from Hacker News

Boeing Starliner, leaving its crew behind, lands in New Mexico

by clessg on 9/7/24, 4:14 AM with 75 comments

  • by dghlsakjg on 9/7/24, 4:52 AM

    I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts?

    Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad?

    Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?

  • by zdw on 9/7/24, 5:10 AM

    Saw the reentry fireball in the sky from AZ, which was pretty.

    Glad it made it down in one piece, hopefully they'll be able to troubleshoot the problems better because of that.

  • by blisterpeanuts on 9/7/24, 11:34 AM

    I’ll say it, since no one else is: Congratulations to Boeing! This is a much needed victory at a time when their reputation has taken a beating (most of it deserved).

    Over on Slashdot, it was reported that the likely cause was: a “Teflon seal in a valve known as a ‘poppet’ expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer”.

    As Musk’s SpaceX team has stated repeatedly, every failure provides data for future success. At least they have a good idea as to why the thrusters failed, and the design can probably be modified and retested in a couple of uncrewed launches in 2025 or 2026.

    The thrusters can be fixed. The question is whether Boeing can fix its culture.

  • by rezmason on 9/7/24, 5:39 AM

    Is this the first time a spaceship disembarked from a space station and landed back on the ground, all while unpiloted?

  • by underseacables on 9/7/24, 7:53 AM

    I seriously believe there's going to be at least one executive from Boeing who's going to say to the government in some legalese document or something "see, it landed just fine"

  • by gopkarthik on 9/7/24, 6:48 AM

    Noob question: Hypothetically if the crew were in the Starliner for the trip, they would have planned safely?

    I get that prior to the trip, the risk of failure was high enough to not make that call.

  • by ChrisArchitect on 9/7/24, 11:50 AM

  • by grecy on 9/7/24, 8:02 AM

    After all the recent discussions on the topic, it seems strange this is not on the front page…