The contrast of this launch versus the starship launch is pretty stark
I mean, they were both for completely different purposes with mission profiles that aren’t even slightly comparable. I think they were both successes in their own ways.
You’re right, they are successful in different ways. Starship was successful in a 2024 type of way, while Boeing was successful in a late 60’s/1970’s sort of way.
I’m just saying they both did what they set out to do. They both clearly have their own issues to deal with still, but it was a good day!
Normally I wouldn’t compare them because you’re right, they’re very different in terms of mission, but they just happened to launch within a day of one another. Starliner still seems like an expensive POS when compared to falcon and dragon.
Years long delays and development hell for the Starliner; finally launches with significant but manageable propellant leaks. Meanwhile Starship is making cutting edge leaps and bounds in only its fourth test flight. Starship looks nearly ready to launch payloads.
To be fair though, since we’re comparing them, Starship is also not exactly on schedule and it’s starting to result in canceled missions.
Starliner successfully docked to a space station to deliver crew, a feat first achieved in 1971.
Starship flew into space and crashed, a feat first achieved in 1944.
Nobody broke any big milestones, both were just test flights, that are both horribly behind their promised time-frames.
boeing cant get themselves off the strugglebus. they can barely accomplish what spacex is now considering day to day operations.
This is because of the fundamental structure of Boeing versus SpaceX.
Boeing has largely converted to corporate structure with lots of bean counters who look to commodify many of their projects when the industry in which they work in is absolutely not one that can be done as such. SpaceX is mostly engineers running the program who take each project as an engineering project and not an assembly line looking to be optimized.
This has lead to a lot of broken production communication. Because with Starliner, you might have Bob here that works specifically on getting some coolant line put in. But Bob has zero understanding of the grander picture here. Why is this coolant line being put in here? Then some module will go in over that line, again Sue only knows that she needs to install the module, not understanding anything before or after her step.
Then next thing you know, that coolant line’s vibration causes stress when up against the module that causes micro-cracks in the line causing leaks for helium gas. Because at no point did anyone see their part and how it worked with the whole. Nor was anyone along the way knowledgeable enough to know the ramifications of specific engineering designs.
Which might have you ask, what about the engineers? Again, it’s all compartments and budget constraints. Assumptions that are made about design that aren’t correct assumptions but no one knows they aren’t correct because some bean counter wants Mary the engineer to shave as much cost off her design for her module, not knowing how any of those redesigns will out with any other redesign that’s also being implemented.
Boeing from ground up is not built to handle the task they are being given. There’s too few engineers, too many corporate shills, and too many barriers between departments to facilitate the kind of communication that’s required to build the same thing SpaceX does for Dragon. And the thing is, Boeing will just deploy the bean counters to see if they can find the issue, when it’s the folks sending the corporate and the corporate themselves that’s the problem. They are never going to solve their issues.
At the same time, none of this goes unnoticed by Boeing employees. It’s pretty demoralizing watching hard work not work correctly. Then have the corporate pull everyone into a room and explain “what happened?” Then the finger pointing happens and nothing gets solved, rinse and repeat till your nerves are frayed beyond belief.
The employees and the engineers to get this kind of work done is there. There’s just this whole corporate layer that’s not needed that make everything 10,000% worse. Yes, there needs to be leadership, but the layers of operations that Boeing adds to the process is just people trying to enrich themselves.
Imo the contrast between Starship and SLS are even starker, but in the opposite direction. I hope I’m wrong (I want as much in space as possible) but SpaceX seems to be running pretty rough and roudy for manned missions rn. They’re popping off these experimental rockets like toys with very short turnaround. But to be fair they did the same with Falcon-IX and it’s a success now so again I could be wrong.
The alternative being you sit down, put in the time, and resources and have a 100% success rate like SLS. Ofc the catch being it costs like 10x but NASA doesn’t have the luxury of televisied launch failures. I’m just REALLY concerned something fails with humans to the moon in it and poof that’s that for a another 5 decades. There’s a reason extremely valuable launches like human life and the JWST are done on tested platforms like Soyuz and Aireon VI.
That being said yeah the Boeing craft looks even worse rn. I’m surprised they let it even dock with all the issues.
Destructive testing has always been part of every engineering development projects.
When developing new parts it’s common to make a lot of test parts and stress them to failure to see how they react.
For innovative design it can take several iterations before finding the right material/design. Each destructive testing is bringing valuable information.
Knowing exactly how a part will fail gives extremely valuable information on how to build a part that will NOT fail and everyone does that including NASA.
SpaceX has just brought this philosophy to whole different level by doing destructive testing on the whole rocket. The best example is that on the last flight they purposefully removed heatshields on some area of the Starship and added sensors in the area to see how it would impact the ship.
The can afford to do that because they focused on building a rocket factory to mass produce starships rather than building a rocket. It means that even if they were not launching it the factory would still produce Starships.
PS: SLS is not 10x the cost of Starship. According to an independent report ( source ) Right now the estimated cost of a Starship launch is estimated around $90 million, one the program is operational the cost of a Starship launch is estimated to be around $10 millions.
A SLS launch is estimated to be around $4.1 billion
So a Starship launch is 40 to 400 time cheaper than a SLS launch
I’m super curious what the public response will be if people die in a SpaceX launch. Will it get as much scrutiny as if it were the NASA shuttle?
I don’t think so, I think it will be a blip in everyone’s feeds. For NASA they built their program on the country’s involvement, because that’s how they got funding, and so there was an emotional attachment and involvement. SpaceX is background noise for the majority of people, they could have people dying left and right and it probably wouldn’t be a big deal.
SpaceX are popping off these experimental rockets like toys with very short turnaround.
The alternative being you sit down, put in the time, and resources and have a 100% success rate like SLS
https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/when-to-use-agile-vs-waterfall/
Helium Leaks and Propane Leaks? I feel like there is an underlying design flaw in how they’re storing fluids.
Rokect science at the end of the day is just fancy plumbing with a ton of really easy but extremely complex math added to it. Leaks are the one thing that almost every single mission to space has had to dealt with, and helium is one of the hardest substances to contain, second only to hydrogen.
really easy but extremely complex math added to it.
Elaborate. How can math be really easy but extremely complex at the same time?
Difficulty and complexity are two different and independent variables. Rocket science math is made of simple operations and principles but compounded and mixed into complex configurations.
Think about juggling. Throwing one ball into the air and catching it back is easy and simple. But juggling three balls at the same time is a complex operation, it is made of individually easy motions, but it is complex to do three or more at the same time in a coordinated and harmonious way.
Rocket science IRL is that but 100 fold.
helium is one of the hardest substances to contain, second only to hydrogen
I think helium is harder to contain. Although hydrogen is lighter atom, it is also a larger atom due to lower nuclear charge (Z effective). Hydrogen is also a diatomic molecule, whereas helium is a single atom. I think the only thing helium has going for it is that it doesn’t easily dissolve in and embrittle metals. But helium can fit through any gap hydrogen can.
Rokect science at the end of the day is just fancy plumbing with a ton of really easy but extremely complex math added to it.
One of us went to school for this stuff, and I can tell it wasn’t you.
Thanks for the totally uncalled for and unprovoked personal insult. But the honor is not mine, it’s a phrase by Chris Hackett, writer for Popular Science, artist, maker and science communicator. But thanks for pointing out you are the boring idiot in the room. It makes it easier to ignore you.
