"The Coming: A Boeing Whistleblower’s Warning"

A couple of US astronauts are stuck in space due to Boeing Starliner 'issues'.

Boeing, we have a problem.

The return trip to Earth for two NASA astronauts who rode to orbit on the trouble-plagued company’s Starliner has been delayed for a third time as of Saturday — with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams cooling their heels at the International Space Station (ISS) while engineers on the ground race against time to fix numerous issues with the spacecraft.

They have a reported 45-day window to bring them back, according to officials.

The return module of the Starliner spacecraft is docked to the ISS’s Harmony module, but Harmony has limited fuel leaving the window for a safe return flight increasingly narrow, officials said.

Wilmore and Williams were supposed to come home June 13 after a week on the ISS.

Maybe they'll be rescued by the Chinese.


After years of delays, Boeing's Starliner capsule successfully blasted off on its inaugural crewed flight from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 10:52 a.m. EDT on June 5. But during the 25-hour flight, engineers discovered five separate helium leaks to the spacecraft's thruster system.

Now, to give engineers time to troubleshoot the faults, NASA has announced it will push back the perilous return flight, extending the crew's stay on the space station to at least three weeks.

"We've learned that our helium system is not performing as designed," Mark Nappi, Boeing's Starliner program manager, said at a news conference on June 18. "Albeit manageable, it's still not working like we designed it. So we've got to go figure that out."

The return module of the Starliner spacecraft is currently docked to the ISS's Harmony module as NASA and Boeing engineers assess the vital hardware issues aboard the vessel, including five helium leaks to the system that pressurizes the spacecraft's propulsion system, and five thruster failures to its reaction-control system.

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A couple of US astronauts are stuck in space due to Boeing Starliner 'issues'.
These astronauts left for the ISS on June 5 and they're still there. It was supposed to be an 8 day mission. There are a couple of snags. Some people want Space-X's Dragon capsule to bring them home, but, it seems that Boeing's Starliner is unable to disconnect from the space station due to the software that would enable it to disengage by itself was not downloaded into the computer so it can't disengage and there are no other ports available for the Dragon capsule to hook-up with.

Quite a few of us noted that it was not a smart thing for those two astronauts to get on the Starliner capsule and we were, unfortunately, correct it would seem.

Here's a video that goes into this in the first part of the video:

 
RT: Or via a proxy:

9 Aug, 2024 18:05

Boeing rockets built by inexperienced workers – NASA​

One case of shoddy welding set production back seven months, the agency’s inspector general found


NASA’s inspector general has issued a damning report on Boeing’s rocket division, stating that the aerospace giant’s next-generation spacecraft is years behind schedule, significantly over budget, and built by “inexperienced technicians” led by ineffective managers.

In development since 2014, the Block 1B variant of NASA’s Space Launch System was originally scheduled to lift off as part of the agency’s Artemis II lunar flyby mission next year. The rocket’s debut has since been pushed back to the 2028 Artemis IV moon landing mission, which NASA’s Office of Inspector General warned on Thursday could be delayed even further.

Boeing, which was contracted in 2014 to build the rocket’s powerful upper section, is partly to blame for this delay, the inspector general declared in a report.

NASA inspectors visiting Boeing’s Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana found glaring “deficiencies in quality,” the report stated. Inspectors issued 71 Corrective Action Requests to remedy these deficiencies, which they noted was “a high number…for a space flight system at this stage in development.”


These deficiencies “are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing,” the report continued, citing one example of how the company’s “inexperienced technicians” were unable to weld a fuel tank in accordance with NASA standards. This shoddy welding directly led to a seven-month delay in the development of the rocket’s upper stage.

“Boeing’s process to address deficiencies to date has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur,” the report declared.

Boeing initially promised to deliver the upper stage by February 2021, and now insists that it will be ready by April 2027. Costs have soared in the meantime, with NASA estimating that the stage will set it back $2.8 billion by 2028, more than double Boeing’s 2017 estimate of $962 million.

The inspector general’s office recommended that Boeing be fined for its “noncompliance with quality control standards.” However, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, Catherine Koerner, announced on Thursday that the company would not be penalized


With its aviation division already reeling after a door panel blew off one of its 737 MAX 9 planes in mid-air in January, Boeing was thrust into the headlines again in June when its Starliner spacecraft malfunctioned, leaving two astronauts marooned on the International Space Station (ISS). The astronauts were originally meant to stay on the ISS for a week, but NASA announced on Wednesday that they could be stranded in space until 2025, when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is scheduled to drop off a fresh crew of astronauts.
 
Strange, such systems have been used for decades, even Voyager's RCS is working 47 years and 25 billion clicks later.
Voyagers 1 and 2 have been doing that since 1977, and have used up about three-fourths of their 100 kg of propellant as of December 2012. Thrusters are also referred to as mass-expulsion control systems, MEC, or reaction-control systems, RCS.
Problems everywhere, even the moonsuit makers have pulled out after being awarded the contract 18 months earlier. Not that long ago they were testing it on the vomit comet
SpaceX's latest mission is delayed thanks to more leaks. Probably a good thing, the mission involved a spacewalk and looks like they only tested their EVA suits it in a high altitude chamber, not a hard vacuum. Can't find any footage of course.
Its a disaster, apparently astronaut Suni Williams reportedly has zero g related eye problems. Didn't seem to affect her in her previous missions, we all age I suppose.
All I can say is thank God that the Don Pettit, the 'fix it guy' is returning to the ISS after a 12 years, what trooper!
He'll save the day!
 
Maybe he knows something. Maybe he's sick of the pressure, or the bad press. No hint in the article, though.

President of Boeing Defense, Space and Security Leaving Company

Also today:
Boeing grounds 777X test planes for defective part linking engine to airframe
 
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It was mentioned in a video I watched, which is included in this post, that Boeing did fairly good work until it bought McDonald Douglas. It was also said that those in the know say that what really happened is that McDonald Douglas actually bought Boeing with Boeing's own money. Anyway, instead of putting high quality engineers first as had been done previously, they started putting the shareholders earnings first. And that's when quality went down the tubes.

 
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