Interesting that this did not make HN at all before the launch. There are way more cheerleaders for SpaceX than Boeing. But IMO it's still very cool, I could watch rocket launches all day.
It's been delayed so many times after getting very close to launch that it makes sense that everyone just lost interest.
On top of that Boeing's launch coverage is nowhere near as fancy as SpaceX (or new space in general, RocketLab and Blue Origin also tend to have pretty decent coverage, although neither of them are doing crewed orbital spaceflight yet). No views of the non-flight-control employees enjoying seeing their work fly, very little live telemetry, low resolution for when they do have live video, mostly CGI views once down to the second stage, no live views from the capsule in space either.
Finally, on top of that, Starliner is kind of just a dead end in its current state. Boeing only built the two it needs for this one contract, and it only flies on Atlas V, which are fully sold out now. So it can only do the 6 contracted ISS missions and then it's done until someone is willing to pay to have Starliner+Vulcan Centaur crew rated.
> Boeing only built the two it needs for this one contract, and it only flies on Atlas V, which are fully sold out now. So it can only do the 6 contracted ISS missions and then it's done until someone is willing to pay to have Starliner+Vulcan Centaur crew rated.
This is what I like about SpaceX. Of course they have government contracts, but it's always building towards something bigger.
I was really unimpressed with Boeing's feed and its lack of telemetry. No indications of altitude, speed, distance down range, etc. Even their timeline jumped rather than progressed. It was worse than some of those old Windows progress bars of old.
It was delayed three times in the month leading up to launch, and there was an attempt just over a year ago that was scratched because they discovered they accidentally used a flammable material. So, four total times. But "staying excited for months" is misleading.
True, but you have to add previous attempts going back several years. Wasn't Atlas+Starliner actually rolled out to the pad last time only to be scrubbed and brought back for another 6 month delay?
"Although it was originally planned for a 2017 launch,[15] various delays pushed the launch back to no earlier than July 2023.[47] Then on June 1, 2023, Boeing announced the flight was indefinitely delayed, due to problems with the parachute harness and flammable tape on wiring.[105] On August 7, 2023, Boeing announced that it was resuming preparations for a launch, and that it hoped to resolve the issue with the flammable tape by September 2023, and to address the parachute harness issues by November 2023.
The Crewed Flight Test was tentatively scheduled for a launch date of May 6, 2024,[106] but due to a problem with an oxygen valve on the ULA Atlas rocket, the May 6 launch date was cancelled approximately two hours before the planned launch time.[107] The launch has been further delayed due to a helium leak in the Starliner service module, which was originally discovered during the May 6 launch attempt.[108][109]
A launch was attempted on June 1, 2024, for 16:25 UTC (12:25 PM EDT), but was aborted at 3 minutes and 50 seconds prior to liftoff. Starliner successfully completed countdown and lifted off on June 5, 2024 at 14:52 UTC (10:52 AM EDT)."
You are missing ones where it was scheduled, but didn't even make it to the stand because some issue was found. I can't recall when exactly, but at some point it was discovered that the tape used to wrap wires was flammable. So it was postponed, once again.
Everyone was excited for the one last time and I was around for that, I didn't even realize it was happening today. I just assumed it'd be delayed for another long period again.
I did not, either. I tend to get most of my tech-related news via HN. Fortunately this morning I decided to swing past Ars to see if anything interesting was happening, and they had a high profile post about the launch. I made it to the livestream with less than five minutes to spare.
Yeah. The atmosphere is very thin but nonzero at ISS altitude so atmospheric drag causes orbital degradation over time. Whenever a resupply ship docks, if it has extra fuel, they orient the station so the ship is pointed prograde and fire the main thruster to increase the altitude. They plan to leave enough fuel for the supply ship to do its usual retro burn and land or burn up as normal.
The station can also boost itself with the Zvezda module, which has thrusters.
It is worth noting that Dragon does have physical controls, they're just backups hidden under the panel below the screens for emergencies. This is on top of the redundancy offered by the screens, where if one screen fails, the same controls are accessible on the other ones.
Plus, since it's supposed to fly autonomously, there isn't a lot of physical control to be done. This isn't like with cars where there's an argument that tactile controls are easier to adjust without looking away from the road.
I am not an astronaut. I prefer knobs. As my comment said, I think of them as a feature. I think the average astronaut would put up with their lack of preferred control schemes to go into space.
Starliner isn't even a rocket, it's a capsule. A capsule (Starliner) got launched today on top of a really old rocket design (Atlas V) which first launched in 2002...
There was a decent amount of concern within NASA on the touchscreen design, but the contract type tended to force those discussions to the sideline. In the end, NASA wanted a ride and not to drive the design.
Edit: for those wondering, this is not hearsay or speculation; it is from direct experience (albeit 5+ years ago)
Tradeoffs on the kind of refurbishment needed compared to a splashdown, since Starliner is supposed to be reusable. Plus stuff like faster extraction of time-sensitive payloads and overall cheaper capsule processing operations since you don't need specially fitted boats chasing after the capsule.
Dragon was also initially intending to land on solid ground, but dropped the idea when NASA asked for additional tests to prove that popping landing legs out of the heat shield would be safe. SpaceX had intended such landings in large part because of the plans for Red Dragon, but since by then they had started to shift towards Starship, they deemed it easier to just splashdown and deal with the extra refurbishment than try to prove out a technology they no longer felt the need for.
Think the main reason is that sea-recoveries are expensive compared to ones on land. I imagine there's at least some extra risk to a sea recovery as well (one of the Mercury capsules sank during recovery, though happily not with its astronaut inside).
Interesting to think about. I know Starliner lands in Utah. I don't know where, but I'm guessing it's somewhere very remote. I wonder if the effort to get out to the ocean to recover a ship is significantly different than getting to a remote part of the desert to recover.
Additionally, I know when the first Crew Dragon landed, it clearly wasn't hard or expensive to get to given that there were a bunch of small, private boats that (inappropriately) approached the spacecraft. It was quite close to shore, not like the old Apollo missions landing in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific.
There was an article when the launch was scrubbed two days ago, but it didn't make much traction, and the few comments on it were (as objectively as possible) mostly "smirking SpaceX fans".
There is no schadenfreude for the people in my circle. The same can be said for Intel.
We all see it as a huge national security issue that these companies are fumbling, given how foundational they are for U.S. security, self-reliance and tech leadership.
There's no pleasure in Boeing's failure on my part either. It is such a learning moment on many levels that is absolutely being ignored. No meaningful changes are going to come from looking at Boeing. Instead, my cynicism would expect people to "learn" from it in seeing where Boeing went wrong with how they went for short term gains not that focusing on short term gains as the problem
It's 'compatible' in that they can do the work to integrate it with another rocket if needed, which isn't really saying much because most payloads are like that. It isn't compatible with Falcon 9 in its current state, and IIRC because it's wider than F9, actually flying Starliner on F9 would require a lot more structural work too (devising an appropriate aerodynamic adapter and ensuring structural loads are acceptable).
Plus, NASA crew rates the full stack rather than treating the rocket and capsule separately, so integrating Starliner on another rocket would require the crew rating process to be repeated (granted, it'd be a bit easier since F9+Dragon is already crew rated).
The falcon with dragon is only partially reusable too (second stage discarded). The space shuttle reused more but is more of an antique so that's not a great determiner of antiqueness.
