Tag: Boeing

Boeing dropped from competition for Air Force “doomsday” plane

6:09 pm

It appears that by mutual agreement the Air Force has eliminated Boeing in the competition to build a new replacement for the E-4B Nightwatch, what the military calls its “doomsday” airplane, designed to survive a nuclear war.

Sources told Reuters that Boeing – the incumbent manufacturer of the E-4B Nightwatch – could not agree with the USAF on data rights and contract terms for the replacement plane that began flying in the 1970s. In other words, the planemaker did not want to sign a fixed-price agreement.

…”Rest assured, we haven’t signed any fixed-price development contracts nor (do we) intend to,” Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, told investors in October.

With Boeing out of the competition, Sierra Nevada (the parent company of Sierra Space) is left as the only bidder. It is also quite willing to operate under a fixed price contract.

As I noted in a comment thread after a reader first posted a link to this story,

Boeing is signing its own death warrant. The entire federal defense and space agencies are steadily switching to fixed-price, and will simply go to others if Boeing refuses to accept those terms.

In fact, those agencies will want to go to others, because Boeing is making it clear it can’t meet its contractual obligations.

This decision also tells us a great deal about Boeing as a company. Its inability to fulfill any contract under a fixed price means it no longer has the discipline to do anything right. It seems buying products from it at this point might be a very foolish proposition.

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Boeing losses total almost a billion dollars this quarter

1:15 pm

The hits to Boeing keep coming: In addition to the $1.5 billion it has had to write-off because of problems with its Starliner capsule, Boeing is now reporting losses in the third quarter totaling almost a billion dollars, with half those losses coming from overruns on its fixed price contract to provide Air Force One to the U.S. government.

The $482 million loss on the high-profile presidential plane was due to “higher estimated manufacturing costs related to engineering changes, labor instability and the resolution of supplier negotiations,” Boeing Chief Financial Officer Brian West said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call Wednesday.

Boeing has faced numerous problems with the VC-25B program, including shortages of workers and parts, that have delayed delivery of the first of two Air Force One jets until 2027. To date, the company has lost over $2.4 billion on the program, according to a company spokesperson. CEO Dave Calhoun said last year that Boeing should have never agreed to the fixed $3.9 billion price tag.

The second-largest contributor to losses for Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security (BDS) business was a satellite program that cost the company $315 million in the third quarter. The company wouldn’t identify the program, but West said the loss is “tied to customer considerations and higher estimated cost to deliver a highly innovative satellite constellation contract that we signed several years ago.” [emphasis mine]

Let me translate what CEO Calhoun was really saying in the highlighted sentence: “We want a blank check! Boeing is incapable of producing anything based upon a standard fixed price, and wants the federal government to go back to open-ended cost-plus contracts that put no limit to overruns and schedule delays.”

Whether Boeing gets that blank check or not really depends on Boeing. It is very possible our corrupt legislators in Congress — who think money grows on trees — will bring these cost-plus contract back, but I doubt Boeing will win many such contracts in the near future, based on its horrible performance on all levels technically. It needs to completely clean house, with major shake-ups in management and staff, as whoever is working there now is simply doing a terrible job.

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First manned Starliner mission now delayed to April 2024

8:45 am

In a press release yesterday that outlined the updates to NASA’s scheduled manned missions to ISS, the agency confirmed that the first manned Starliner mission has now been delayed one more month, from March until April 2024.

The first crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft, named NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT), is planned for no earlier than mid-April. CFT will send NASA astronauts and test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on a demonstration flight to prove the end-to-end capabilities of the Starliner system. Starliner will launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, spend approximately eight days docked to the space station, and return to Earth with a parachute and airbag-assisted ground landing in the desert of the western United States. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words underline the fact that this date is merely a target, and has been announced as part of the entire schedule for all the manned missions to ISS next year, fitting it in between two SpaceX crewed Dragon flights. It assumes Boeing will have the spacecraft ready by then, but based on that company’s track record, that assumption remains dangerous. Boeing has a lot of work to do, including parachute drop tests to fix the parachute cords as well as replacing the flammable electric tape installed throughout the capsule.

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Boeing delays first manned Starliner flight again, until March of 2024

4:21 pm

Because of both parachute and wiring issues in its Starliner capsule, Boeing revealed today that it is delaying the first manned Starliner flight again, until March of 2024, so that it has time to change and test the parachutes as well as remove the flammable tape inside the capsule.

The company had been hoping to finally fly that first manned flight last month, but was forced to cancel when in June it discovered two shocking problems. First the connections between the parachutes and the capsule were too weak, and second, for some reason engineers had used tape to protect the capsule’s wiring that was too flammable and had to be replaced or covered somehow.

Boeing is taking the tape off in places where it’s easy and safe to do so and considering other remediation techniques, such as protective barriers or coatings over it, in trickier spots, Nappi said.

The parachute work is multifaceted as well. For example, Boeing has modified the soft link design to make it stronger, and the new version is being manufactured now, Nappi said. The company also decided to swap out Starliner’s parachute system, putting a new version slated for the first operational mission on board for [the crew flight test]. The new soft links will be incorporated into the new chutes, which will get to strut their stuff during a drop test soon. “We expect that the drop test will occur in mid to late November,” Nappi said. “That’s what the planning indicates at this point, and we’ll watch that closely.”

The seemingly endless number of mistakes and bad engineering that we have seen during the development of Starliner speaks very badly of Boeing in almost every way possible. These last two problems are especially egregious. Neither should have ever happened, and if so should never had been unnoticed until a mere month before launch and years into the project.

It must also be noted that March ’24 is merely a target date. Don’t bet the house on it happening then.

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Boeing’s total losses due to Starliner now equal $1.5 billion

9:44 am

According to CNBC, the total losses for Boeing due to its on-going and persistent engineering problems flying its manned Starliner capsule now equal almost $1.5 billion, not $1.1 billion as estimated yesterday.

Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year. The charges total $1.47 billion, according to its annual reports and the company’s most recent quarterly filing.

The annual losses have ranged from $57 million in 2018 to $489 million in 2019.

At this moment, the only way Boeing can make a profit on Starliner is to garner a lot of other tourist customers, outside NASA. The problem is that SpaceX’s already operational fleet of four manned Dragon capsules has captured that market, with a capsule and rocket that has demonstrated remarkable reliability. To convince others to fly on Starliner it will have to fly it a lot beforehand in order to convince others its problems have really been fixed. This will take time and money, which will only add to the red ink.

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Boeing gets NASA contract to develop new airplane wing design

10:22 am

In its effort to reduce fossil fuel use and thus save us from being burned to death by global warming in only a decade, NASA has now awarded Boeing a contract to develop new airplane wing design that it predicts will lower fuel use by up to 30%.

The X-66A is the X-plane specifically aimed at helping the United States achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To build the X-66A, Boeing will work with NASA to modify an MD-90 aircraft, shortening the fuselage and replacing its wings and engines. The resulting demonstrator aircraft will have long, thin wings with engines mounted underneath and a set of aerodynamic trusses for support. The design, which Boeing submitted for NASA’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, is known as a Transonic Truss-Braced Wing.

While developing a more efficient wing design is certainly worthwhile, having skepticism about this project is certainly reasonable. First of all, it seems somewhat strange to award Boeing such a contract at this time, considering NASA own experience with the company with Starliner, as well as that company’s problems with other government contracts for the military.

Secondly, the press release makes a big deal about the project getting an X-plane designation, an entirely superficial and PR related title that if anything suggests there is very little steak to this sizzle.

Third, it is unclear the nature of this contract. Is is cost-plus, or fixed price? The press release says NASA will “invest $425 million over seven years, while the company and its partners will contribute the remainder of the funding, estimated at about $725 million.” If cost-plus, this means nothing. Boeing will use any excuse to go over budget in order to get more money from NASA.

Finally, half a billion dollars to develop and test a new airplane wing design, using an already existing airplane, seems incredibly exorbitant. And to require seven years to build it seems ridiculously long.

All in all, I suspect the real goal of this project is to funnel tax dollars to Boeing to help keep it afloat, not to build a new green airplane.

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Boeing sued for stealing specialized tooling to assembly SLS

9:36 am

A Colorado company, Wilson Aerospace, on June 6, 2023 filed a lawsuit against Boeing, claiming that the company conspired with Wilson’s direct competitors to steal the designs of its specialized tool for installing the core station engines on SLS.

According to the lawsuit, after some initial discussions, Boeing arranged for a “live” demonstration of Wilson’s torque device, during which participants could handle and operate it to verify the tool’s capability and performance. What Wilson claims it did not realize, however, is that some of the participants in this demonstration were not Boeing employees. “Wilson later learned that at least seven of those in attendance for the live presentation were external to Boeing and were, at the time, employees of Wilson’s direct competitors,” the lawsuit states. “This fact was concealed from Wilson who was deceived by Boeing and the ‘Bogus Boeing Employees’ into giving the presentation by falsely suggesting to Wilson that everyone was a Boeing employee.”

The complaint alleges that Boeing subsequently used information from this demonstration, as well as proprietary drawings and designs, to work with Wilson’s competitors to develop a cheaper solution. “Boeing concealed these facts from Wilson as part of its scheme to defraud Wilson and to transmit Wilson’s IP to its direct competitors,” the lawsuit states.

The company is demanding a jury trial. If its charges are proved true, it will be another piece of evidence demonstrating the level of corruption that exists at Boeing.

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Newly discovered Starliner issues delay launch again

9:24 am

NASA and Boeing revealed today that two newly discovered design issues involving Starliner’s parachutes and the tape used to protect the capsule’s wiring has forced it to cancel the planned June launch, with no firm new launch date scheduled.

The parachute issue involves the parachute cords, specifically the “soft link joints” that connect those lines to the capsule.

[Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner VP] told reporters fabric links that join the parachutes to the lines of the spacecraft, called soft link joints, need to be replaced and possibly recertified to withstand heavier loads and stresses to ensure crew safety. “They were tested recently because of a discovery that we found during the review process where we believed that the data was recorded incorrectly,” Nappi said. “We tested (the soft links), and sure enough, they did fail at the lower limit.” [emphasis mine]

The tape — which has been found to be far more flammable than expected — is difficult to fix.

The second problem found last week is more extensive since the tape used to protect Starliner’s wiring harnesses from nicks or abrasions runs for hundreds of feet through several of the spacecraft’s internal systems. “There is a lot of tape on the wire harnesses,” Nappi said. “We’re looking at solutions that would provide for potentially another type of wrapping over the existing tape in the most vulnerable areas that reduces the risk of a fire hazard.”

That both of these issues were not fixed in development is beyond astonishing and speaks so badly of Boeing’s engineering and management that it is difficult to find words. In fact, for Boeing to use tape that could cause a fire now, more than a half century after the Apollo 1 capsule fire, suggests a level of incompetence that makes one wonder why anyone would ever fly on any of its spacecraft or airplanes. This is certainly not the company that built the 747.

Officials indicated that they might be able fix this issues fast enough that a fall launch could occur, but made no promises.

For Boeing, this new delay only worsens its bottom line. It built Starliner on a fixed-price contract, so every delay and issue must be paid for by it, not NASA. Meanwhile, the delays mean that SpaceX is getting flight contracts to ISS from NASA, contracts that Boeing would have gotten had Starliner been ready as planned. Worse, ISS is now looking at a 2028 retirement. If Boeing doesn’t get Starliner operational soon, there might not even be any contracts for it to win.

I have embedded the full press conference below for those who wish to watch NASA and Boeing officials blather about how they really haven’t done anything stupid here. Really, you have got to believe them!
» Read more

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NASA’s corrupt safety panel doubts Starliner is ready for its first manned flight in July

9:26 am

The head of NASA’s safety panel — which over the years has consistently missed the big safety issues while whining about things that did not matter — expressed strong doubts yesterday on whether Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule is ready for its first manned flight in July.

Speaking at a May 25 public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Patricia Sanders, chair of the committee, expressed skepticism that NASA and Boeing will be able to close known issues with Starliner in time for a launch currently scheduled for as soon as July 21.

“There remains a long line of NASA processes still ahead to determine launch readiness” for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, the first crewed flight of the spacecraft with two NASA astronauts on board. “That should not be flown until safety risks can either be mitigated or accepted, eyes wide open, with an appropriately compelling technical rationale.”

This panel hasn’t the faintest idea what it is talking about, and should be ignored. It appears that NASA and Boeing are presently reviewing the capsule’s parachute system. Sanders however raised other issues which actually appear more designed to simply slow or even prevent the capsule’s launch.

The panel did the same thing during the development of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule, making irrelevant claims about paperwork and the safety of the company’s Falcon 9 fueling procedures that were ridiculous. Meanwhile, it has ignored much more fundamental numerous safety issues with NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion capsule, such as the agency’s plan to fly it manned using its capsule environmental system for the first time.

It is very possible that there remain serious safety issues with Starliner. I simply note that I would not rely on NASA’s safety panel to provide me an honest or educated appraisal of the situation.

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Boeing & NASA; 1st Starliner manned mission to now launch on July 21

3:34 pm

In a update posted by NASA today, agency and Boeing officials announced that they are now aiming to launch Boeing’s Starliner capsule on July 21, 2023 on its first manned mission to ISS.

The new target date provides NASA and Boeing the necessary time to complete subsystem verification testing and close out test flight certification products and aligns with the space station manifest and range launch opportunities.

The specifics behind this somewhat meaningless press release jargon can be found at this twitter thread. Apparently Boeing & NASA want to do more ground tests of the capsule’s parachute system as well as its flight software. There also appears to be some issue relating to the capsule’s batteries.

Boeing is also mulling a redesign of Starliner’s batteries for after this delayed crewed flight test. It also expects to redesign Starliner’s smart initiator system, which separates the crew from service module. NASA’s paying $24 million for that redesign amid added requirements

Though Boeing has a fixed price contract with NASA, if NASA demands redesigns or changes it has to pay for them. That Boeing and NASA are finding these issues at this late date, four years after Starliner was first supposed to launch, does not speak well of Boeing’s workmanship and quality control systems.

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Starliner’s first manned mission to ISS delayed again

9:36 am

According to a tweet by a NASA official, the first manned mission to ISS of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying two NASA astronauts, has been delayed again, from the planned late April launch to sometime during the summer.

No reasons for the delay were given, as yet. The second link notes however that a schedule conflict at ULA, which is launching Starliner on its Atlas-5 rocket, might be part of the reason.

A launch in late April [of Starliner on the Atlas-5] would have put it in conflict with the inaugural launch of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, currently scheduled for as soon as May 4. Vulcan and Atlas use the same launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and ULA has been conducting tests of the Vulcan rocket on that pad. It has not shared updates on the status of the Atlas 5 used for Starliner.

This conflict might also explain why Starliner itself has not yet been fueled, since Boeing officials have said they want to do this within 60 days of launch to avoid the same kind of valve leaks that delayed the second unmanned demo mission for almost a year.

Starliner itself is years behind schedule, a long delay that has cost Boeing an enormous amount of income. First, the problems during the first unmanned demo flight in December 2019 forced the company to do a second unmanned demo flight, on its own dime costing about $400 million. That second flight was then delayed because of those valve issues. All the delays next cost Boeing income from NASA, as the agency was forced to purchase many manned flights from SpaceX that it had intended to buy from Boeing.

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A review of Boeing’s struggling space effort

8:53 am

Link here. [now fixed] The article, entitled “As Boeing Struggles To Fix Its Airliner Business, Elon Musk Is Eating Its Lunch In Space,” is a remarkably accurate overview of Boeing’s space effort, considering it comes from a mainstream press outlet. This paragraph will give you its flavor:

New competition could also threaten Boeing’s lucrative Space Launch System. Nicknamed the “Senate Launch System” for its origins in 2010 as a pork-barrel program to preserve jobs with the Space Shuttle winding down, NASA procured the rocket with “cost-plus” contracts – totaling $13.8 billion for Boeing so far – which means the contractor is guaranteed its expenses will be covered, plus a profit. Critics say that’s encouraged cost overruns. NASA’s inspector general has pegged the cost of a single Artemis launch at $4.1 billion, which he characterized last year as “unsustainable,” with total spending on the program projected to top $90 billion by 2025. For reference, NASA’s budget this year is $25 billion.

“This is a sucking chest wound on NASA and their ability to actually advance planetary science and lunar programs,” said Chris Quilty, founder of the space -focused financial services firm Quilty Analytics.

That $13.8 billion figure is accurate as to what NASA has paid Boeing, though it underestimates the actual cost of SLS, which is more than twice that.

Read it all. It suggests Boeing faces very tough times ahead in space.

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NASA, Boeing, and the UAE negotiating partnership for building Lunar Gateway airlock

9:26 am

According to press reports in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), that country is negotiating with NASA and Boeing on a partnership to build an airlock module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway Moon space station.

US aerospace company Boeing said it has held discussions with Emirates officials about the UAE providing an airlock module on the Lunar Gateway. This is an airtight room that astronauts would use to enter and exit the space station.

John Mulholland, vice president and International Space Station programme manager at Boeing, told The National that the company was “actively working” with the UAE on the concept and design.

It appears the UAE is offering to pay Boeing to build it for NASA, and would expect in exchange a larger share in the use of the station.

If this deal works out, the UAE will essentially replace Russia as a Gateway partner. Russia had signed an agreement with NASA in 2017 to build that airlock, but that deal is now null and void following the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and its desire to partner with China instead.

For the U.S., this is a win-win, since it will now be an American company building the airlock, not Russia.

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NASA extends Boeing’s contract to produce more SLS rockets

10:30 am

NASA yesterday announced that it will pay Boeing $3.2 billion for two more SLS rockets.

NASA has finalized its contract with Boeing of Huntsville, Alabama, for approximately $3.2 billion to continue manufacturing core and upper stages for future Space Launch System (SLS) rockets for Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.

Under the SLS Stages Production and Evolution Contract action, Boeing will produce SLS core stages for Artemis III and IV, procure critical and long-lead material for the core stages for Artemis V and VI, provide the exploration upper stages (EUS) for Artemis V and VI, as well as tooling and related support and engineering services.

All this really means is that NASA is going depend on SLS and Orion to fly its astronauts to and from the Moon, and because of that its pace of flight will be — at best — slow and long-drawn out. For example, this new order extends the contract out to 2028. It will thus leave plenty of time for SpaceX and other nations to get there first.

I predict that the private Starship missions paid for by Yusaku Maezawa and Jared Isaacman will both fly before these two new Artemis missions. You heard it here first.

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Last 747 rolls off assembly line

8:58 am

Boeing earlier this week completed assembly of its very last 747 airplane, the 1,574th such plane built in the past half century.

Still in its iridescent green protective coating, the giant aircraft was towed out of the widebody aircraft factory in a low-key exercise without any fanfare. Once the 747 has been cleared, it will be flown to another Boeing facility where it will be painted in the Atlas Air livery in anticipation of final delivery to the customer next year.

The 747 was born out of a failed bid by Boeing to market a large jet transporter to the US military in the 1960s. That contract for what became the C-5A Galaxy eventually went to Lockheed, but Boeing was convinced that its basic design, with its high-bypass turbofan engine, could be reworked for the civilian market, which was booming at the time.

On January 9, 1969, the first 747 prototype took to the skies over Washington state. It was a staggering 225 feet (68.5 m) long, had a wing area larger than a basketball court, and the tail was as high as a six-story building.

Without question the 747 was one of the safest and well designed airplanes ever built. It was years after that first flight before one was involved in an accident, and that was not due to a failure of the plane itself. It also flew like a dream, its large size making it look like it was lumbering slowly in the air. Its retirement is almost entirely related to fuel cost-savings, since the 747 has four engines and thus more fuel than more modern planes.

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Blue Origin-led team bids for NASA manned lunar lander contract

11:09 am

Capitalism in space: Though few details have been released, Blue Origin has teamed up with Boeing and Lockheed Martin to bid for a NASA contract to build a second manned lunar lander, after SpaceX’s Starship.

Blue Origin revealed its team’s submission to that second NASA program in a brief statement posted on its website on Tuesday, saying “in partnership with NASA, this team will achieve sustained presence on the Moon.”

The deadline for proposals was Tuesday. NASA is expected to make an award decision in June 2023.

Blue Origin’s team also includes spacecraft software firm Draper, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics, a manufacturer of military and civil robotic systems that was acquired by Blue Origin in January.

It will be interesting to see if this proposed lander is significantly different than the previous proposal, which NASA considered overpriced and not as capable as Starship.

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Boeing announces major reorganization

9:33 am

Boeing yesterday announced that it is doing a major reorganization of its defense, space, and security divisions.

The action will replace numerous executives while reducing eight different divisions into four.

Such action was long overdue, considering Boeing’s many recent engineering failures, from space (Starliner) to aviation (737-Max), all of which demanded such a reorganization and consolidation, simply to pay the bills if not to fix serious management shortcomings. The bad economy has only made this more urgent.

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X-37B returns successfully to Earth after 908 days in orbit

7:13 pm

One of the two X-37B reusable mini-shuttles that Boeing built for the military successfully returned to Earth early this morning after completing 908 days in orbit, a new longevity record.

This was the sixth mission of the crewless reusable plane, built by Boeing and jointly operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Known as Orbital Test Vehicle 6, it launched to orbit May 17, 2020, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.

On this mission the X-37B carried several U.S. military and NASA science experiments, including a Naval Research Laboratory project to capture sunlight and convert it into direct current electrical energy, and the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat-8, which remains in orbit.

It appears, based on the amount of information released after landing, that the Space Force is making more of what it does and will do on this and future X-37B flights more public.

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NASA delays first manned Starliner mission again

9:53 am

NASA today announced that it has rescheduled the first manned demo mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule to ISS from February to April, 2023.

The agency attributes the two month delay to scheduling conflicts with other visiting spacecraft at ISS. This might be true, but it also could be that Boeing wanted a little extra time to finish out the work it still needs to do to fix the anomalies that occurred on the unmanned demo mission, as well preparing the new capsule for launch.

This flight will carry two astronauts to ISS for about two weeks. The press release also noted this interesting tidbit:

The previously flown crew module, named Calypso, will be connected to a new service module later this year.

Apparently Boeing has decided to give names to these capsules, like SpaceX has. It also appears that the company and NASA are satisfied enough with the condition of the capsule after flying the unmanned demo flight to use it again for a manned mission.

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Boeing’s write-off due to Starliner delays goes up to nearly $900 million

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: In a SEC filing on October 26, 2022, Boeing revealed that it has been required to spend another $195 million to cover the additional costs due to the further delays in getting Starliner launched, bringing the company’s total expense now to $883 million.

Boeing acknowledged today that it is taking a further $195 million charge against earnings for the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew program. Developed through a fixed-price contract with NASA, Starliner has encoutered a number of delays and Boeing must cover those costs. Added to $688 million already taken, the company now is spending $883 million of its own money on the program.

Boeing’s original fixed-price contract was for $4.2 billion, and included the test flights as well as six operational flights to ISS. However, numerous problems caused repeated delays and the need to fly a second unmanned test flight. Originally planned for the spring of 2020, the first manned Starliner flight is now targeting February 2023, three years behind schedule. Due to that delay, SpaceX’s Dragon ended up getting new contracts that included many of the later operational flights that Boeing would have earned. Right now, even if the capsule begins flying in ’23, NASA’s already purchased six flights will cover its needs through around ’26.

After that, NASA will still need to buy manned flights, if only to get to the new commercial space stations being built, and Starliner will then be an option. This just means however that it will take Boeing a long time to recover its Starliner losses. And that assumes customers begin to line up to buy flights.

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September 14, 2022 Quick space links

3:20 pm

Links courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who does the trolling on Twitter so I don’t have to. Commentary however is mostly by yours truly.

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SpaceX launches another 51 Starlink satellites and orbital tug

9:47 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to place 51 more Starlink satellites into orbit, as well as a Sherpa orbital tug built by the commercial company Spaceflight.

The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The tug was successfully deployed and will carry a Boeing test satellite for a proposed 147 satellite constellation to its planned orbit.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
34 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 55 to 34 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 52. SpaceX’s 40 launches matches the U.S.’s entire total in 2020, and was only exceeded by the U.S. six times since the dawn of the space age in 1957.

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NASA is paying Boeing twice as much as SpaceX for its manned flights

9:53 am

Capitalism in space: in an excellent analysis of the total amount NASA will pay both SpaceX and Boeing for all their manned flights to ISS before the station retires, Eric Berger at Ars Technica has determined that the agency will essentially pay Boeing twice as much per flight.

In 2014, NASA narrowed the crew competition to just two companies, Boeing and SpaceX. At that time, the space agency awarded Boeing $4.2 billion in funding for development of the Starliner spacecraft and six operational crew flights. Later, in an award that NASA’s own inspector general described as “unnecessary,” NASA paid Boeing an additional $287.2 million. This brings Boeing’s total to $4.49 billion, although Finch told Ars that Boeing’s contract value as of August 1, 2022, is $4.39 billion.

For the same services, development of Crew Dragon and six operational missions, NASA paid SpaceX $2.6 billion. After its initial award, NASA has agreed to buy an additional eight flights from SpaceX—Crew-7, -8, -9, -10, -11, -12, -13, and -14—through the year 2030. This brings the total contract awarded to SpaceX to $4.93 billion.

Since we now know how many flights each company will be providing NASA through the lifetime of the International Space Station, and the full cost of those contracts, we can break down the price NASA is paying each company per seat by amortizing the development costs.

Boeing, in flying 24 astronauts, has a per-seat price of $183 million. SpaceX, in flying 56 astronauts during the same time frame, has a seat price of $88 million. Thus, NASA is paying Boeing 2.1 times the price per seat that it is paying SpaceX, inclusive of development costs incurred by NASA.

Despite the larger payments to Boeing, the company could very well lose money on Starliner. The higher cost to NASA from Boeing is due almost entirely because the agency was absorbing more of its initial development cost. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule had already been flying cargo missions to ISS when these manned contracts were awarded. SpaceX merely had to upgrade its manned capsule. Boeing had to design and build it from scratch. Moreover, the contracts were fixed price, which means Boeing had to absorb more than a half billion in additional costs when it had to refly the unmanned demo flight of Starliner.

Finally, because of the delays, Boeing won less NASA business. It also has gotten none of the private commercial manned flights that are going on right now. Those contracts went to SpaceX, including all the profits. Whether Boeing can eventually win some private contracts down the road is unknown. It will certainly have to lower its price to compete with SpaceX.

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Starliner manned launch delayed until 2023

8:42 am

NASA and Boeing yesterday announced that the first manned flight of a Starliner capsule has been delayed again, and will not occur before February 2023, at the earliest.

This delay is in order to fix the various thruster problems that occurred in the second unmanned demo flight in May 2021, dubbed OFT-2.

Nappi said some “debris-related conditions” likely caused those thrusters to shut down, but later noted that is their best estimate since the OMAC thrusters are in a service module that burns up on reentry and is not recovered. “We do not know where the debris may have come from,” he said. “The bottom line is that it looks to be the leading root cause, and we’ve eliminated that by looking at the CFT vehicle and making sure that there’s absolutely no debris in the system.”

Several reaction control thrusters also shut down during the mission, which Nappi said was likely due to low inlet pressures and can be addressed with a “tweak in timing and tolerances” in software. High pressures in a thermal control loop noticed in the mission were linked to filters that engineers determined are not needed and can be removed. A guidance system on the spacecraft called VESTA worked well but generated more data than the flight software could handle, requiring changes to the software. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words indicate once again that there are quality control problems at Boeing. For any “debris” to get into the thrusters without notice means someone at some point wasn’t doing things right.

SpaceX and Boeing got contracts to fly humans on their commercial capsules at the same time, in 2014. SpaceX began those flights in 2020, about three years behind schedule, mostly due to NASA-imposed delays. Boeing has still not flown, with almost all its delays resulting from company failures, almost all of which were uncovered during the two unmanned demo flights in 2019 and 2022.

Hopefully, the company will finally get the last kinks from the system before next year’s flight. In the meantime its inability to get this job done on time has meant it has lost a lot of commercial business, all of which went to SpaceX.

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SLS arrives at launchpad

8:44 am

The Space Launch System rocket (SLS) that will fly on NASA’s first test launch of this rocket on August 29, 2022 has finally arrived at its launchpad, seven years late and about $20 billion overbudget.

In the coming days, engineers and technicians will configure systems at the pad for launch, which is currently targeted for no earlier than Aug. 29 at 8:33 a.m. (two hour launch window). Teams have worked to refine operations and procedures and have incorporated lessons learned from the wet dress rehearsal test campaign and have updated the launch timeline accordingly.

The rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building took ten hours.

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August 15, 2022 Quick space links

12:43 pm

From Jay, BtB’s stringer:

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Boeing adds another $93 million charge against earnings for Starliner manned capsule

9:01 am

Capitalism in space: Boeing officials revealed yesterday that they have been forced to add another $93 million charge against earnings for its much delayed Starliner manned capsule the company is building.

This is on top of $410 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 and another $185 million in the third quarter of 2021. All together, Boeing has had to cover $688 million in cost growth.

At the moment the first manned launch is tentatively scheduled to occur before the end of this year, with NASA supposedly announcing a firm date before the end of July. This new charge however suggests that the manned launch will not happen until ’23.

Boeing has not simply lost $688 million. It also has lost potential business because of the delays, both from NASA and private citizens. Instead, that business went to SpaceX.

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Virgin Galactic is replacing its WhiteKnightTwo mother ship

9:21 am

Virgin Galactic yesterday announced that it has hired Aurora, a Boeing subsidiary, to build two new mother ships to to replace WhiteKnightTwo and launch its SpaceShipTwo suborbital space planes.

Virgin Galactic Chief Executive Officer Michael Colglazier said: “Our next generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations. They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year. Supported by the scale and strength of Boeing, Aurora is the ideal manufacturing partner for us as we build our fleet to support 400 flights per year at Spaceport America.” [emphasis mine]

The press release claims the first new mother ship will begin operations in 2025.

Forgive me if I am very very skeptical. The highlighted words tell us a lot about this company. First, we now have confirmation that the company has had problems maintaining WhiteKnightTwo. This fact was strongly implied when all planned flights in ’21 and ’22 were cancelled following that first passenger flight in July ’21 in order to do a full maintenance refit of WhiteKnightTwo. This press release tells us that the company’s management has recognized that WhiteKnightTwo cannot be maintained much longer.

Second, the company continues to overhype its future, even without Richard Branson. The chances of it flying 400 times per year, anytime in the near future, is so slim as to be non-existent.

Third, the need to hire an outside company to build these new mother ships also suggests that Virgin Galactic no longer has the capability of doing it itself.

Right now the company’s stock is selling for about $7 per share, well below its initial price of about $12. Expect it to fall again.

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NASA shuffles crew for first Starliner manned mission

8:48 am

In a press release yesterday, NASA announced the two-person crew that will fly on the first manned mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule to ISS.

[C]ommander Barry “Butch” Wilmore, whom NASA assigned to the prime crew in October 2020, will join NASA astronaut Suni Williams, who will serve as pilot. Williams previously served as the backup test pilot for CFT [crew test flight] while assigned as commander of NASA’s Boeing Starliner-1 mission, Starliner’s first post-certification mission. As CFT pilot, Williams takes the place of NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, originally assigned to the mission in 2018. NASA reassigned Mann to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission in 2021.

The crew for this flight, delayed now more than two years, has changed several times. In 2020 astronaut Chris Ferguson dropped out for personal reasons. Then NASA listed the crew as Wilmore, Mike Finke, and Nicole Mann, with Williams then assigned to Starliner’s next mission, its first long term flight to ISS.

With this change, the crew has been reduced to two, and Finke is now listed as a backup should something further change with the prime crew.

The press release made no mention of an actual launch date, though it did say that Boeing and NASA are still reviewing the data from Starliner’s unmanned demo mission:

The Starliner team is in the process of delivering the initial test flight data to NASA and jointly determining forward work ahead of a crewed flight. These engineering and program reviews are expected to continue for several weeks, culminating in a launch schedule assessment at the end of July, based upon spacecraft readiness, space station scheduling needs, and Eastern Range availability.

The goal had been to fly before the end of this year. It appears NASA and Boeing are still pushing to meet that goal.

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First look at the new Starliner flight suit being made by Dover

10:08 am

It appears that the flight suit that the company ILC Dover is making for Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule has been unveiled not by the company but as part of an exhibit at the Kennedy Space Centers’ visitor complex.

Boeing has also signed contracts with two companies to provide two different flight suits.

Announced late last month, Boeing’s choice of ILC Dover’s AES came somewhat out of the blue. The aerospace company had previously selected another spacesuit manufacturer, the David Clark Company, to provide pressure garments for astronauts launching and landing on its CST-100 Starliner capsules.

An example of the David Clark suit, which was first revealed in 2017, has already flown twice to space on Boeing’s two orbital flight tests. Although astronauts have yet to fly on the Starliner, an anthropometric test device (instrumented mannequin) named “Rosie the Rocketeer” was dressed in the suit for the trial missions.

Boeing’s next and, as currently planned, final Starliner test flight will carry a crew, who will also wear the David Clark suit, according to a statement released by the company. The ILC AES will be introduced once Boeing begins flying astronauts on NASA-contracted missions to and from the International Space Station in 2023.

“In the spirit of commercial human spaceflight, we made the decision to bring an additional Starliner spacesuit supplier online to introduce additional redundancy, flexibility and competition for crew accommodations on future flights to low-Earth orbit destinations. We expect to introduce the new suits during operational missions, and are pleased to see the market opening up and allowing more options for Boeing as well as our government and commercial customers,” read the company’s statement.

In my opinion, the graphics at the link of both suits show them both to appear more comfortable and better looking than SpaceX’s Dragon flight suits. That opinion however is just a question of taste and style, and has nothing to do with the suits’ operation or use.

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