Monday, December 23, 2019

OK, yeah, but.....

So Boeing's Starliner's failure is being touted as some grand horrible failure that will end the world or something.

Boeing's new Starliner spacecraft landed in the New Mexico desert on Sunday morning — days after the NASA mission failed because the capsule's clock was improperly set, and the capsule ended up in the wrong orbit.

Yes, things didn't go quite right, but the spacecraft landed.  It was recovered.  Folks, space flight is hard.  It's not easy to do what we're trying to do.  And in case anyone wants a little context, the crew of the Apollo 1 mission died.  We've had two Space Shuttles disintegrate; one on take off, and one on landing.  The Ruskies had space craft blow the fuck up with people inside.

So we got a spacecraft that made orbit, landed and was recovered but didn't quite accomplish what people had hoped?  Dude, I'll take it.  Learn from the mistakes and move on to bigger and better things.  Finally.

3 comments:

p2 said...

Begs the question: Are these critics actual rocket scientists? Try balancing a pencil on it's point on your little fingertip while driving at highway speed with that hand out the window, in a hurricane. There's your idea of getting anything into space.

pigpen51 said...

I would have to say from what little I know,and trust me, it is very little, that we are pretty much on schedule. It takes a lot of trial and error, before you are ready to commit to launching human beings on the nose of a bullet into space.
And to think that a civilian company is involved in this project makes me proud of America. We have the smartest people not only in our military, but in our civilian experimental labs doing some of the most innovative things that you could imagine.
I see lists in some of the magazines and online that I read, that our people are working on, and it just floors me. I mean, just something as simple as taking your blood sugars, are now as simple as touching a smart phone device to a sensor stuck to your arm, which you can hide under your shirt sleeve, and you have your reading. That is no ordinary invention. It will not only allow people to monitor their blood sugars more often, but it will also allow them to keep a record of it, send it to their doctors, or adjust their insulin more often, or even have it connected with their insulin pump, and they will work in tandem. And to it is a simple thing, that we invented to make life easier for people with diabetes. Just imagine what the future holds.
We are planning on actually going back to the moon as soon as 2024. I suspect that a base there will be the next phase, and launching probes will be much cheaper and require less fuel as well. Then, when the time comes to launch to a planet,we can slingshot around the earth and use it's gravity to gain part of our initial thrust for the trip, instead of having to carry heavy boosters just to get out of earth's atm. People should be stoked, and not worried about climate change, which from what I can deduce,is not the threat it is claimed to be, and the earth is already beginning to make some adjustments to compensate for it. Mankind is not responsible for climate change, and cannot do anything to change it. The earth is just to huge of an ecosystem.

Deserttrek said...

Much ado to smear Boeing
If it had been manned, the pilot would have taken over and corrected the trajectory.
A ground landing on target is a first for the program and now lets launch one with people

Merry Christmas