Boeing has delayed by at least three months its first uncrewed flight to the International Space Station under NASA’s human spaceflight program and pushed its crewed flight until November. SpaceX has just successfully completed its first uncrewed test flight. If SpaceX completes its planned crewed mission in July, then SpaceX will be the only US option for manned missions for many months and possibly longer.
Given the history of Boeing, it would not be surprising if it took them one or two years to get their uncrewed test and then their first crewed mission completed. NASA will not let them rusk because safety will be the top priority.
SOURCE- Reuters
Written By Brian Wang.
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Pity but i hope they will manage to do it three months. Holding my thumbs for boeing.
Ford DID have a car model called Starliner…
Frankly, if you got to worship someone, a guy trying to take us to Mars would be high on my list. But vapid, truisms are always welcome.
According to Elon, D2 can handle TEI-speed reentry. Of course, the words “according to Elon” should require you to assign no greater than a 50% probability of that actually being true. He’s… enthusiastic.
Finally, Boeing realizes it can’t compete with costs a magnitude higher than those of SpaceX. This shows how long it’s been since Boeing had to compete with an innovative company on a cost, and performance basis.
Likely, the whole program will be delayed as much as possible, because Boeing has realized it’s throwing good money after bad. Boeing will do just enough to avoid refunding money to NASA. Read the contract to see what is in store.
That’s how federal crony corruption rolls.
Musk worshipping on NBF! I am shocked!
The return to Earth speed is significantly higher as well…
Hmmm….what about the Ford Galaxie?
All the visionaries that started these companies are long gone. Now run by risk adverse people that only care about money and stock price. It happens to all companies eventually. It will happen to SpaceX once Musk is gone.
I’m sure up at the top of RocketLab is a Musk-like authoritarian figure with unbridled ego and love of science fiction.
Seems counter intuitive to themselves and investors.
Orion and D2 don’t share the same environment. D2 is an LEO system. Orion is a BEO system. BEO is considerably harder. Radiation is higher energy outside Earth’s magnetosphere, and the spacecraft is in sunlight for much longer.
Between the 737 MAX, Bridenstine hoisting the Jolly Roger on SLS with the commercial EM-1 proposal, and now this, it’s easily the worst week in Boeing’s history.
Oops–forgot about Shanahan being investigated on procurement conflicts of interest.
Rusk? Rush Musk? Risk?
Maybe one day we will be able to buy share in a rocket ship and hope for a big payoff with no crashes. Like they did in the early days.
I read somewhere that the Orion capsule has already finished a couple of certifications which Dragon has not. Thermal and radiation- if I remember correctly. Anyone have more info on that, and could it become a problem?
Exactly, the smartest thing Elon has done is to keep SpaceX private so he doesn’t have to worry about quarterly dividends for his investors.
So the problem is that US society is not stratified enough?
The statement will be retconned to be “I meant they flew to the launch site on a 777 so we still win.”
I don’t think it is appropriate to call something a “Starliner” that has the interior space of a Ford Explorer.
Less Musk, more just having a company that makes its $ by actually putting stuff in to orbit.
Commercial crew access contracts are a rounding error to Boeing’s bottom line, and probably treated as such. Boeing knows that NASA is going to want two ways to get to ISS, they probably planned on being second all along.
Getting paid twice as much to take twice as much time? Good gig.
More people got into investing in the stock market. These people won’t accept loss to the people in charge of these companies now won’t accept loss.
something wrong happened with big aerospace conglomerates like Boeing and Lockheed.
it’s not Boeing and Lockheed of Apollo and SR-71 times . Today they become an enormous corrupt and lazy organisations (and monopolies) without a leadership.
They haven’t had a pad-failure test yet. SpaceX did that 4 years ago.
What is particularly embarrassing (for Boeing) about this delay is that NASA paid Boeing substantially more money (like a $billion more) than SpaceX got, for this Commercial Crew Contract. Goes to show that raw dollars aren’t the only thing that matters in technological development; having a guy on top like Ol’Musky that really, really, wants this technolgy to be developed is more important.
It was highly unlikely when the CEO of Boeing first said it.
I remember Boeing CEO saying the first people on Mars will have come on a Boeing rocket. ..
Highly unlikely it seems now.
Expect a long delay for even a Demo 1 of “Starliner”. Have they even shown the crew loading gantry yet (like SpaceX did about 6 months ago)? Next stop Dec 2019 so they can claim it will happen in 2019 … looks like they are now racing Jeff Bezos to get a person off the ground … SpaceX should easily win unless NASA tosses in a spoiler to delay it for Starliner “fairness”.