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NASA violated safety standards docking Boeing Starliner to ISS
This is the shocking part of the Boeing Starliner scandals that hasn’t gotten any media attention: When docking at the ISS, NASA greenlit both approach and docking to the space station even though the Starliner’s thrusters had failed—and there was insufficient redundancy to guarantee a safe docking…
This is the biggest scandal of the group. It’s the kind of management that destroyed the Challenger in 1986. I think this really illustrates that bureaucracies can’t learn from “institutional memory”. After a while, all those memories walk out the door and end up in a retirement village…
To my mind, there are 4 major scandals involving the Starliner project:
- Boeing’s mismanagement of the project and NASA funding, doing far less with far more than SpaceX… Embarrassingly so.
- Docking the Starliner to the ISS when safety standards dictated that they must abort and return to Earth. I understand that would put them between a rock and a hard place… But if they’d crashed into the ISS, they could have killed everyone and destroyed a $300 billion asset. NASA’s luck eventually runs out.
- NASA was only paying the astronauts $5 a day per diem for the extra 9 months in space… No overtime.
- Political interference on NASA prevented a rescue flight before the election.
#1 and #4 are not news. I heard about them ad nauseum. (Perhaps because I mostly get my news from Ricochet, and some folks I just have a tendency to pass over. Not you.)
#2 is almost unheard of. The consequences I really hadn’t thought of.
#3 is news. Embarrassing news.
Honestly, I thought of a better one for #4, but as I was typing it out, I lost that train of thought…
Its not so much of these scandals being recent news, if someone hasn’t been following technology or aerospace news, they may have missed these news items…
NASA likely wasn’t the source of the political interference, just the conduit. It would be instructive to know who had that kind of pull.
Trump has said that they’ll get more “overtime” pay, even if he has to pay it himself. Not that it will be a huge amount of money, but “it’s the thought that counts.”
Some west wing interns no doubt. I suspect that NASA would have brought them down much sooner had it not put a feather in Elons cap once it was clear he shifted to becoming a Trump supporter.
As for the whole Starliner debacle I think you need to understand how NASA whole manned program has essential become a job support program (with Congress well in the thick of the choosing process, just like large DoD procurement, for what few contractors left that can be expected to at least deliver something for the outrageous billing.
Well I certainly did!
I hope it happens.
Regarding #2, I don’t think they had much choice and probably made the best decision under the circumstances. The multiple successive thruster failures left them in a couple of one-fault failure situations, one zero-fault, and once even lost six-axis maneuvering (loss of forward thrust.) (Those are the numbers of faults the system is away from loss of full six-axis maneuvering.) A Boeing reset (aka Raytheon reset) got them back within parameters for manual docking.
So it was close, but it’s not clear that leaving and trying re-entry would have been a better course. The thrusters affect that too. I think the flight managers made good calls throughout the event.
The astronauts are salaried. (Both are also retired Navy.) Technically, it’s just like an extended deployment at sea. In fact, the 286 days the astronauts were on the ISS is shorter than the longest carrier deployment in history. Sailors get hardship pay on their 221st day that amounts to $16.50/day and caps out at $495/mo.
The top pay for astronauts is $152,258.
If it was unsafe to return to Earth, also, how do those risks compare to docking?
The astronauts were getting $5/day.
And I don’t think navy people have much trouble walking when they get back.
That is the standard incidental travel allowance for federal employees. Do you understand the difference between salaried and hourly employment?
Our military personnel pay a huge price for extended deployments. Sit this one out.
Which means the astronauts pay that price AND have trouble walking when they get back, etc.
In addition to which, this one wasn’t supposed to be an extended deployment.
And nobody was trying to kill them. Please.
The military doesn’t plan extended deployments either. You think that the Navy planned for the extended deployments of the Truman and the GHW Bush after the October 7 attacks on Israel? Or is that an approved conspiracy theory?
Not the point. But just in case, are any scheduled navy deployments only supposed to last 8 days?
Nobody was trying to kill them? You could truncate that a little … Nobody was trying.
Do you think Alaska Crab fishermen get danger pay? or deep sea welders? Nobody is trying to kill them either, but the nature of their job is dangerous…
Also if you’re preparing for a 10 day trip into space your physical training would be different than if you’re planning to stay for months… Look at how unhealthily skinny they were exiting this mission.
That’s called reserve duty.
But you know all of this through your extensive experiences, right? What is you do or did again?
Now Now…
We all can see the news… We can hear a Carrier Battle Group’s deployment being extended for a few extra months to deal with a crisis or natural disaster somewhere in the world…
Its different for the Military, this kinda thing happens routinely…
The Starliner going home without its astronauts is unprecedented. Nothing like it has ever happened before.
You think that everyone in the manned space program thinks they’re taking a 737 to Cleveland? Everyone that straps themselves on to a rocket knows what happened to Apollo 1 and 13 and the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. On a scale of Oh, My! to Oh, Crap! this hardly registers a sigh. And somebody is worried about overtime pay?
We’ve become so hyper politicized there’s no perspective.
Actually, all things considered, it would appear that complete disasters are far more likely than what happened with Starliner.
Not at all … I am worried about minor things like pay, because NASA got very lucky and let me. NASA has a history of pushing its luck right past the breaking point…
That’s a bad example. Firstly a 737 isnt as safe you’re assuming… and 2ndly you end up in Cleveland…
Because of the energy levels involved space flight may become more and more routine but there is a limit to how safe it can become.
Those astronauts did not need to be stranded for 9 months. That was a political decision to avoid embarrassing the Biden admin. And it placed them at significant health risk they did not need to suffer.
Over 250 million flight hours…
He’s on his own, there. Personally, I wouldn’t get any closer than Canton. North Canton, in daylight.
Yes, as long as the doors stay on, or it doesnt catch fire on the tarmac… (I guess its the safest place to burn down a plane)
CDN, you’re out to lunch on the pay.
Astronauts are not hourly workers. They don’t get overtime. Per diem is meant to pay for the extra expenses above your normal salary while traveling. All their meals and lodging are free. Why would they rate any per diem?
Astronauts are probably not paid what I’d expect, but the line for people wanting to be astronauts is quite long and filled with any number of people who can do the job.
Don’t feel sorry for them. They got to be in space and astronauts pretty much live for that.
Being abandoned in space is a bad deal, to be sure, but they did get something out of it. They’re glad to be home, but they’ll look back on that as an adventure.
I bet they were due some paid time off during those months. They weren’t able to get it.
And “overtime” is one thing. But essentially being on the job 24/7, for MONTHS rather than DAYS, is different.
Sunny and Butch are ranked as GC 15, a base salary of $125 000 to $163 000 per year. They also have a per diem of $5 a day when traveling.
NASA took active decisions to keep them traveling for an unplanned and exceptionally extended period. Lets leave the space flight stuff out for a second – imagine they were working for an oil company who decided to leave them on an off shore oil rig for an extended period – would they be entitled to compensation well beyond their ‘normal circumstances’ pay?
I’m guessing that all those people on navy ships at sea should be getting overtime now?
The key points. Any number of people would have gladly traded places with them.