Starliner: If its Boeing, I ain't going.
(archive.is)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (9)
sorted by:
Of particular note:
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.
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.