Boeing Starliner Oopsie?

[vreihen16]

Just watched the demo flight launch video stream of the new Boeing Starliner, on an unmanned demo flight to the International Space Station (ISS) to show that it is ready to carry people for the next launch.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) provided the Atlas booster and Centaur second stage, and both of them performed nominally according to the video stream. They left Starliner in an elliptical orbit as planned, handing off to Boeing to use Starliner's thrusters to trim things up to ultimately rendezvous with the ISS.

Things got busy in the Starliner control room as this was going on, with papers being referenced instead of the computer screens in front of everyone. They turned Starliner towards the sun so that the solar arrays could charge the batteries, and announced that they had a non-nominal orbit insertion and were working the options up until the (scheduled?) end of the video stream.

If I was a betting person who knows that meeting up with the ISS in orbit is like threading a needle, I would put some money on them bringing the capsule back down without docking. I would also sell Boeing before the market opens, 'cuz it could get ugly if I'm right.....

[M_Six]

Boeing is on a real losing streak recently. Not sure if they've got too many irons in the fire or if this is just a badly timed coincidence. But between the 737 Max fiasco and this clusterfuq, it seems QC is not one of Boeing's strengths lately.

[eluded]

Elon for the Win.

[Dang3r]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Boeing is on a real losing streak recently. Not sure if they've got too many irons in the fire or if this is just a badly timed coincidence. But between the 737 Max fiasco and this clusterfuq, it seems QC is not one of Boeing's strengths lately.

[Maynard]

Who needs QC, everything comes with a full 100% return policy, no questions asked (please, no questions). It's all part of the Walmartization of America.

[vreihen16]

Just for historical completeness, the first Boeing Starliner launch to carry two astronauts on a test flight just landed *empty* a few days ago, with said astronauts stuck at the space station until next year when they will come home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

With Boeing already being over a billion dollars in the hole on the Starlemon project and NASA likely demanding major changes to the failed thrusters before another probably un-manned test flight, there is speculation that Boeing is going to pull the plug on the program. The ISS is scheduled to be shut down in about five years, so there's a real chance that Boeing would never complete their contracted flights even if everything works perfectly.

To add more salt to the wound, NASA recently awarded a contract for ISS cargo flights to Sierra Space, whose Dream Chaser space plane lost out to Boeing in the last crewed flight contest.....