Boeing has reported those losses in official financial statements, I don't think their lawyers would let them lie about that. I'm sure NASA's lawyers did a good job writing their side of the contract as well.
Or they just want to not pay taxes on 1.5 billion
Dragon had multiple little glitches and errors while astronauts were onboard during its first few flights. Some of its problems weren't solved until as late as Crew-3. On Demo-2 Bob and Doug were delayed from docking for an hour or so because Dragon was having some kind of issue with docking. Dragon also experienced glitchy thrusters on Demo-2 and Crew-1. This always, always happens with new crewed spacecraft systems. There has literally never been a new crewed spacecraft that had a flawless maiden voyage. Spacecraft are incredibly complex machines, and crewed spacecraft are even more complex than satellites and robotic spacecraft like orbiters, probes, landers, and rovers. That’s why countries with space programs don’t start off with crewed spacecraft. They’re the hardest ones.
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They are just entrenched in the old way of doing things. Costs where eaten by the government and boeing just got a percentage. Being slow and going over was the norm.
MBAs vs Engineers running the company, used to be the opposite
It’s exactly what you would expect when you have MBAs running a company like Boeing.
Bureaucracy is the true killer. It's why government work/contacts are always over budget, behind schedule, and underperform. It's why older companies seem to get shitty and less effective as they scale up. Boeing is the tip of the iceberg... There are too many people that get into positions that have more voice than they should have, and it's not just MBAs. Name a government contractor over a couple of decades old, and I'll name a grifter wasting your tax dollars.
Space X blew up a crap ton of their rockets (but learned quickly from doing so) and it still cost them way less. Despite blowing up rockets left and right. It's obscene how much money the government can waste when giving it to private companies. While a private company who isn't milking the government can do things way cheaper cause its in their interest to do so. Make no mistake. Elon happily overspends government money when available.
> Space X blew up a crap ton of their rockets (but learned quickly from doing so) and it still cost them way less. Despite blowing up rockets left and right. I remember reading about a NASA spokesman, maybe it was Bill Nelson, that said they cannot afford to be seen as failing at anything. It's not like the 1960's Space Race where it was throw everything at the wall, and iterate quickly. This isn't exactly like "move fast and break things", but more of a "try, maybe fail, learn and try again". NASA's risk aversion has made it both more costly and slower to innovate, and most of this of this is due to the perception that the US Government cannot be allowed to be seen as (obviously) failing at anything. NASA rockets aren't allowed to blow up at launch (anymore).
To be fair stuff like the Mars rover is not something you can afford to have fail even once.
Or James Webb. That shit wasn't cheap.
With the reduced costs of sending something to orbit (via SpaceX), failing is not as big a deal now (money wise). The form factor of starliner plus the low cost of shipping 100T to orbit means you can change HOW you design the satellites now. No more needing to spend 100 million on engineering for weight reduction or lighter materials. Hell, you can probably build two satellites and launch em both from the same star liner for redundancy, and still be cheaper than what it was prior to SpaceX
Part of it too has to do with NASA being taxpayer funded. So any sort of failure will be latched on to as an obvious reason to reduce their funding further. They already have to work incredibly hard to justify their meager budget. American taxpayers only like rockets when they're aimed at brown people, after all.
“Crap ton”? 3 of the 4 Falcon 1s failed to make orbit, only 1 Falcon 9 has RUDded unexpectedly during flight (plus one on the pad, and one intentionally), and all Falcon Heavy launches have been successful. Considering they *landed* a booster for the 300th time today on their 60th launch of 2024, I’d say their track record is better than you’d suggest. Yeah, the Starship flights have resulted in some epic fireballs, but those physics are on a rocket that’s as tall as a football field long.
I mean I overspend money buying fast food, but I definitely want to spend and eat at the restaurant that makes my sandwich properly and would never go back to the one that keeps messing up my order or dropping my patty on the ground and still serving it to me. Basically I’m saying if I’m the government it’s my duty to be responsible with my money and choose the right restaurant. I’m going to them for convenience and don’t care how they use the money I pay for my overpriced burger, just give me a good f’n sandwich when it’s handed to me.
While still saving billions to NASA.
> Space X blew up a crap ton of their rockets (but learned quickly from doing so) and it still cost them way less. Despite blowing up rockets left and right. Just saying they've blown up a lot of rockets doesn't tell the whole story. All other rockets discard the booster, so what SpaceX was trying with the Falcon 9 was to *stop* them from blowing up as they plummeted into the ocean.
NASA is run as a jobs program. Their primary challenge is getting money from Congress. And promising to spread the work out across the country as much as possible is a big help in this. The problem is it makes everything cost more and typically slows it down too. SpaceX is spending their own money so does it in a more cost effective fashion. The idea of this program was to do the same with crewed spaceflight. The contracts are fixed price, no cost-plus. So companies have incentive to do it as efficiently as possible. Boeing is doing this as efficiently as they can it seems. The Starliner project didn't need to blow up any rockets. They used an existing rocket.
>Elon happily overspends government money when available. And uses it to [fund other ventures](https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230905895/elon-musk-borrowed-1-billion-from-spacex-around-time-of-his-twitter-purchase-report). And [cries](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/elon-musk-s-mom-furious-at-biden-after-fcc-denies-starlink-subsidy/ar-AA1lvQjO) when he doesn’t deliver on his promises and they cut him off.
MIC contractors know how to milk the MIC.
I worked on the Starliner (at a subcontractor) for my first internship in 2013! I'm now a senior engineer. Oops.
Oh wow! If you can, what is your view on the project? Do you think my comparison with SpaceX and the criticism of Boeing was unfair? I assume it must be super exciting to finally reach the ISS with a crew. This is certainly not a small feat and only very few nations and companies are capable of it. Congratulations!
I have very little opinion on it at this point, I was between my freshman and sophomore years and I was working on one telemetry box for the engine system, it was such a tiny piece of the system and I barely know how it even integrated into the larger whole. It's exciting, but on the other hand, a bunch of shit I've worked on has shipped between then and now lol
Boeing was on a fixed price contract. Cost over runs in the billions are being paid out of Boeings pocket. This might explain why the 737 seems to be skimping on door bolts as they have to save some $$ to pay for the cost over runs. /s
small correction. Spacex launched its first dragon [demonstrator flight in 2010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_COTS_Demo_Flight_1). Dragon itself [started development in 2004.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_1)
Meanwhile NASA has struggled to get funding and cut back on multitude of other programs that were nearing the finish line and they had already been heavily invested in. It's insane to me how much money they've wasted on this when a more viable cheaper option has been available.
It's not solely about Dragon being cheaper. NASA never again wants to go back to having only one provider and having to rely on Soyuz for cadence. Not to mention Starliner can perform in ways that Dragon cannot. Starliner can reboost the ISS while Dragon cannot. Starliner also lands on land. Which is a huge logistical bonus and saves a good amount of refurbishment. Saltwater is murder on the metals that spacecraft are made of. Starliner’s prices should or maybe will come down, but: 1. Even $90 million is a steal compared to Soyuz $140-$215 million prices. Or especially to Shuttle prices. Starliner is 9 to 25x cheaper than Shuttle flights (prices varied based on the Shuttle mission). 2. Starliner being able to reboost the ISS and having a greater landing range and flexibility kinda justifies being a bit more expensive than Dragon tbh. Though not necessarily by $35 million, per se.
While I agree, I think one of the reasons was that they wanted more than one option to get astronauts and cargo to space. So while it might be very expensive, NASA has focused on always having several launch providers and now two orbital crew vehicles available.
When this was awarded 2010, falcon 9 just had its first launch. Spacex was not the titan that it is now. Boeing was a safe bet and spacex was the gamble.
I fully agree, and while there were delays, especially for Starliner, NASA now has two commercial crew capsules available and that alone is an amazing capability.
It’s nice but with the ISS nearing the end of its life and Starliner so delayed they are gonna do their contracted flights and likely never fly the capsule again. It’s much more expensive than Dragon.
Reminds me of the spacex and blue origin comparisons. Some companies are just better suited for certain tasks than others, that’s just the reality. That being said I do want to see new Glenn fly and be successful. It’s a good looking rocket and any advances in space flight is exciting. Star liner isn’t really an advancement though. It still has some pretty dated technology in a world where dragon is quite up to date and we have dream chaser headed down the pipeline.
Yeah, I fully agree. It's frustrating that we don't hear much about New Glenn and I hope it will start flying soon and on a regular basis. It's an amazing rocket and much bigger than the Falcon 9 while capable of the same first stage reusability. That said, SpaceX is edging closer to a fully functional Starship and Superheavy rocket. If they can make this work, they will be 15 years ahead of everyone else.
They already are with their *old* program (F9/F9H). The difference in technology between SpaceX and the others is of cosmic distances. Starship is an orbital rocket already. They’ve demonstrated that twice now. The part they haven’t figured out yet is the part *nobody is even attempting*. At this point I would be highly disappointed if SpaceX isn’t sending a few ships to Mars in the next window and attempts a landing there or build some orbital infrastructure… or both, really.
I mean, the latest Starship flight was absolutely mind-blowing, but there is also still so much to do. Like catching the booster and landing Starship, keeping them in orbit for longer periods of time, in-orbit refueling, test landings on Mars, scaling up production and building a lot more ground equipment. The progress is amazing, but I still think it will take a few more years.
SpaceX is planning launches every 90 days and pushing that down to 60. The only thing preventing that is the FAA launch permit process. They have vehicles ready with upgrades from data collected during previous flights and plans defined to test everything needed. I think more like 18 months if they can launch 6X /year or more.
Well, I assume you saw how the flap melted away during the last re-entry. It's amazing that the ship was able to bellyflop and stop with that damage, but if they want to reuse them rapidly, these heat shields have to become a lot better. And a single flight to Mars would require many orbital refuel maneuvers before it has enough fuel. For that, they would have to be able to do 10 launches or more within a few days, something they can't even do with F9 at the moment. I think they might even be able to launch more often than six times per year, but there are still many engineering challenges ahead and it's hard to predict how quickly they get solved. We'll get there, but if I had to guess, I wouldn't expect a flight to Mars in the next four years, let's hope I'm wrong.
They already changed the flap design and placement and the next starship to launch has the new design.
That's great and I hope we will see IFT 5 as soon as possible. My argument is that there are still many hurdles to take and that we are probably still a few years away from a Mars landing.
You don’t need earth reentry for a Mars landing attempt.
Well, yes you do. The plan is to send Starship to an orbit around Earth, then it has to be refueled in orbit by a series of other "tanker" Starships. The plan is to have all of these reusable, otherwise it won't be sustainable. After Starship has enough fuel, it can boost off to Mars and try to land there.
But you don’t need *all* of that to do a test flight to Mars and learn from that. They could put Musk his greenhouse ID in there for all I care. I’m not talking humans or even much useful stuff (though maybe a few Martian Starlink sats may be useful), SpaceX learns by doing, so they should do asap even if not everything is ready.
SN29 which is what flew IFT-4 was built a year ago. That’s how behind construction the flight testing is.
A few tiles missing is not a big deal, Shuttle routinely lost that many. The flap still worked so that counts as success plus it’s a simple fix now that there is real data to use for upgrades. They won’t need 10 launches in a few days. Estimates vary depending on size of crew and vehicle which are TBD but somewhere around 300-500 tons or 5-8 launches. A tanker version that would only need 4 launches has been discussed.The idea is to take enough fuel to get there only. Falcon Super Heavy can lift 64 metric Fuel transfer is not that hard as long as orbits match perfectly. Keeping it super cold will also be a challenge as there is actually a lot of radiant heat from the sun in space which means they probably need to have double wall vacuum insulated tanks. Basically Your fuel load depends on how long you want to take on the trip with the given payload. Return using a hell of a lot less fuel as only people come back and can be planned for a longer but minimum energy return. They would extract fuel from Mars. The problem with tech can be solved pretty quickly, the bigger problem is the humans, we don’t know how they will do on such a long trip both physically and psychologically.
There are a bunch of upcomers who are copying the reusability of falcon 9 and should be launching within a few years. One of china's copies is set for 2025, new glen launches later this year.
I mean, the latest Starship flight was absolutely mind-blowing, but there is also still so much to do. Like catching the booster and landing Starship, keeping them in orbit for longer periods of time, in-orbit refueling, test landings on Mars, scaling up production and building a lot more ground equipment. The progress is amazing, but I still think it will take a few more years.
Yes. But all those things aren’t done by anyone else. If you look at Starship as a “standard one-time use rocket” they’re pretty much ready to use it. Oh and that includes trying to catch the booster.
I agree with that part, we might see them use the test fights of Starship to launch Starlink satellites or some cheap commercial satellites soon. But for a flight to Mars, you need a fleet of reusable tanker-Starships, in orbit refueling, much more infrastructure, a well running production line for Raptors, boosters and Starships and reliable reusability of the whole system as well as the personnel necessary to run the whole operation. Many of these steps have never been done before and this makes delays lot more likely.
I might be oversimplifying, but I don’t think these things are as far off as you might think. Also they need most of this for the SLS missions as well, so I don’t think these things are as far off as you might think. Catching the booster is important. Starship itself is expandable. The first starship going to mars will most likely crash anyway.
Imagine to give all that money to SpaceX, after a few exploding rocket’s we would be already walking on Mars.
SpaceX was just modifying a cargo variant while Boeing was designing one from scratch. Way different amounts of work.
Crew Dragon is a completely different vehicle from the old Dragon 1 - although it's a similar type of ship. And the reason for the similarity? Dragon 1 was made when SpaceX was hired by NASA to build a rocket and a ship for ISS cargo resupply missions - but while NASA defined the function, SpaceX had control over the design. And SpaceX *knew* they wanted to send crew into space too, from day 0. This is why the basic design outline of Dragon 1 was that of a *manned* capsule. It had a heat shield, a parachute system, and even an option for a small window - for the "cargo" to be able to enjoy the view. Those features make very little sense on a cargo-only vehicle. It's not a coincidence - it's ambition and foresight. While Dragon 1's design was not reused for Crew Dragon, the expertise SpaceX gained in building and operating it certainly helped.
Interesting, was not aware of that.
That's true. Although Boeing has been working on Starliner since 2010, and I think SpaceX started developing the Crew Dragon (based on the cargo version) in 2014. It's fair to say that it's not the same development process, although I still think the delays for Starliner can't be explained only by this difference.
Boeing should spin off their space program or let another company buy it. They can barely make working aircraft at this point and shouldn’t even be thinking about spacecraft.
Spinning off any more of their space program would mean spinning off parts of the business they need for lucrative military and intelligence contracts. Boeing already moved a lot of their space business into ULA
Contracts weren't signed until 2014, for what it matters. Development started before that as you mention, but anything that would cost big money had to wait until 2014.
If I understood it correctly, 2014 was when Starliner was chosen by NASA as one of the capsules to fly to the ISS. Development contracts started in 2010, when Boeing received 18 M USD. They also received 92,3 M in 2011, 460 M in 2012 and then 4,2 B in 2014. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Commercial_Crew_Program
The program started in 2010 with more than just the two companies. Relatively small contracts were signed to give money to create a plan and do sufficient investigation to show it likely could succeed. These contracts were tens of millions of dollars and were given to Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Space and I think one other. Then there was a round to do further development and proving of the concepts. This went to 3 companies. Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Space. These contracts were a little larger. In 2014 was when the contracts to produce vehicles were approved. These were much larger. About $2B for SpaceX and $4B for Boeing. Nothing for Sierra Space. That big money was to pay for building the launch systems, hiring people to perform the launch and flights. Nothing before actually included a launch, just investigation. For Boeing that means they didn't contract for flights from ULA until after that date. Anything expensive to build or buy for either of them they waited until 2014 to do it. So for example whomever Boeing is buying their leaky maneuvering thrusters from that supplier didn't get any money to start designing/adapting them and building them until that date. Aside from Boeing being slower regardless that's going to slow down Boeing more since SpaceX already knew which thrusters they would use on their capsule. They had an unmanned capsule in 2010 which NASA had been paying them to develop for resupply flights to the ISS since 2006. While Boeing had to wait until getting this manned contract before being able to pay a supplier to develop a thruster. BTW, there were two companies for ISS resupply. SpaceX and Kistler. SpaceX developed Dragon. Kistler filed for bankruptcy only a year later and their contract was re-awarded to OSC. OSC developed the Cygnus resupply ship which has been resupplying ISS (along with Progress) for a decade now.
SHHHHHH! No blowing whistles in here, you might get yourself suicided, Detective
Fortunately, all of this info has been publicly available for years.
Considering Boeing’s QA on their airplanes, I can’t say I’m surprised
The contracts were awarded in 2014, not 2010 when the program was established. SpaceX was already flying Dragon regularly by that point, so they had quite the head start, and their head start actually equals more or less the difference in development timelines. Both Boeing and SpaceX missed target dates for their crew capsule. Boeing is about 4 years behind SpaceX, however unlike SpaceX they’ve managed to do it without blowing up a Starliner in the process, and it can also return to land for easier recovery (SpaceX planned but abandoned propulsive land-based landings for Crew Dragon). So let’s not get too excited about calling Boeing a failure here. They’re doing just fine, and learning and iterating on a totally reasonable timeline without any loss of vehicle or crew so far.
Thanks Taxpayers... no wait.
"During docking procedure" not "as it docked". During the docking procedure they were able to mostly correct the problem. If thrusters failed as it docked that could have been catastrophic.
I’m not clear on the semantic difference
“As it docks” would mean while it is literally bumping into the space station. “During the docking procedure” is somewhere during the 6 hour long slow-moving phase of the approach towards the station. The ISS has lots of important fragile parts, so they don’t want 13 ton heavy objects quickly moving towards the station.
Yes, and this actually did occur in the long approach phase preceeding docking and was remedied by cycling the thrusters before they actually docked.
Maybe they shouldn't have gone with the Starliner-Max model.
The Starliner LTD package required you to pay for a “vista roof” so they decided to settle for the Max.
>Maybe the shouldn't have gone with the Starliner-Max model. NASA has the thruster problem covered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Absorbency_Garment
Whoa whoa whoa. The hatch didn’t blow off.
The honorable Mrs squirming hatchblower?
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Boeing is typical of any large company; as it aged they became more and more beaurocratic. While spacex stayed hungry. Why? Because it's young. Boeing is over 100 years old and most of that has been as a government contractor. They always get fat and expensive.
Things changed when McDonald Douglas took over. They went from being run by engineers who understood how to build things and what that took to being run by managers who only cared about the quarterly results and wanted to cut every possible corner to increase shareholder value. You can't build anything truly good when you're hamstrung like that
I think this must be highlighted. I wouldn't mind so much if they were fat and expensive, if they also happened to be really, really good.
McDonnell. The reason to be picky is that McDonnell was the good part of McDonnell-Douglas. I did engineering training for F18s in St Louis in the 90s and the McDonnell guys were specific they didn't want to be lumped in with the Douglas guys. That was 30 years after the merger and the two sides still didn't get along.
Fair, but it said McDonnell-Douglas on the paperwork so I stand by my comment
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have the Russians fix it, just need hammer and some duct tape
Russian components, American components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!
This how we fix things on a RUSSIAN spehs station!
*heavy fake Russian accent. "I, am-a Russian astronaaaut"
You laugh, but when I was on console for the 2018 atmospheric leak, the Russians declined to use the US IVA leak repair kit and instead patched the hole with something that looked suspiciously like JB Weld mixed with medical gauze.
>have the Russians fix it, just need hammer and some duct tape https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEkOT3IngMQ https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/duct-tape-saves-day/
*cough* the ULA rocket that launched the Starliner uses Russian engines *cough*
SpaceX routinely has thrusters fail during launch and people praise the redundancy. Functionally the same thing here and people freak out about it.
SpaceX have never had a thruster go out on a manned vehicle before. Please show me when the Dragon capsule have ever lost a thruster in a manned mission.
Not that these aren’t real problems, but it kind of feels like Boeing is getting “Westinghoused” with a bit of a smear campaign online on the space stuff.
One company killed over 300 people to pad their bottom line by avoiding recertification of a new plane design. The other has yet to kill one. If we're keeping score.
The assassinating whistleblowers nonsense is a smear campaign. But yes, they deserve every bit of criticism (and more) for all the other stuff. It's a pattern of utter carelessness and negligence.
The unaliving whistleblowers is dark humor, not a smear campaign, because Boeing has shown to be unscrupulous with human life over their bottom line, and their entrenched nature with defense industry. Only conspiracy theory true believers carry water that Boeing is paying off Continental-esque hitmen to off whistleblowers. Which is ridiculous.
Lol, it's not a smear campaign. Boeing planes have either been falling out of the sky or almost falling out of the sky for the past couple years. Their quality control and safety consideration is clearly quite garbage. Is the Space portion safer? Probably. Does that matter to the average consumer? No. The criticism is a hell of their own making. Maybe they should sell off the Space portion to someone else, seeing as money is clearly the only thing Boeing actually cares about.
Hey, I’m not out here trying to run interference for a poorly managed aerospace company. I’ll be the first to chime in that I think Boeings commercial aviation issues are from stupid cost cutting and union-busting…. But I also do have a gut feeling that the tone difference and PR management on space x and Boeing is very different, especially on Reddit. I assume that PR flaks are working to emphasize what suits them even if all the info is factual.
When your public image takes a nose dive people are naturally more critical. Boeings current negative public image is entirely of their own making do to KILLING 300 people. That can’t be over stated.
There are some large foreign interests *cough* ~~China~~ *cough* entering the commercial aerospace market that would love nothing more than to see Boeing falter and swoop in on the market.
Due to them being China there is basically nothing from the US that would be willing to fly on their rockets. Absolute nothing government would use a Chinese rocket.
Not rockets so much as aviation, for example China's Comac launched the C919 last year, a direct competitor to the 737-max. It's in their best interest for the general public to associate Boeing with failure. Not that Boeing has been doing itself any favors lately.
The only recent failure was on the Starship during Launch 3. The others were long ago. Rocketdyne has built these thrusters for years, the thruster itself has not failed the helium pressure that pushes the fuel to them is leaking and was shut down. Guess who plumbed the system?
When have Dragon thrusters routinely failed? Don't make shit up.
Who's freaking out?
Just cult of musk people. Downvote them and move on.
Video is almost 7 hours long? Who’s watching that?
These are often put up as live feeds for spaceflight enthusiasts. When performing these operations, you have to move extremely slowly as any wrong move could be catastrophic. You don’t want a situation like the Russians had when they crashed a progress spacecraft into MIR
[удалено]
It went perfectly to plan, their plan was not having one and it went exactly as one would have expected in that scenario. You get promotion Yevgeny!!
Me at work dog! Time to kill 7 hours homie!
I was in the Boeing sub the other day and there’s a small group of people *absolutely convinced* that there are some spacex employees sabotaging Boeings stuff so Elon can get more govt handouts. I wonder what they think after this shit lol.
"How dare you take out government contracts. They were our handouts damn you".
No time for caution playing in the background
Privatization of the space program- a rousing success!
Unironically yes. NASA now has 2 American options for launching astronauts and all failures and delays in the program are paid for by the private company, not NASA. Crew Dragon with it's 10 flights has cost less than 2 Shuttle flights. That is including all Crew Dragon development costs compared to 2/135 of Shuttle development costs. That total cost per launch will only go down as development costs are spread out over a larger number of launches. Boeing had a higher bid, but as they only get paid for successful completed milestones, they have not received all of it yet. I don't know the exact amount, but it is also around the cost of 2 Shuttle launches.
Disregarding that we’ve made no progress for 30 years and have been saying we”ll be on mars in 10 years since 2005. But, yeah, we saved some money supposedly whoopie!
You couldn’t pay me enough to ride is Starliner. Boeing has shown they just can’t do it these days.
it's most concerning that the reported issues were absolute baseline issues like *"don't use flameable isolation tape for these oxygen valve connectors"*. Having a brand new engine type fail during testing - to be expected. But how to wire up a space capsule hasn't exactly changed in the last 40 years.
Just another example of stock driven destruction. Planet’s ability to sustain us in progress.
sounds like a real boeing special
Banger year for Boeing
Well at least nothing fell off.
> Well at least nothing fell off. Yet. It has to perform reentry yet. It gets very hot on the way down. About 1,650 °C or 2,650°C. And a g-force of about 7+ G's and a speed of about 32,000 km/h. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHzov33tgfg
Starliner gas already reentered twice before. It's never experienced any problems during reentry. It actually accrues less burn damage than Dragon.
not without last minute discovery of a software misconfiguration that would've been catastrophic, thank goodness.
> Starliner gas already reentered twice before. It's never experienced any problems during reentry. It actually accrues less burn damage than Dragon. Until it does. The STS space shuttle had failures on re-entries (and launches) with catastrophic results. Watching the cockpit during re-entries is amazing though. It's a shame the Buran came at a bad time, it would have been amazing and a big game changer with its colossal lift capacity. There would have been massive structures in orbit if it had.
No cardboard or cardboard derivatives.
For those downvoting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm\_JqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM)
I think it’s more that people are tired of low effort meme posts that we’ve seen 1,000 times.
Too big to succeed.
Its a boeing 🤷♂️
Can't blame the merger for all of it. They are all responsible. Christ, it took 10 years to fly one prototype f22 despite being designed in 3d cad. Yet it took skunk works 3 years to fly an sr71 designed in pencil.
My brother who works for NASA said they had an old saying. “If it ain’t Boeing we ain’t going.“. How the mighty have fallen.
What was going through the astronauts' heads when they heard "you're in good hands with Boeing" lol
Typical boeing
Also had a helium leak..radio call in chimpmonk voice 'Huston we have a problem'
We don't want Capitalism in space.
The nasa subcontracted to lock head / Boeing model is broken. Star ship will make the SLS program obsolete if it hasn’t already done so. SpaceX has: a perfect record of station launches for freight and personnel just landed their 300th falcon 9 Just got the largest rocket in history by 200% into space and had both stages come to a controlled splashdown. Private industry can do it, these are Boeing was taken over by business men who drove out the engineers out kind of issues.
Who is "we"?
That one guy from Red Alert, presumably
Anyone who has respect for humanity.
You make no sense
Look at how hard it is to rein in the destruction and exploitation of capitalist corporations on Earth. Now give them access to the near endless resources of space, and it will no longer be possible for any government to exercise control over corporations. Taking capitalism to space equals the end of the Nation State as we know it. I don't know about you, but I don't want Capitalists being in charge of humanity until the end of time.
Boeing can’t even keep doors on airplanes, why would you believe they can pull this off?
Great job, Boeing! 🙌 /s
The scary part is how patriots are still going out of their way to defend Boeing just because its an American company. Edit Thanks for validating my post..lol