NASA issues update on repairs/fixes to Starliner
According to an update posted today by NASA, Boeing is moving forward on the repairs and fixes necessary to finally fly a manned mission with its capsule Starliner, now delayed several years and costing the company an additional $1.5 billion due to those repairs.
Boeing has completed P213 tape removal in the upper dome of the Starliner crew compartment and work is underway to remove or remediate the tape in the lower dome of the spacecraft. These hardware remediation efforts inside the Starliner production facility at NASA Kennedy are expected to be completed during the next several weeks. After the P213 tape remediation efforts conclude, engineers will conduct final assessments to ensure acceptable risk of any remaining tape.
A set of parachutes is on track to be delivered and installed on the CFT spacecraft by the end of this year to support the current target launch date. Separately, the team also is planning a drop test of Starliner’s updated drogue and main parachutes. The parachutes will incorporate a planned strengthening of main canopy suspension lines and the recent design of the drogue and main parachute soft-link joints, which will increase the safety factor for the system. The drop test is planned for early 2024 based on the current parachute delivery schedule.
The company is targeting having Starliner ready for launch in March ahead of its scheduled April 2024 launch.
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According to an update posted today by NASA, Boeing is moving forward on the repairs and fixes necessary to finally fly a manned mission with its capsule Starliner, now delayed several years and costing the company an additional $1.5 billion due to those repairs.
Boeing has completed P213 tape removal in the upper dome of the Starliner crew compartment and work is underway to remove or remediate the tape in the lower dome of the spacecraft. These hardware remediation efforts inside the Starliner production facility at NASA Kennedy are expected to be completed during the next several weeks. After the P213 tape remediation efforts conclude, engineers will conduct final assessments to ensure acceptable risk of any remaining tape.
A set of parachutes is on track to be delivered and installed on the CFT spacecraft by the end of this year to support the current target launch date. Separately, the team also is planning a drop test of Starliner’s updated drogue and main parachutes. The parachutes will incorporate a planned strengthening of main canopy suspension lines and the recent design of the drogue and main parachute soft-link joints, which will increase the safety factor for the system. The drop test is planned for early 2024 based on the current parachute delivery schedule.
The company is targeting having Starliner ready for launch in March ahead of its scheduled April 2024 launch.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
It is costing Boeing $1.5 BILLION to remediate these two issues? Really? Does anyone with a brain actually believe that?
I mean call it 1,000,000 man hours to completely disassemble the capsule, remove all of the offending tape, replace it with something of the correct spec, and then reassemble everything and pay everyone involved $250/hr and you’re still only up to $250M. This is absurd.
Here are two marketing tag lines Boeing should be forced to adopt going forward to ensure truth in advertising:
Boeing, you can buy better but you can’t pay more.
Boeing, yesterday’s technology tomorrow.
Oh how the mighty have fallen. : (
When it comes to manned spacecraft, if it‘s Boeing, I‘m NOT going!
MDN: The $1.5 billion is not simply for fixing these specific problems. It includes the extra cost for the second unmanned demo flight, as well as the additional write-offs caused by the three-plus year delays. It also includes the cost to fix the problems related to the failure of the first unmanned demo mission.
At this point, Boeing senior management might well be evaluating the amount of corporate damage that would be caused by an accident causing loss of crew, or by an Apollo 13-style hazardous episode even with crew recovery.
This existential threat should be compared with that of voluntary termination of the program. Either of these scenarios could effectively destroy Boeing’s viability as a builder of space vehicles – the question is only which would be worse.
If they go ahead at this point with a crewed flight, they are rolling the dice, betting the company and the lives of astronauts, in a game where “winning” only means not becoming any worse of a laughing stock, and “losing” potentially means the end of the company as a tier-1 aerospace enterprise! I would hate to be in their shoes!
Recall what John Shannon was saying just weeks ago about Starliner’s future:
But asked whether Boeing plans to continue with the program long-term, he suggested that was in doubt. “It’s a great question. And I wish I had the answer to it right now,” he [John Shannon] said.
The concern, he said, is that the private market for space travel is uncertain and plans for commercial space stations that would provide a need for regular launches have yet to materialize, even though NASA has started to invest in those and Boeing is a partner with Blue Origin and Sierra Space on one.
“They’re just not at a level of maturity where I can write them into any kind of a business case and say that yeah, this is something that’s going to kind of get us over the hump,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/02/boeing-starliner-capsule-commercial-crew/
Boeing would bail out of this program if they *could*. But they really can’t. Even setting aside lost future milestone payments and possible contract penalties, it would be too damaging to their image and their future in government contracting. So they have to just eat these losses, and get this vehicle to stand up as soon as possible. It won’t make them any money in the end; quite the opposite. But it’s a bitter medicine they just have to swallow, and get it over with as soon as possible. I can no longer imagine it being marketed to any other uses behind the minimum Commercial Crew 7 missions.
MDM – in 1997, Boeing Defense proposed to charge the government $6M / F15 to run a single coax cable down the wing to one of the hardpoints. The unnamed defense contractor I worked for was told by the government to find another answer. We did. When you consider $600M for a fleet of 100 planes in 1997 dollars, the government might be getting a bargain…
John Fisher. Back in the Sixties a senator was outraged by the cost of a new aircraft (forget which one). He vowed., “Never again will the US spend $5M per airplane !” He was right. They have never been that cheap again.