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Boeing has now lost $1.1 billion on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Boeing has now lost $1.1 billion on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight::"We're not really ready to talk about a launch opportunity yet."

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[–] supercriticalcheese@feddit.it 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

During a normal flight, these substandard links would not be an issue. But Starliner's parachute system is designed to land a crew safely in case one of the three parachutes fails. However, due to the lower failure load limit with these soft links, if one parachute fails, it's possible the lines between the spacecraft and its remaining two parachutes would snap due to the extra strain.

The second issue involves P-213 glass cloth tape that is wrapped around wiring harnesses throughout the vehicle. These cables run everywhere, and Nappi said there are hundreds of feet of these wiring harnesses. The tape is intended to protect the wiring from nicks. However, during recent tests, it was discovered that under certain circumstances possible in flight, this tape is flammable.

I cannot imagine these two are insomourtable, but it also depends on how likely are these to occur in practice.

[–] Ryantific_theory@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

From what I saw, part of the issue is that P-212 glass cloth isn't flammable, implying that there was a mistake in ordering or using P-213 instead.

As for how likely they are, spacecraft carry a pure oxygen supply and fires are one of the most dangerous things that can occur. Astronauts have died on the ground in training capsules that ignited, after which NASA paid close attention to any potential risk. As for the parachute, I don't know how likely they are to fail, but it effectively changes from a point of failure with one redundancy (can lose one chute, but still land) to a single point of failure that would result in the death of all astronauts aboard if it failed. NASA's pretty good about making sure that astronauts never die from something that could have been planned for.