US Launch Vehicles and Spacecraft: Discussion & News

Astronauts begin operation on SpaceX Dragon’s docking with ISS

magnumcromagnon wrote:

Boeing Forced To Buy Rocket Parts From Russia For New 'Made In USA' Starliner Spacecraft

kvs wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:I know kvs has praised the improvement of solid rocket fuel, well it's set to be improved further more now by from what I just posted.

It is clear that Russian solid rocket fuel retained the same energy density for 50% of the weight.  That is why the railway ICBM no longer requires
special cars and special track but has the same specs in terms of explosive power as the pervious Soviet variant.   So the research outlined in
the above article has been ongoing for last 30 years at least.   And transition improvements were achieved either in the late 1980s or early
1990s.   Now it is revealed that there is much more room remaining for improvement.    But I would not take the 500% as some generic guide.
One still needs a certain amount of energy to achieve objectives.   Burning faster means more useful payload.   But weight reduction of the
missile itself is worthwhile and that requires more than just burn rate.    

GarryB wrote:
BTW the only title with more butt hurt than "Boeing Forced to buy Russian rocket parts", would be "Russia imposes sanctions on Boeing so they can't make rockets or F-35 fighters".

magnumcromagnon wrote:

Boeing Forced To Buy Rocket Parts From Russia For New 'Made In USA' Starliner Spacecraft

BlackArrow wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:

Boeing Forced To Buy Rocket Parts From Russia For New 'Made In USA' Starliner Spacecraft

So what?

The Starliner spacecraft probably has components sourced from 50 different countries - as is typical for any major aerospace project. Guess which country the engines which the "Russian built" MC-21 airliner has been flying around for the last 2 years come from?

magnumcromagnon wrote:

BlackArrow wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:

Boeing Forced To Buy Rocket Parts From Russia For New 'Made In USA' Starliner Spacecraft

So what?

The Starliner spacecraft probably has components sourced from 50 different countries - as is typical for any major aerospace project. Guess which country the engines which the "Russian built" MC-21 airliner has been flying around for the last 2 years come from?

GarryB was right, the title alone would induce a monumental level of butt-hurt, see example a. (the post above) 

I'm just pointing out that both the USA and Russia buy a lot of aerospace technologies from each other,

Big_Gazza wrote:Yup, what an absurd joke!!! Twice it has catasrophically failed a static pressure test!!! You'd expect this sort of incompetance in Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, but (allegedly) 1st-World Texas??  

To think there are Seppo clowns who really think that this amateurish pile of junk is going to be a workable reuseable vehicle capable of lunar flights!!!  Green Day had it right.  Idiot America indeed.  

kvs wrote:

Big_Gazza wrote:Yup, what an absurd joke!!! Twice it has catasrophically failed a static pressure test!!! You'd expect this sort of incompetance in Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, but (allegedly) 1st-World Texas??  

To think there are Seppo clowns who really think that this amateurish pile of junk is going to be a workable reuseable vehicle capable of lunar flights!!!  Green Day had it right.  Idiot America indeed.  

The catastrophic failures of this cistern appear to validate the vague link between appearance and function.   A good jet fighter looks good, a good rocket looks good and
does not look like some farm hack.    Of course, appearance does not imply goodness or quality.    But ugly crap is likely to be crap.

The evidence has been there for a long time that Space-X is a grifter operation.   It appears to be a cover for something more valuable since on its face it is trash.
If Space-X is the scam, then it is Tesla that is being propped up by the US government.   Since yanquis worship Mammon, they pretend that they cannot
subsidize the private sector.   So they cannot pimp electric cars via tax dollars directly.   But privatizing NASA with some doomed to fail startups is legit.
Of course, the money flows to Tesla to prop it up.   Nobody can blame anyone if some space rocket startups disappear.   That is normal for any new
competitive industry (e.g. cars, aircraft, etc.).  

Hole wrote:Has nothing to do with Tesla and all with NASA´s budget. In the past NASA had to beg for more money, some politicians always were against it, bureaucratic waste and so on. But after these "private space companies" appeared the state subsidies are flowing and nobody tells NASA to stop spending so much in support of these companies.

kvs wrote:

Hole wrote:Has nothing to do with Tesla and all with NASA´s budget. In the past NASA had to beg for more money, some politicians always were against it, bureaucratic waste and so on. But after these "private space companies" appeared the state subsidies are flowing and nobody tells NASA to stop spending so much in support of these companies.

But that does not contradict what I am saying.   The privatization is a racket since it leeches off taxpayer money.    The yanqui sheeple
are brainwashed that Space-X is a real company and not a grifter shell that would not exist in a real private free market where it had
to earn its money.

It's amazing how the biggest private companies in the West (and also in the world) live off govt. subsidies! So much for a free market.

US State Department allowed Roscosmos to "expand" in the US market



The Russian company International Launch Services (ILS), which is a subsidiary of the Khrunichev Center, part of the Roskosmos structure, has received permission from the State Department to promote a range of space services in the United States. This was reported today by the press service of ILS.

Now the company will be able to provide launch services for Soyuz launch vehicles. Since she received the right to carry not only cargo, but also people on Russian spacecraft, she has the opportunity to promote space tourism in the United States.

ILS has recently received permission from the US Department of State to promote the commercial launch services for Soyuz launch vehicles.

- says the company’s press release.

The enterprise was created by the Khrunichev Center to provide launch services for Proton-M and Angara launch vehicles.

ILS also said that Typhine Luradur came to the post of director of the enterprise instead of the retired Kirk Payscher. She previously worked for the United Launch Alliance, an American company, where she served as president of global sales. The company specializes in providing spacecraft launch services to US government organizations

https://topwar.ru/168912-gosdep-ssha-razreshil-roskosmosu-rasshiritsja-na-amerikanskom-rynke.html

Putting Russians out of Business of Ferrying Americans to ISS Proving a Difficult Task for Boeing

The institutional culture of a once-great company has been corrupted by inefficiency typical of military contractors




Along with “Crew Dragon” from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the issue-plagued Boeing Starliner was supposed to finally restore US capability to access the ISS without having to hitch a ride with the Russians as has been the case since the 2011 retirement of the Space Shuttles

NASA SHOWS IT’S LOST CONFIDENCE IN BOEING’S ABILITY TO POLICE ITS OWN WORK ON STARLINER SPACE CAPSULE

The space agency will embed software experts alongside Boeing’s engineers to increase oversight

In the days and weeks after Boeing’s test flight of its new spacecraft went awry, the company and NASA went to great lengths to highlight the positives of the mission — how, as NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine had said, “a lot of things went right.”

More than two months after the test mission was cut short by what Boeing and NASA now acknowledge were potentially catastrophic software errors, the space agency is being far more blunt about the poor performance of one of its most trusted contractors and dictating the steps Boeing must take to fix the serious problems that have been uncovered.

In a call with reporters Friday, NASA officials said an independent investigation of the marred test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has produced 61 corrective actions and identified 49 gaps in Boeing’s testing procedures. A decision on whether Boeing will be allowed to proceed with flying astronauts or have to redo the test mission without humans on board may be months away, they said.

“We could have lost a spacecraft twice during this mission,” said Doug Loverro, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and mission operations. “So clearly this was a close call.”

Boeing, along with another company, SpaceX, is under contract to build a spacecraft to fly NASA’s astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program. NASA hasn’t had the ability to fly astronauts since the space shuttle was retired in 2011 and has faced delays and setbacks in its attempt to fly humans again from U.S. soil.



With 61 issues identified by NASA for Boeing to address the launch of a first crew may be pushed back for up to a year

Given that lives are on the line, Loverro added: “I want to make sure everybody understands that we at NASA are talking this very seriously. … And we’re going to make sure that at the end of the day, we can fly astronauts safely on Starliner.”

The test of Boeing’s Starliner ran into trouble almost from the moment it was hoisted into space shortly before Christmas. The spacecraft’s internal clock was off by 11 hours, a significant software problem that went undiscovered because Boeing’s preflight testing was cut short and used a faulty computer simulator.

While Starliner was in flight, Boeing uncovered another software problem that should have been unearthed by testing on the ground — one that could have caused the service module to crash into the crew module before the spacecraft reentered the atmosphere.

“It’s important to remember we went into this flight … with a test plan,” said Jim Chilton, Boeing’s senior vice president for space and launch. “We had all agreed to that plan, and we executed the plan. And it wasn’t good enough.”

As a result, NASA now plans on embedding some of its software experts with Boeing’s team to oversee its work and testing more rigorously. Examples of corrective actions include fully testing all outcomes of the software instead of just the most likely ones as well as strengthening oversight of the software teams.

“We had delegated too much authority to the software board to approve changes,” Loverro said, referring to the engineering team reviewing software processes.

Meanwhile, NASA’s probe of Boeing and its processes continues, as the space agency tries to figure out when it will allow Boeing to try again.

“We’ll evaluate the results of their work,” Loverro said. “And we’ll be in a position to decide whether we need another test flight or not. We are still a ways away from that. And I can’t even tell you what the schedule is for making that decision because it’s very dependent upon what we see as Boeing’s corrective action plan.”

Chilton said Boeing has no “intent to avoid [another test flight]. We stand ready to do it.”

A repeat of the test would come at an enormous cost for a program that already is unusually rigid and governed by a “firmed fixed-price cost” contract. In case it does have to repeat the test, Boeing has taken a $410 million charge, it said during its most recent earnings call.

Boeing has been under enormous financial strain since the grounding of its 737 Max airplane fleet after two fatal crashes killed a total of 346 people. Both the Max and Starliner failures were tied to software problems, and Chilton said Friday that the issues discovered during the Starliner investigation have been shared with the commercial airplane division.

“Certainly we have what we consider a strong, and in fact we are strengthening our central and core engineering organizations both around software and other things,” he said. “These learnings have been fed to those teams and I know are being applied across our enterprise. I’m not aware of anything common or relevant to the 737 Max out of this.”

The call with NASA came as House investigators Friday released a damning report concluding that the mistakes on the 737 Max were a result of “technical design failures, lack of transparency with both regulators and customers and efforts to obfuscate information about the operation of the aircraft.”

Source: The Washington Post

Missed Test

NASA has learned that Boeing did not perform a “full, end-to-end integrated test” of its astronaut-ferrying Starliner spacecraft with the rocket that’s supposed to launch it into orbit, the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Members of NASA’s safety advisory panel told journalists that such a test is needed to ensure that all software systems respond to each other for every maneuver.

“It’s pretty exhaustive. You gotta do that,” Christopher Saindon, a retired Navy first officer and pilot, who left the advisory panel earlier this month, told the Sentinel. “That was somewhat surprising to us on the panel. There were certainly gaps in the test protocol.”

Boeing’s Bad Look

Boeing’s development of its Starliner spacecraft has been plagued with issues. During its first-ever, uncrewed test launch in December, its onboard timing system caused it to never end up at its destination, the International Space Station.

Ensuing investigations found that other software glitches could’ve nearly caused the December test to end in a “catastrophic failure,” according to a February report by NASA’s safety review panel.

NASA’s No-Good Look

“Since the two noted problems [during the December test flight] occurred at system interfaces, one would have to speculate that there was some weakness in the integrated testing,” current panel member Don McErlean told the Sentinel.

Boeing wasn’t the only one to blame for the newly revealed oversight, as Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger pointed out on Twitter. “Not a great look for NASA, either, as they apparently signed off on bypassing [the test].”

https://www.anti-empire.com/putting-russians-out-of-business-off-ferrying-american-astronauts-to-iss-proving-a-difficult-task-for-boeing/

Crew Dragon with two NASA astronauts docks to ISS