Boeing, NASA say Starliner astronaut launch will move forward despite spacecraft helium leak

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NBC News/CNBC

May 24, 2024, 3:18 PM EDT / Source: CNBC.com


Boeing and NASA are moving forward with the launch of the company’s Starliner capsule, set to carry U.S. astronauts for the first time, despite a “stable” leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system.

“We are comfortable with the causes that we’ve identified for this specific leak,” Mark Nappi, Boeing vice president and manager of the company’s Commercial Crew program, said during a press conference on Friday. “We know we can manage this [leak], so this is really not a safety of flight issue,” Nappi added.

Boeing is now targeting June 1 for the first crewed launch of its spacecraft, with backup opportunities on June 2, June 5 and June 6.

The mission, known as the Starliner Crew Flight Test, is intended to serve as the final major development test of the capsule by delivering a pair of NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station before flying routine missions.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/boeing-nasa-say-starliner-astronaut-launch-moves-forward-rcna153992

[Jack-o-Lantern]

1. I sure hope they can pull this off...isn't Boeing the company where hatches blow out at altitude??

And other parts of the aircrafts are falling off??

[BidenRocks]

2. How soon they forget...

RIP Challenger crew.
I don't have any faith in the company or the unneeded machine.

[IzzaNuDay]

24. Boeing wasn't culpable in Challenger accident

That was well documented the blame was on the Morton Thiokol O-ring breach. Not a Boeing issue.

[BidenRocks]

25. The rush to launch

Was a NASA issue.
See the similar issues.
Behind schedule and way over budget.
I would not fly on that pos even as a test pilot.

[IzzaNuDay]

30. the first Starliner lead astronaut quit in 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/07/tech/boeing-starliner-crew-chris-ferguson-scn/index.html

he’s probably watching this drama!

[Dem2theMax]

3. How about instead of the astronauts,

let the people who say this is safe, prove it by being the ones in the seats.

[bluestarone]

29. Well, i'd at least make them

Fly with the astronauts.

[scipan]

4. I don't remember any spacecraft being flown before

with a fuel leak. Seems dangerous, because of the change in pressure in space, shear forces, heat, cold, etc. But what do I know?

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Helium is technically not a "fuel"

it's an inert gas (so it doesn't actually "burn" - where "burn" = "mixes and ignites with oxygen" ). I think it is used to do flushing and pressurizing of the fuel lines/tanks.

[scipan]

6. Thanks for the correction. I was oversimplifying rocket engines

it is rocket science after all...

I had to go find more details on how it's used (don't know why it says helium is non-inert, wiki disagrees):

Helium, as a non-inert gas, is not an immediate risk to a launch. But as it is in a part of the Starliner propulsion system, it could affect the pressurization for small maneuvers in orbit. Aside from studying that leak, NASA and Boeing have been working to learn how the helium system could potentially affect Starliner's return to Earth.

The leak is located in one Aerojet Rocketdyne reaction control system (RCS) thruster that is located in a single "doghouse," one of four such assemblies around the outside of Starliner's service module. It is in a manifold that is "used to open and close valves on each of the thrusters," said NASA's Steve Stich, program manager for the agency's commercial crew program.

https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-launch-date-helium-leak

It goes on to say that they have developed a way to fire just a few RCS thrusters 2x to deorbit if several become disabled, and they have other thruster types as well to use to deorbit.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. I'm a retired chemist

and we used helium as a "carrier gas" for doing gas chromatography and other stuff. When we injected a liquid sample into the GC, it immediately vaporized at the heated port and the helium carried that sample plug into the column, and would move the separated components from the eluent, out of the other end of the column, and into the GC's detector.

Of course we would have fun with the helium - blowing up disposable gloves with it, and some wanted to do the "Donald Duck" voice thing, and whatnot.

[scipan]

9. Hey I just learned that ppl can die from like a whole balloon filled with He

like CO2 but less binding I think?

I also just read that, because it's such a tiny molecule, it can pass through glass? At least given enough time.

Glad to know chemists can be silly. We tried inhaling/eating Reddi Whip to change our voices but don't think it worked that well.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Oh yeah

all kinds of gasses can displace the O2 needed to attach to the iron in your hemoglobin. That's what happens with too much N2 as well.

And LOL, we used to do all kinds of wild stuff in the lab to pass the time.

[LudwigPastorius]

10. "It is in a manifold that is used to open and close valves on each of the thrusters,"

That seems kind of important. What if a valve won't open to fire the maneuvering thruster, or worse, gets stuck open?

Don't you have to be at a precise attitude to reenter the atmosphere safely?

I certainly hope this isn't Boeing putting pressure to launch on NASA because it needs a "win".

[BumRushDaShow]

11. It probably depends on how "big" a "leak" it is

They might have specs for NMT some amount of leak but they still have equipment that can detect minuscule leaks below whatever threshold they have set. I expect if they can still maintain the pressure at or above a certain designated spec, even with the leak, then they might be speculating it should be okay.

[scipan]

16. Farther down in the article

it says the problem is in 1 of 4 "doghouses" so it can only affect 25% of RCSs max, they have other thruster types, and they can even deorbit with just 4 RCSs. So several backups.

There are three certified techniques in which Starliner could come back home: Eight RCS thrusters, two orbital maneuvering and attitude control (OMAC) thrusters, or four OMAC thrusters

Yeah though, Boeing is not very confidence boosting lately.

[lapfog_1]

31. as we used to say at NASA... rocket science is easy, aerodynamics is hard.

the shuttle disasters bookend my time at NASA. I joined not that long after Challenger. Recent enough that nobody talked about it. One person I know that worked there at the time drove his car into a bridge abutment right after the crash. He wasn't trying to kill himself, he just couldn't stop thinking about it as if he could have done something to prevent it. Right after I left NASA was Columbia. This one hit hard as one of the astronauts that died that day had an office just down the hall from me.

There were decisions all along that created both disasters. The original selected vendor of the solid rocket boosters was on the east coast and could have shipped the booster rockets to the cape by intercoastal waterway without the O-ring. The O-ring only existed because Morton Thiokol was in Utah and therefore had to ship the boosters by rail car... thus in sections. BTW you can blame Senator Orin Hatch on directing NASA to consider the solid rocket booster from Utah. I know I do.

Prior to the Columbia, the specific piece of form that tore off and struck the leading edge of the left wing had torn off from THREE previous missions, and it was by pure luck that this suitcase sized bit of foam ( designed to keep the tank cold thus preventing more of the liquid gases inside the tank from boiling off just before launch ) from hitting anything vital. There were MANY fixes to this issue... top of the tank and not delay in launching, insulate that area with something else, cover the foam with some other material to prevent the atmosphere from ripping the foam... or even change the flight profile so that more time was spent at "throttle down" until higher in the atmosphere ( but which might also have limited the entire flight profile ).

By the way, I was part of the team as NASA did the post ascent throttle down for MaxQ to prevent tile damage before Columbia... so there is that bit of guilt that we all carry with us.

Finally, and I have said before here... The original Space Shuttle was designed to be a technology demonstrator, not the final multiple use space truck that was promised to Congress. Everyone I knew at NASA over my 10 years there said that we should have built ONE, flown it for maybe 5 missions, learned all that we could... and then designed the real thing. Like Mercury and Gemini before Apollo. Or almost all ground breaking planes in history. Try something out... learn what you can do better, then iterate until you have something that works. But Congress kept cutting the budget and people lost interest in NASA... the moon landing days were well behind us... and the Soviets were busy just trying to feed their population.

Ultimately there were a lot of bad decisions all along the way. And yet being part of NASA was the proudest thing ever in my life.. and even made my father proud of me ( he thought I should have been a pilot in the Navy, like he was after his time serving on a destroyer in WW2 ).

I hope they are not making another hurried pressured decision.

[scipan]

32. My dream job was to work at NASA. I was a software engineer.

I saw the first 3 shuttles take off from across the Indian? River, and was watching live on TV when the Challenger exploded. You bring back so many memories.

NASA has had a hard time of it. So much cost cutting, yet the expectations of success and especially the risk of losing popular support if astronauts died. It took me a long time but I now wish they wouldn't do any/many manned missions. Robots can do almost all of it now. Not for the astronauts' sake but moreso to avert another catastrophe that might make people turn away.

I now think I would have been a wreck, worrying some glitch of mine would blow up a shuttle. Yeah I know about avoiding single points of failure.

You post triggered a memory about Columbia, that they knew foam pieces fell off and hit the wing, and were considering a space walk and repair, but ultimately decided it wouldn't work. You know those guys died doing what they loved, and had a much more realistic grasp of the danger than I did. They are my heroes too.

ETA: I watched a demo at Kennedy Space Center about the tiles, and 1) they were incredibly light (wouldn't add much weight in a repair kit), but 2) *each one was different*. They never told the crew about the tiles falling off.

About the Challenger, you probably know this, but Sally Ride passed Feynman a note about the O rings probably being the culprit. Next day he did his ice water thing.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

8. On some spacecraft...

...helium is used to pressurize the fuel and oxidizer to move them from the tanks so they can mix and ignite. AFAIK the fuel commonly used is hydrazine and MON-25 is an often used oxidizer. In some cases hydrazine (MMH) is used alone since it will combust in the presence of sufficient heat and a catalyst.

In any case, this doesn't seem like a minor problem.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. Right but it's not a "fuel" in and of itself

it's a (perfect) "noble gas"!

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

15. Absolutely, not a fuel.

AFAIK there's not much that's less reactive than helium. I think that's why it's used as it is in spacecraft.
Chemistry is dangerous.

[BumRushDaShow]

19. I suppose

neon would reluctantly agree!

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

22. ...and the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made...

[BumRushDaShow]

23. Now I'll have that song in my head for the rest of the day!

[scipan]

17. Thanks. Makes sense, except how does the He not mux

mix with the fuel?

I mean, you need a piston or something to keep it separate?

Guess I need to Google some more.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

18. To be completely candid...

...I'm not sure but, if I were the designer, I'd use some type of bladder to keep the fuel separate.
(If I did know, I'm not sure I'd be allowed to say since that info may be export controlled.)

[scipan]

20. Makes sense, thanks.

Pistons are overkill and heavy.

[truthisfreedom]

14. Naturally they're forced to go forward with a publicly announced leak.

It’s completely humiliating. Just what they deserve. If something else goes wrong, naturally it will be assumed that the leak was to blame, and they’ll be forced to defend themselves as late night comedians harvest their humiliation for cheap laughs. And they’ll deserve that too.

[Rebl2]

21. Seems foolish to me

[BidenRocks]

27. People will die!

Space X was put through the grinder, yet Boeing floated on past glory.
Time to rethink. Even if one F-9 ruds, there are over 300 successes.
Not a design issue!

[Ocelot II]

26. I think that if I were part of that crew I'd nope right out of this flight...

[Arne]

28. They should not be using Helium.

They should instead use Nitrous Oxide.
The crew would laugh all the way to the ISS.

[Wonder Why]

33. Hey, what's a little leak? No big deal! Ask the Challenger crew.

[Polybius]

34. Does Biden have the power to stop this on his own?

Seems like it might be a good idea. Not only to prevent a disaster and to save lives, but because of the relentless media attacks if something were to happen to the shuttle.