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As a child of the space race I like to keep on eye on all things space related. After launching the crewed version of Starliner... Boeing and NASA have a pretty messy situation on their hands. If the cranky Starliner burns up in reentry because of dodgy steering jets it would be... bad. If the cranky Starliner burns up in reentry with people on board it would be a disaster.
Having lost two shuttles (and their crews) to risky decision making, NASA is a bit wary about dodgy equipment. Boeing has been great for the stock holders but for their rockets and planes? Not so much. Starliner is turning out to be under engineered, over budget and shoddily made. I'm not blaming the workers - Boeing's space program is actually a jobs program - this is purely a management problem. Lax training, lax quality control, and budget squeezing are all management responsibilities.
Maybe now when the new CEO was trained as an engineer things will turn around... but this is a huge company and the 'squeeze profits' mentality is probably deeply entrenched. A lot of managers need to be fired, new engineers trained up and the whole company needs to be turned around. This may take a decade. Or more.
In the meantime, NASA has decided to 'get off the pot' and have Butch and Suni come home in the safer Dragon capsule. This is a big piece of crow for Boeing to eat but all in all it would be worse if they returned crispy in the Starliner.
I still think NASA's idea to have two launch systems is a good idea - but there needs to be better oversight, consequences for bad actions, and compatibility between systems.
Having lost two shuttles (and their crews) to risky decision making, NASA is a bit wary about dodgy equipment. Boeing has been great for the stock holders but for their rockets and planes? Not so much. Starliner is turning out to be under engineered, over budget and shoddily made. I'm not blaming the workers - Boeing's space program is actually a jobs program - this is purely a management problem. Lax training, lax quality control, and budget squeezing are all management responsibilities.
Maybe now when the new CEO was trained as an engineer things will turn around... but this is a huge company and the 'squeeze profits' mentality is probably deeply entrenched. A lot of managers need to be fired, new engineers trained up and the whole company needs to be turned around. This may take a decade. Or more.
In the meantime, NASA has decided to 'get off the pot' and have Butch and Suni come home in the safer Dragon capsule. This is a big piece of crow for Boeing to eat but all in all it would be worse if they returned crispy in the Starliner.
I still think NASA's idea to have two launch systems is a good idea - but there needs to be better oversight, consequences for bad actions, and compatibility between systems.
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Boeing is such a massive disgrace. Once one of the world's stellar companies (pun intended), now a laughing stock.
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Actually, the risky part with Starliner is way before reentry. The problem is they have to undock, and fly around the ISS in a sort of loop combined with an end-over-end tumble to get the retro rockets facing in the direction of flight before they do a de-orbit burn.
Needless to say, that uses the RCS thrusters a lot, and if they fail at the wrong point the capsule ends up facing the wrong way or stuck in a tumble and can't de-orbit... or in the worst case, it does the de-orbit burn facing the wrong way and crashes into the ISS!
They've simplified the undocking manoeuvres a lot however, only doing one step at a time, so if an RCS unit goes kaput it's not a total loss and might be recoverable. (apparently the fix is to turn them off and back on again!) But like you say, NASA is not taking chances any more!
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