Boeing to Refly Automated Starliner Flight Test
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Boeing will refly an automated mission of its Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year after the near catastrophic loss of one of the crew vehicle in December.
“We have chosen to refly our Orbital Flight Test to demonstrate the quality of the Starliner system,” the company said in a statement. “Flying another uncrewed flight will allow us to complete all flight test objectives and evaluate the performance of the second Starliner vehicle at no cost to the taxpayer.
“We will then proceed to the tremendous responsibility and privilege of flying astronauts to the International Space Station,” the company added.
The Washington Post reports the flight will likely take place in October or November. The schedule will in all likelihood push a crewed Starliner flight test to ISS into 2021.
The first Starliner flight nearly failed twice during its flight at the end of last year. Soon after launch on Dec. 20, a combination of software error and communications problem resulted in the vehicle not reaching its intended orbit and being unable to rendezvous and dock with the space station.
After the near miss, engineers began a search for other software errors. They discovered a bug that could have caused the crew capsule to collide with the service module after separation prior to reentry. A collision could have caused the capsule to burn up in the atmosphere.
Controllers uploaded a software fix. The vehicle landed safely at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico after completing an abbreviated two-day flight in Earth orbit. NASA and Boeing said the hardware performed largely as expected.
A subsequent investigation found 49 gaps in software testing where errors might have been found. A joint review team composed of NASA and Boeing officials recommended 61 corrective actions that needed to be taken.
Boeing has taken a $420 million charge against earnings to cover the cost of the investigation and additional flight test.
Boeing is one of two companies developing a vehicle to take crews to the space station. SpaceX is scheduled to conduct its first crewed test of the Crew Dragon vehicle in May. The company conducted an automated mission to ISS last year.
The two-person crew is scheduled to stay aboard the orbiting laboratory for about three months. After a review of the flight performance, SpaceX will launch a four-person crew to the station later this year.
Starliner is one more embarrassment for the reeling aerospace giant. Boeing has been reeling from the grounding of its 737 Max airliner after two fatal crashes that resulted from design and software problems.
The company reported a large annual loss for 2019. It has also shutdown aircraft production in the United States due to the coronavirus pandemic as air travel has slowed to crawl around the world.
It’s not clear if work on the Starliner will be slowed or stopped due to the coronavirus crisis.
In its statement, Boeing said the decision to re-fly the mission was based on safety concerns.
“The Boeing Company is honored to be a provider for the Commercial Crew mission. We are committed to the safety of the men and women who design, build and ultimately will fly on the Starliner just as we have on every crewed mission to space,” the company said.
34 responses to “Boeing to Refly Automated Starliner Flight Test”
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Sounds like a very good idea. And it’s good they are doing it on their own dime since they messed up the first flight. Maybe there is some hope for Boeing under its new leadership.
It’s good that this decision has now been made. And if Boeing can actually fly OFT-2 before year’s end that would be evidence that at least a modest sense of urgency is now to be found at the multiply-stricken firm. Given that the earliest notional date is sometime in October, however, I think the likelihood OFT-2 will slip into 2021 is still appreciably above 50%.
Good, but Miss Baker mourns the loss of opportunity
I wonder what the final price tag will be for all the money saved on Boeing programs over the past decade?
all in all the recovery will cost them about 1 billion dollars. they have made substantial internal changes, offered some bonus to get people to come to the program from the 787 and 777 …they now have some excellent talent in the program. the software recovery program is now run by the person who did the 787 software FCS. she is one of the best
That bio has some red flags in it, however: https://www.theregister.co….
Yes, this actually was “thought about” in the B777 (which is Boeings first commercial FBW airplane) and its recommended that the triple (and the dreamliner) be powered down every week. I dont know of an airline that does not do that. every airline I “taught” at while at Boeing did that routinely. We do it at the start of every international flight and the end (ie the crew coming and when it goes does a “power down”)
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if there is some reason you dont do it, like cleaning is right there…then its noted in the AML and the next crew does it even if its domestic. there are warning indications that it has not been done
its required for PBN which we do each flight (performance based navigation) now. we use to not do PBN on each flight but PBN requires it as a function of PBN
one of our triples Juliet November was specially tuned up requiring this …for awhile it was the test vehicle for the upgraded FCS and so it was flying with one of the old computers in it as a failsafe. it you didnt do it they had issues with stack overflows which were corrective but annoying. turns out it was a timing issues 🙂
This is a problem with all computer systems. There was a window from the mid 90’s to about 2005 when you could keep a Linux system up without reboots after software updates. I had PC’s with uptimes of more than two years. Now I have to reboot a Linux machine every month or so. I consider it an act of savagery, but that’s just where the technology base is.
It has always been a habit to shutdown my computer when I am not using it. Not only does it save energy, but keeps folks from trying to hack it. I also turn off my router when I am offline, both are on the same power strip.
Windows user? Microsoft products, excepting NT, were never good server operating systems. Sure for personal use you shut down a computer. For weather stations, database systems, data servers, email services, web servies ….. They need to stay up.
The Course Management Systems for online instruction are all built around Windows, Office, so it’s not practical for me to switch over to Apple.
yes. any system full time or not you need to plan full reboot operations. the longest system that “I” have running full time are one 8088 and an 80286 both running Dos, that operate the 2 meter repeater system in Santa Fe. it use to be two 8088’s but one of the 8088’s failed (the processor did) and its the one in a laptop which I am finding a bit of a challenge to replace…however if I had it here in Istanbul instead of back in Texas I now have the time so I would try it
the drill was to simply attach the extension bus of the laptop to the 286 and churn on. there is a watchdog “machine” a 1802…that really does nothing but look for a failure of either machine (and it detected the laptop failure) an every Friday, switch machines and recycle the one that had been working
its worked like this since 1992(with the addition of the 286 recently) and I see no reason it cannot just churn on. the 1802 is really old school it has a limited set of binary commands which can come over the net, radio or telephone (yes we still have a phone patch)
the APRS, 220, 6 meter and 440 machine all have similar arraingments but newer machines. and instead of the 1802 the 220 aND aprs MACHINE have new arduinos
Dos is pretty stable 🙂 and lightening fast 🙂 all the machines around the world (South Pole, Wake Island etc have similar arraingments
fly safe
While at the same time, Boeing is doing mass layoffs.
lucky for the people I know who got offered bonus to go went before the virus killed everything. a few months later and they would have well gone for just keeping the job 🙂
it is going to be interesting to see how the company works its way out of htis…ie the layoffs. My guess based just on inside rumors is that Boeing will probably not make another commercial airliner this year…or if they do production will be at a very small percent of itself. the problem here is consistent with the US and national airlines…ie they are likely to have excess capability for a long time now
its not an engineeering problem it is a management one. likely to be made worse as the economy sinks…tough times
Historically Airbus makes real gains at Boeing’s expense in these kinds of economic cycles. Seems like Airbus could make some real inroads with A320 NEO variants esp the A321-NEO as a 757 replacement with no 797 option for 757 operators to consider.
The problem is Airbus is at capacity with long wait times for delivery. The European shutdown will only make that worst.
I believe a similar situation happened in the 90’s. Boeing had layoff’s and Airbus opened a new production line. The window the Europeans have might last years.
its a story of long term debacle V short term gain
Boeing has been searching for the “universal type rating” for now four decades. the problem has been the 737…at each step of the way, th 300/500, the NG and now the Max Boeing wanted to go another direction but was hosed by customer demand for the upgraded 737
now it looks like a bad decision…the 797 is “working” but its 10 years away (at best…its probably a version of the 787)
I will however be surprised if Boeing or Airbus build new planes this year…both are seeing massive order cancellation
Yes, and European environmentalists are pushing to link bailouts to down sizing the airlines to reduce emissions making the long term future look bleak for both firms.
https://grist.org/climate/a…
Any coronavirus bailout for airlines ‘should come with strict climate conditions’
By Fiona Harvey
on Apr 4, 2020
“In their letter to the chancellor, the campaigners — including Greenpeace, Flight Free, the IPPR and New Economics Foundation think tanks, and Tax Justice — call for the government to take equity stakes in airlines rather than handing out cash or loans. They want to see social benefits with workers’ rights enforced, including a living wage and no mass redundancies a condition of any rescue. In the longer term, they want to see support for a “just transition” for workers to move to jobs in lower carbon industries.
and
“They also want a new fiscal regime that includes a frequent flyer levy or air miles levy, replacing air passenger duty, which would reduce demand without removing access to flights from those with limited alternatives or limited resources, by shifting the tax burden to frequent leisure flyers. About half of people in the U.K. do not fly in any given year, but 1 percent of people take a fifth of all flights.”
Tom. there is a lot there to address…but I would do it by making two general points
FIrst most business (including Boeing and the airlines) which are in hard shape are there because of major mistakes by their leadership mostly aimed at making the corporation look better by massive stock buy backs. this has inflated the stock market well beyond fair value and also pushed wealth of the upper 1 percent well past any reasonable levle
there are going to have to be some bankruptcies and major reshuffles to survive, in my view corporations should have to fight as hard for survival as individual people are.
now none of this is the fault of people who work there…and the key to any recovery plan is not protecting corporations but people.
we could have given every American 18000 over four months for what we bailed out various failing corporations
second. when it is all said and done we should use the pandemic wakeup to usher out the old world that has not served us well for sometime…and bring in a new one that is more sustainable, equitable, and kinder to the environment. this will likely take kiling the greed which has become staple in western civilizations (as well aas at the upper level in almost all countries) but thats OK with me
the virus has illustrated how weak our institutions, our leadership and our politics are…and we need to fix that
the ultimate reality of the virus is that we could have confronted it in a scientific, methodical manner, gotten ready for it and would have been a lot better off…but we were simply incapable of doing that
I wonder if they will start downsizing their production facilities. Do they really need so much capacity in the new post virus world?
787 production was just stopped.
Actually I was thinking the problems all over Boeing. KC-46 Pegasus, Starliner, Max, 777X, even 797/MOM. I’m waiting for shoes to start dropping on T-7. Everything is in some sort of trouble or another.
Maybe, just maybe, the lack of money put into development has something to do with the $43 billion in stock buybacks that Boeing has done since 2013. That would seem to indicate that “shareholder value” is more important than keeping their actual customers happy. This is not a “good thing”, IMHO.
the problems are all different. of all of them theh starliner is the one least acceptable
That is the best news I’ve heard in awhile. If they hadn’t decided to re-fly the mission, I would have had serious doubts about the NASA and Boeing relationship. I’ve always thought that having two separate companies flying human missions to the ISS is the best way to move forward. I hope they both succeed with flying colors. Our country needs this now and into the future.
So is this a Boeing goodwill gesture; a NASA requirement; Boeing reading of the tea leaves; or a real decision based on the evidence and real leadership at Boeing?
Cheers
Neil
PS. Agreed good idea. Actually in my view fwiw a requirement.
I would only speak to rumors…but I think its a little of all those things with a heavy dose of internal pressure from some of the new people in the program. in the end its the right thing to do. the software fcs has been completely “redone” (or more correctly has been redoing) and I think that they are found a few things they dont like. there is fundamentally nothing wrong with the vehicle…but theh FCS but it this way they have brought in the same people who made the 787 a dream to fly 🙂
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The next Starliner test: https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Funny. 😀
Seriously though, hopefully all goes well with Starliner’s reflight
I hope it’s perfect. We need a robust commercial crew program.
a sound move. there were just to many things wrong with the vehicle and the process
What Boeing needs to do next is move their headquarters back to Seattle to be close to their factory instead of their bankers. It will be a good symbolic gesture that Boeing is returning to the basics that made it successful.
Good decision, right decision. Boeing now has the opportunity to claw back a good reputation. Bean counters/accountants have there place, but, IMO, it’s not in having the final say. You build to a safety standard and, if the price dictates that you can’t, then, IMO, you don’t build it at all.