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Another embarassing software failure at Boeing (USA cannot into space)

  1. #1
    Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Dark Matter [my scoffingly uncritical tinning]
    At least no planes wrested control from the pilot and crashed themselves with no survivors this time:



    First comment is great :D

    Apparently Boeing were testing their new capsule that was supposed to dock with the space station. As soon as the capsule separated from the rocket and was activated it started firing its thrusters erratically, using up all the maneuvering fuel it was supposed to use to get to the ISS. It did manage to re-entry properly however.

    The mission launched successfully on 20 December 2019 at 6:36:43 am EST, but thirty-one minutes after launch the mission elapsed timer (MET) clock made an error and forced an abort to the ISS. During a later press conference, it was revealed that MET was offset by 11 hours. When it became obvious that the maneuver did not happen, NASA and Boeing tried sending commands to get Starliner back on track, but the position of the spacecraft switching communications between two TDRS satellites made the maneuver misfire inevitable.[citation needed] This resulted in an abort in ISS rendezvous. The decision was made by NASA and Boeing since the spacecraft burned too much fuel to reach the ISS even after Mission Control fixed the MET clock issue. NASA and Boeing officials placed the spacecraft in a different orbit and the entire flight plan had to be redone and the mission was reduced from eight days to three flight days.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Orbital_Flight_Test

    There seem to be no reasonableness/sanity checks when it comes to aerospace software, which is deplorable. As a result a single sensor, or a clock, causes catastrophic failure.
  2. #2
    Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Dark Matter [my scoffingly uncritical tinning]


    Apparently they used the wrong value for elapsed time. There are multiple timers on a rocket computer (of course) and they used the wrong one.

    These launches supposedly cost well over $100 million - will anyone lose their job?
  3. #3
    aldra JIDF Controlled Opposition
    software engineers should be held to the same standards as civil engineers
    The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
  4. #4
    Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Dark Matter [my scoffingly uncritical tinning]
    Originally posted by aldra software engineers should be held to the same standards as civil engineers

    It's weird, as soon as this happened I thought "software", simply because software standards seem to be so deplorable.
  5. #5
    Originally posted by aldra software engineers should be held to the same standards as civil engineers

    they'll just start calling themselves software mechanics.
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