quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Then we get the Shuttle going and cancel it before having something flying, going on nearly 9 years now hitching rides on the Soyuz.

You'd have thought, after 20+ years of near continuous usage as a space truck, an easier to maintain and simpler version would've been developed while the current shuttle was winding down...

Usage of satellites and space usage wasn't going away yet (there was a space station in orbit forchrissakes), yet nobody in leadership (Congress) put their foot down and demanded NASA/.com knock-off the pie-in-the-sky ideas and work on realistic but modern approaches to the next gen of spacecraft.

stupid google maps !

It's deja vu all over again...

https://www.latimes.com/archiv...-mn-17288-story.html

Mars Probe Lost Due to Simple Math Error

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ
OCT. 1, 1999 12 AM
TIMES SCIENCE WRITER

NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched, space agency officials said Thursday.

A navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used the metric system of millimeters and meters in its calculations, while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, which designed and built the spacecraft, provided crucial acceleration data in the English system of inches, feet and pounds.

As a result, JPL engineers mistook acceleration readings measured in English units of pound-seconds for a metric measure of force called newton-seconds.

In a sense, the spacecraft was lost in translation.

“That is so dumb,” said John Logsdon, director of George Washington University’s space policy institute. “There seems to have emerged over the past couple of years a systematic problem in the space community of insufficient attention to detail.”

The loss of the Mars probe was the latest in a series of major spaceflight failures this year that destroyed billions of dollars worth of research, military and communications satellites or left them spinning in useless orbits. Earlier this month, an independent national security review concluded that many of those failures stemmed from an overemphasis on cost cutting, mismanagement, and poor quality control at Lockheed Martin, which manufactured several of the malfunctioning rockets.

But NASA officials and Lockheed executives said it was too soon to apportion blame for the most recent mishap. Accident review panels convened by JPL and NASA are still investigating why no one detected the error.

“It was launched that way,” said Noel Hinners, vice president for flight systems at Lockheed Martin’s space systems group. “We were transmitting English units and they were expecting metric units. The normal thing is to use metric and to specify that.”

None of JPL’s rigorous quality control procedures caught the error in the nine months it took the spacecraft to make its 461-million-mile flight to Mars. Over the course of the journey, the miscalculations were enough to throw the spacecraft so far off track that it flew too deeply into the Martian atmosphere and was destroyed when it entered its initial orbit around Mars last week.

John Pike, space policy director at the Federation of American Scientists, said that it was embarrassing to lose a spacecraft to such a simple math error. “It is very difficult for me to imagine how such a fundamental, basic discrepancy could have remained in the system for so long,” he said.

“I can’t think of another example of this kind of large loss due to English-versus-metric confusion,” Pike said. “It is going to be the cautionary tale until the end of time.”

At the Jet Propulsion Lab, which owes its international reputation to the unerring accuracy it has displayed in guiding spacecraft across the shoals of space, officials did not flinch from acknowledging their role in the mistake.

“We know this error is the cause,” said Thomas R. Gavin, deputy director of JPL’s space and earth science directorate, which is responsible for the JPL Mars program. “And our failure to detect it in the mission caused the unfortunate loss of Mars Climate Orbiter.

When it was introduced and how it was introduced we don’t know yet,” Gavin said.

NASA officials in Washington were reluctant to blame either Lockheed Martin or JPL solely for the problem, saying that the error arose from a broader quality control failure.

“People make mistakes all the time,” said Carl Pilcher, the agency’s science director for solar system exploration. “I think the problem was that our systems designed to recognize and correct human error failed us.

“We don’t see any connection between this failure and anything else going on at Lockheed Martin,” Pilcher said. “This was not a failure of Lockheed Martin. It was systematic failure to recognize and correct an error that should have been caught.”

In any event, scientists are anxious that the conversion error does not affect a second spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander, now approaching the red planet for a landing Dec. 3. The lost orbiter would have served as a radio relay for the lander before beginning its own two-year survey of the Martian atmosphere and seasonal weather.

Data exchanges for the Global Surveyor, which has been orbiting Mars since 1997, have been conducted exclusively in the metric system, Hinners said. Mission controllers expect to use the Surveyor as a relay station in place of the lost orbiter.

If found formally at fault by an accident review board, Lockheed will face financial penalties. But it was not certain Thursday whether Lockheed’s contract with JPL actually specified the system of measurements to be used, as many aerospace agreements now often do.

Whatever the contractual consequences for the aerospace company, the loss of the Mars orbiter might have a lasting effect on public confidence in NASA, space analysts said.

Earlier this year, for example, NASA faced public concerns about its Cassini probe as it swung within a celestial hairsbreadth of Earth with an on-board cache of plutonium. The agency’s matchless skill in navigating space helped defuse fears of a potentially lethal collision between Earth and the Cassini probe.

Now that skill will be more open to question, analysts said Thursday.

“It is ironic,” Logsdon said, “that we can cooperate in space with the Russians and the Japanese and the French but we have trouble cooperating across parts of the United States. Fundamentally, you have partners in this enterprise speaking different languages.”

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
- 737 MAX grounding
- Loosing the Quantas Airlines' Project Sunrise competition
- Delays and problems with the USAF KC-46 program
- 737NG pickle fork problems
- Aeroflots cancellation of 22 787's
- 777 engine problems with GE

Things ain't going too well at Boeing

Ask any Naval pilot and they'll quickly tell you the P-8 pretty much sucks pond scum. Wouldn't list it as a "failure", but it ain't exactly setting the world on fire.

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
When production on the 737 Max is stopped next month I’m hoping the US economy isn’t damaged too badly.

That is a headline created by the Lame Street Media to sensationalize the issue and create fear in the uneducated.

The reason why Boeing has to stop production on the MAX is because "the parking lot is full", primarily due to recertification by the FAA taking longer than expected. And that's fine! Since no one can/will take delivery of the MAX right now, there are too many backed up on their property and Boeing has nowhere to put anything coming off the production line. Our company is scarfing up every option for the MAX that is being surrendered by all the other airlines. When Boeing completes the re-certification process...and they WILL be re-certified...UAL is going to have a YUGE fleet of B737-MAX's; maybe as many as Southwest.

The simple solution (certainly easier said than done) is for Boeing to ditch the MAX -7/-8/-9, convert ALL the options and orders to the MAX -10, and manufacturer that model ONLY. The MAX -10 doesn't have the MCAS system found on the other MAX variants; the focal point of the crash suffered by two FOREIGN carriers.

But Boeing won't discontinue the MAX -8/-9 series, as that is where Southwest has all their future fleet plans and money tied up. And as Southwest goes, so goes Boeing with regard to the 737 design. Southwest pretty much says "JUMP", and Boeing says "HOW HIGH?" Southwest doesn't plan on adding the MAX -10 to their fleet.

This kinda sucks for Boeing and 737 pilots in general, as my career kinda HEAVILY lives and breathes on its success/failure of the 737 fleet.

[/drift...apologies, as the above really strays from the Starliner subject at hand]

I put this launch on my calendar last year or the year before, because THIS launch was supposed to be the first launch of AMERICAN astronauts back into space by an American rocket, a test flight. Well, they must have not been too confident in the rockets abilities, because they pushed back the actual launch of real people to a later date.

Im glad no astronauts were harmed. Who wins the race now? Space X probably puts an American back in space first after this fiasco.

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:
It's deja vu all over again...

https://www.latimes.com/archiv...-mn-17288-story.html

Mars Probe Lost Due to Simple Math Error

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ
OCT. 1, 1999 12 AM
TIMES SCIENCE WRITER

NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched, space agency officials said Thursday.

Not this again. Wasn't this the reason we lost a probe to a hard Mars landing some years back?

Saw this in the sky as I was on my way to work yesterday morning. Cool sight to see. People pulled over to watch.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Then we get the Shuttle going and cancel it before having something flying, going on nearly 9 years now hitching rides on the Soyuz.

You'd have thought, after 20+ years of near continuous usage as a space truck, an easier to maintain and simpler version would've been developed while the current shuttle was winding down...

Usage of satellites and space usage wasn't going away yet (there was a space station in orbit forchrissakes), yet nobody in leadership (Congress) put their foot down and demanded NASA/.com knock-off the pie-in-the-sky ideas and work on realistic but modern approaches to the next gen of spacecraft.

One of my customers at the music store near Cape Canaveral was a NASA shuttle payload programmer. He told me that none of the software had been updated since at least the 70’s and he threw his head back and laughed when my jaw dropped and he said “job security! Nobody under age 40 does machine code!” I told him “that’s a bug, not a feature” and he shrugged and grinned and said “I don’t care, I get paid.” This was 13 years ago.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: P220 Smudge,

I think there are two, perhaps three different dynamics going on here

first, the spacecraft division and the aircraft division are two distinctly separate organizations - different senior management, different supervisors, different engineering teams and different skilled labor

in my opinion the issues surrounding the the 737MAX and the MCAS are entirely separate from any issues surrounding Starliner

however, I believe the problem is slightly more systemic in nature and can be traced back to when Boeing decided to move out to Seattle and follow the money to Chicago

as for the MAX issue, one experienced pilot I work with on a regular basis told me that he believes the latest generation of pilots are too dependent on automation, have poor hand flying skills, and don't know the systems and failure modes well enough

quote:

can be traced back to when Boeing decided to move out to Seattle and follow the money to Chicago

And I presume that the people making decision are finance guys and not engineers?

Engineers using Common Core Math.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:

quote:

can be traced back to when Boeing decided to move out to Seattle and follow the money to Chicago

And I presume that the people making decision are finance guys and not engineers?

I think you'd be correct in that

I cant think of any sane, right-minded competent engineer that would ever think it would be a good idea to take your management team away from your focus of industry

and to Chicago?....

yeah, if you want to ruin a technology or a manufacturing business, take advice from either accountants or MBA's...

no concept of what it takes to do stuff - they're focused on pennies with a 3 month horizon of visibility

Kind of curious how many directors and VPs now have new jobs.

“CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Boeing safely landed its crew capsule in the New Mexico desert Sunday after an aborted flight to the International Space Station that threatened to derail the company’s effort to launch astronauts for NASA next year.

The Starliner descended into the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in the predawn darkness, ending a two-day demo that should have lasted more than a week. All three main parachutes popped open and airbags also inflated around the spacecraft to ease the impact…”

https://apnews.com/d941852c59a4811603a8ab3611a3cb8f

Elon Musk (Space X) trolled them hard on twitter with this:

“Orbit is hard,” SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said in a tweet to Boeing. “Best wishes for landing & swift recovery to next mission.”

Anyone else get the impression this was other than a "failed mission".

It was complete with extra-believable info "there was gifts, clothes, and food on board for the ISS crew for the holidays".

Maybe my tin-foil hat is a bit snug, but I'm not so sure about this one. I'm betting it was a success and managed to launch something that isn't supposed to be widely known about.

Andrew

No it was a real test that lost. Boeing isn’t that smart to pull off a deception. I have no doubt as to the cargo. Pretty much the same stuff every resupply mission.

quote:

Originally posted by El Cid 92:
Anyone else get the impression this was other than a "failed mission".

Get a new brand of tin foil hat, yours needs re-calibrated.

This was a long planned mission and this little mistake cost them a hundred million dollars, or more.

Classified missions are usually sent up by the air force rockets, numerous times a year. If they needed a heavy lift classified payload, they would have the Space X heavy or Delta IV heavy classified mission on deck.

So some on the inside with info to a competitor of Boeing, today's landing makes this a highly successful event.

Something went wrong, we didn't lose the craft, and there craft was recovered perfectly well within parameters for humans to survive the whole event.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LS1 GTO,

quote:

Originally posted by El Cid 92:
Anyone else get the impression this was other than a "failed mission".

It was complete with extra-believable info "there was gifts, clothes, and food on board for the ISS crew for the holidays".

Maybe my tin-foil hat is a bit snug, but I'm not so sure about this one. I'm betting it was a success and managed to launch something that isn't supposed to be widely known about.

Andrew

Help me with the math, as I am having difficulty with the part where a publicly traded company, with several high profile failures in recent history, have put the big hurt on stock value, and how this will increase public (investor) desire to risk anything financial.

This monkey shaves with Occam's razor...