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It seems Boeing’s Starliner Spacecraft can’t quite get away from various complications on its first crewed mission. Earlier today and not too long after the additional helium leaks were found, the decision was made to call off the initial docking as five of the spacecraft’s thrusters failed. As a result, NASA and Boeing decided to push the docking back a few hours as they dealt with the problem and ensured everything was safe to proceed.
Thankfully this eventually resulted in a successful docking with the ISS, marking the first crewed flight on Starliner to reach the orbiting laboratory. It does however beg questions about whats to come in the next few days. Here I will go more in-depth into Starliner’s initial approach, the loss of thrusters, what to expect in the near future, and more.
Full article here - https://thespacebucket.com/boeings-starliner-docks-to-the-iss-after-thruster-failure/
For more space-related content check out - https://thespacebucket.com/
Credit:
NASA - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ
Boeing - https://www.youtube.com/@Boeing
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:39 - Thruster Failure
3:42 - Similar Problems
Well yeah. Sounds like a tough problem. Also sounds like a thing you should have accounted for in your design. Also sounds like you should fix all the places where it’s leaking not at a molecular level.
And Boeing, honestly, stop whinging about it being “hard”.
It’s fucking rocket science. Of course it’s hard.
Seriously, as an engineer who’s worked in aerospace, it’s just absolutely shocking to watch Boeing consistently fuck up on stuff like this so regularly. They’ve fallen so, so far, and it’s honestly a bit heartbreaking. They used to be a company that was synonymous with engineering rigor and quality. Now they’re bitching about how it’s hard to build space capsules (uh… yes, obviously…?) as an excuse for their insufficient QC process and development rigor, and can’t even figure out how to match up their outsourced (side note: stop fucking outsourcing) components to their own assembly processes in a coherent, auditable, and safe fashion retroactively - let alone at the time of assembly.
This is what you get when the fucking beancounters run the show.