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Boeing's Second Starliner Spaceflight Mission to International Space Station Has Astronomical Stakes - The Daily Beast

Boeing's Second Starliner Spaceflight Mission to International Space Station Has Astronomical Stakes - The Daily Beast

Boeing's Second Starliner Spaceflight Mission to International Space Station Has Astronomical Stakes - The Daily Beast
May 18, 2022 3 mins, 48 secs

Can Boeing begin to repair its battered reputation with one rocket launch?

Its Starliner capsule now sits atop an Atlas 5 rocket on a pad in Florida, being readied for a flight to the International Space Station Thursday evening, as part of a test program already two and a half years behind schedule.

A successful Starliner test flight would certainly help, but it would do little to counter the picture of a once peerless innovator falling badly behind its competitors.

Indeed, the problems of the Starliner inevitably prompt analysts to suggest a classic case of industrial Darwinism—that, by its nature, Boeing can never match the game-changing brilliance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX programs because its engineering culture has been gutted by cost-slashing and its executives have become risk-averse.

Just about every step forward they made could be attributed to the brilliance of either individuals or small teams: from the way a cabin door ingeniously sealed on closing to how a serious flight control issue was resolved, more or less overnight, by improvising with existing parts.

That said, the most catastrophic hit to Boeing’s reputation, the grounding of the 737-MAX after two fatal crashes, can be traced back to that team of engineers, though that outcome was not of their making.

A Boeing 737-MAX in the air in the U.K.

Both fatal crashes, involving jets operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, revealed that pilots were confused by a cascade of audio and visual warnings in the cockpit of systems failures.

But the 737’s cockpit alert system falls well short of state-of-the art systems on all other jets—including Boeing’s.

When the 737-MAX was cleared to fly again, the FAA agreed with Boeing that the existing cockpit alert system was sufficiently safe.

This was explained to me by an expert with long experience of Boeing jets and the evolution of their cockpit technology: “To achieve that kind of generational change requires the aircraft to have a digital backbone, and digital capable systems and sensors.

All subsequent Boeing jets were designed to have that “digital backbone” that could accept continual upgrading, but the 737, with its 1960s architecture, was like a house that needed rewiring and the cost of gutting the house was too much— as the expert told me: “It would have required major systems changes, a complete revamp of the overhead instrument panels in the cockpit, massively different interfaces for engines and systems.”.

The commercial division recently reported a first quarter loss of $856 million which reflected the discovery of serious flaws in its next big jet, the 777X, including a flight control issue that, as in the case of the 737-MAX, led in a test flight to an “uncommanded” sudden pitching down of the nose.

Techie evangelists praise the model-based system in Orwellian terms, as “the single source of truth.” At Boeing, that essentially means scrapping the old company hierarchy of specialist groups (“smashing the silos” is the jargon term) and concentrating the whole program under the new system—in effect, giving it total control of the design, development and manufacturing of an entire airplane, from the first concept sketch to the first flight.

MBSE failed to anticipate and prevent the flight control issues on the 777X, and there was a similar failure with the T-7A when Air Force test pilots suddenly found that if they pulled the jet up into a steep climb it developed a disturbing tic known as “wing rock” that could lead to falling out of the sky.

Conceptual art of the Boeing Starliner in orbit.

As it is, in the hard reality of now, the approaching white knuckle moment for Boeing is the launch of the Starliner.

The last planned launch of the Starliner was aborted nine months ago when a problem showed up in the propulsion system used to steer the capsule in space.

Reuters reported last week that Aerojet, the makers of the system, alleged that chemical cleaners used by Boeing on the launch pad were responsible

However, the shadow of Boeing’s management style still hangs over the launch

Last week, the independent panel of experts that advises NASA on safety issues warned that Boeing’s staffing levels on the project “seem to be especially low” and that safety certification of the parachutes, deployed on the final phase of the capsule’s return to earth, was “lagging behind.” More ominously, Patricia Sanders, chair of the panel, was doubtful that Starliner will be ready to fly astronauts soon: “it is still a ways off before we have two fully functioning, operational vehicles.”

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