I find it amazing that this is treated as such a trivial achievement, with an attitude as if any one of us could have done this. Now back to our regularly scheduled social media apps.
It took them a decade and a half because Boeing learned the hard way that you have to actually be efficient when you don’t get a cost plus contract. Their entire system was setup to extract as much money from the government as possible, not to deliver product on time.
Late and over a budget is how you maximize profit in cost plus contracts.
I'm not shitting on Starliner, it's great that we have another person-rated capsule for spaceflight.
I'm just pointing this out because there are many people apparently who are confusing Starliner for Boeing's version of Starship, i.e. a whole rocket plus crew rated capsule.
Well, "ocean liner" means a large oceangoing ship, "airliner" means large airplane, so people could be forgiven for thinking a "starliner" was a large spaceship and not a tiny pod.
Depends on what you consider starting. 16 years is probably the most reasonable number, but you could argue for as little as 6.
Initial work on Dragon began in 2004, it ‘entered service’ in 2009, had its first mission in 2010, but first connected to the ISS in 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon
Work on a crewed version was officially mentioned in 2006 though they only got a contract for manned missions in 2014 and the first manned mission was 16 November 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-1
It's kind of useful perspective that when the contracts for this were being awarded, Boeing argued that SpaceX shouldn't get the contract at all because Boeing, having "human spaceflight heritage", was guaranteed to do the better job than an inexperienced upstart. Plus the extra $400M they extorted out of NASA despite this being a fixed price, milestone based contract.
> when the contracts for this were being awarded, Boeing argued that SpaceX shouldn't get the contract at all because Boeing, having "human spaceflight heritage", was guaranteed to do the better job than an inexperienced upstart.
I think it's useful to note that this wasn't just Boeing's opinion - it was pretty widely believed in the industry. And not without reason - Boeing had Shuttle heritage.
It wan’t an inaccurate assessment. SpaceX was working on life support for a crewed module 14+ years before their first successful manned launch. IE: It took them longer than Boeing.
However the missing context is SpaceX put in 8+ years into the project before getting the award which offset most of the issues.
So it worked out well for NASA, but SpaceX was approaching it more as a prestige project than a profitable one.
> Now back to our regularly scheduled social media apps.
"Ask not what flying cars can do for you; ask what 140 characters can do for your country." [0,1]
"We choose to go to LEO. We choose to go to LEO... We choose to go to LEO in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but so that MIC will learn to build without cost-plus contracting" [2, 3]
I think it is materially less exciting than it would have been if it had launched years ago when it was scheduled to. It provides competition with SpaceX in one very small niche of space travel with no applications to any other niche. Meanwhile SpaceX is building a Mars rocket with in flight refueling.
I really wish they did have more competition, and I also hope they succeed.
I think one of the challenges (and let's be really clear, Boeing has MANY issues) is that there's a double standard (or at least different expectations).
How many SpaceX rockets and failures have there been? (And that's not a knock on SpaceX, either - this stuff is hard. Combining precision and technology with 'controlled explosion' is going to be a challenge).
But as a NASA person said - NASA-funded contracts "can't" have failures. They obviously do, but he was more talking to the acceptability, political and otherwise. One or two launchpad explosions of a taxpayer funded vehicle and you're fighting Congressional demands to shut down the entire program. SpaceX provides a layer of abstraction and indirection to that, so they can move faster - "Who cares if we blow up 10 in the next couple of years to get to one that works".
The Falcon 9 is, by a wide margin, the most reliable rocket ever built. It's had 341 successful launches and 2 failures. The Atlas V (what is flying on this mission) has had 99 successes and 1 failure. It's also slightly misleading, because its first stage is using a Russian made RD-180 engine. And similarly the SLS (another Boeing et al project) is literally using the exact same engines (RS-25) that the Space Shuttle used.
So SpaceX is the only company truly innovating on all fields, has the highest launch success rate, highest launch cadence, the most capable rockets, and launches for far cheaper than any other company (or country).
> The Falcon 9 is, by a wide margin, the most reliable rocket ever built. It's had 341 successful launches and 2 failures.
I think it's worth pointing out that the failures were early in F9's life, and that the current configuration "F9 v1.2FT Block 5" has had no failures to launch and remarkable success when it comes to landing the booster.
> I think one of the challenges (and let's be really clear, Boeing has MANY issues) is that there's a double standard (or at least different expectations).
> How many SpaceX rockets and failures have there been? (And that's not a knock on SpaceX, either - this stuff is hard. Combining precision and technology with 'controlled explosion' is going to be a challenge).
IMO, this really misunderstands the two kinds of "tests".
SpaceX is engaged in a development program. And as a part of that development program, they're doing test flights to discover how to properly build Starship. Those flights are expected to fail in various ways. The exact way they fail gives SpaceX vital information that's used to improve the rocket.
A big part of the reason SpaceX is doing this is because simulation and modeling have a limited ability to give good answers to questions about novel behaviors when it comes to rockets - the speeds and just too high. And the only way to find the true unknown unknowns is to interact with reality.
In contrast, Starliner's tests are supposed to be demonstrations that the system is complete, functional, and ready for service. They are not supposed to have anything wrong with them at all.
It's worth pointing out that Boeing chose to do less testing and more paperwork as part of Starliner's certification. If Boeing had done an in-flight abort test instead of a pad abort test like SpaceX did, they probably would have caught the OFT-1 problems then.
I think you're conflating the way SpaceX is developing Starship with the way the rest of their business operates (and has operated). Their Falcon rockets (i.e. the ones they actually sell launches on) have an outstanding reliability record, and the Dragon 2 development program (the direct analogue to Starliner) didn't lose any test missions. IIRC the only major hardware loss was during a static fire test of the abort motors on the capsule, which is unfortunate, but not so far out of the ordinary.
there have been many many prototype and other losses. And incidents, some catastrophic, some less so.
SN1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15 and the orbital Starship launch attempt all had failures losing hardware. If NASA/publicly funded work had that many failures (or a fraction of them) there'd be Congressional enquiries and calls to shut down the program and stop burning tax dollars.
You are simply underlining my point that your perspective is disproportionately (and inappropriately, in this context) focused on the Starship program, which is completely irrelevant to NASA's Commercial Crew program.
It's true that SpaceX enjoys more latitude to destroy test hardware in its private development programs that aren't funded with somebody else's money (public or private), but why is that relevant here? Commercial Crew was funded by NASA with public money, and SpaceX developed Dragon 2 in a relatively conservative and conventional program with NASA looking over their shoulder the whole time. There is no double standard.
> there have been many many prototype and other losses
SpaceX has an assembly line in Hawthorne and test site in Texas. (Both send kit to the space coast for launch.)
The reliability of what comes out of the former exceed’s Boeing’s. The innovativeness of what comes out of the latter exceeds them once again. Muddling statistics between the two would be like considering Boeing’s experimental drones when measuring its commercial airliners’ reliability. They’re totally different departments.
Different design philosophy. Those launches were expected to fail. None of those were a finished product. It’s more like “let’s see how far we can get with what we have built so far”.
If NASA had that many failures while working on a program explicitly not intended to experience failures and it wasn't being run by Boing, Lockmart or any other defense contractor that has Congress in its pockets, yeah, they'd be getting hell from Congress. But, NASA did used to work on regular old development programs akin to Starship, where perceived failure was completely acceptable to push understanding. For example, there were the Ranger series of lunar impactors, the first 6 of which all failed in various ways, and of course they blew up plenty of rockets and rocket engines back then too.
The issue isn't "burning tax dollars". Congress is too busy selling out the country's future to give a shit about that. The issue is that they'd already rather not be giving any money to NASA in the first place. They'd just give the defense contractors tax payer funded 'donations' directly if they could.
What are you even talking about? NASA has directly publicly funded Starship development to the tune of ~4 Billion with the Artemis Moonlander contract and extension.
The overall perspective is that SpaceX developed their crewed capsule much much faster and cheaper than Boeing. The data also indicates that flying with SpaceX is safer.
Congress doesn't care about buring tax dollars as long as it is spent in their districts. Otherwise Artemis and SLS wouldn't exist.
Boeing and SpaceX are both not NASA, so same level of indirection. If Boeing went the iterative route with some failed experimental launches, that could/should be just as acceptable.
But they didn't, they went for the first time right approach, but that failed too. If you are going to have failures, maybe just accept that first time right doesn't exist, or just takes much much longer.
No, I totally agree. I'm talking about the mindset difference. I'm not saying "SpaceX is 'cheating'" or anything like that. Just the mindset differences are leading to what we see here in terms of iteration cadence.
Unlike science (and particularly math) where everything is trivial unless novel, in most endeavors these are too separate axes. For example, there's no progress or novelty in a sports team winning a championship, but it's definitely not trivial to win. Same for an engineering project - there are many cathedrals out there, but building a new one never became trivial.
> Let's say: if you can just open the manual and start building, then it is trivial.
> We've built many rockets, there are numerous resources about building one, so building rockets is trivial.
Except that you're wrong.
Because it's very common for the first launch of a company's first orbital rocket to fail to make it to orbit. So you can't "just open the manual and start building".
> It is also very common for the first pancake to be a total failure.
I guess, it depends on what you mean by "total failure".
It's very rare for the first pancake to be inedible, or basically anything except a little misshapen. As someone who's primary interested in pancakes is eating them, that's a far cry from "total failure".
But if that is your criteria, there's a very simple and effective solution: ring molds. They cost a couple of dollars on Amazon and guarantee that your pancakes will be perfect circles every time.
In contrast, there is no known way to ensure that a first rocket launch will be a success. If there was, the companies launching them would do it since failed launches are extremely expensive in time, money, and reputation.
Building a new Falcon 9 is trivial - spacex as built a lot already and knows how (or so we assume). However that is only true if you use the existing design as is. Change anything about the design (which we can assume spacex is doing from time to time) makes it non-trivial.
Quick, without cheating, can you name the second human being to run a mile in less than four minutes? Can you name the current world record holder?
I guess that most people in my small town don't know who Roger Bannister is. A lot more of them can tell you the name of the first local to officially run a mile in less than four minutes. They couldn't tell you if anybody from my state has done it since.
I guess that's just a long way to say, "That's natural."
