Starliner: If its Boeing, I ain't going.
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Which is odd because the previous flight was unmanned. They are dicking around with flight software on human rated flights.
In flight software systems its normal to completely remove modules of the program for flight modes your mission profile is not supposed to execute.
This is why, for example, a dragon cargo capsule once survived a launch vehicle failure but had no programming to use its parachutes in a launch failure condition. It could only use them in a return from orbit. The software module had been developed for crewed flights, but for cargo they hadn't planned for a survivable launch abort because cargo dragon has no abort superdraco engines. Afterwards, they decided to make provisions for a cargo launch abort in the off chance a cargo dragon would survive a rocket breakup despite having no escape thrusters.
That make a lot of sense. Still, it does seem to leave you up a creek without a paddle in this exact situation.
This situation shouldn't be a situation. NASA is waffling on the definition of what it means to be a test pilot. If they decide to rewrite Crew-9 as a retrieval mission for B-CTF, then Boeing had better be fukkin dropped.
Seems like it's more than just re-enabling some modules. But either way, it proves that this flight is using software that is significantly different from the previous test. But then what was the point of the unmanned test?
That sounds to me like a middle management answer that has to do with a ticket-implement-build-test-certify pipeline rather than the actual time to do the work.
I say that fully guilty of giving that sort of estimate to managers before.
Given how badly their organization as fucked up already, I doubt any engineer wants to skip a single step.
Does it not have...controls?