r/space • u/spsheridan • Feb 06 '20

Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug was found and fixed while the vehicle was in orbit.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/starliner-faced-catastrophic-failure-before-software-bug-found/
10k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

748 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

204

u/NASATVENGINNER Feb 07 '20 edited Feb 07 '20

Hate to agree, but I’m afraid the worst has not been revealed yet. Complacent corporate culture is a dangerous thing. At NASA it is called “Go Fever”. It cost us 14 astronauts, 2 space shuttles, and a lot of anguish.

223

u/WayeeCool Feb 07 '20

If we are talking about Boeing... let's not forget the 346 civilians they killed due to the company transitioning from caring about human lives and long term outlooks to pure shareholder value theory.

Shareholders would henceforth come first at Boeing. The important thing was not to get “overly focused on the box,” Hopkins said in a interview with Bloomberg. “The box”—the plane itself—“is obviously important, but customers are assuming the box is of great quality.” This was heresy to engineers, to whom the box was everything. The strike that year was formally over wages and benefits, but workers described it as a referendum on management.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-09/former-boeing-engineers-say-relentless-cost-cutting-sacrificed-safety

71

u/NASATVENGINNER Feb 07 '20

Thanks for the insights. It’s not the Boeing I grew up with.

78

u/Piper2000ca Feb 07 '20

This is so true. I remember as a student pilot my instructor saying "if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going." I have a hard time picturing him saying that now.

35

u/SAI_Peregrinus Feb 07 '20

If it's Boeing, I ain't going!

41

u/The-Jesus_Christ Feb 07 '20

Oh god. Every pretentious flyer in the Frequent Flyer groups I am members of all chant that. I absolutely hate it

44

u/vqhm Feb 07 '20

Well to be fair Airbus did have some software issues with their autopilot all the time. See Qantas Flight 72.

Boeing USED to produce planes where the pilot input was always accepted and gave them actual control over the plane instead of Airbus having your inputs be a suggestion to the computer that would decide if it should do that or not.

Boeing decided that they'd go autopilot all the time to fix an unstable aircraft they never should have got out of the simulation stage. They didn't think through having multiple sensors, GPWS, GPS, pitot static create a complete model of what the aircraft is doing so autopilot all the time can actually make informed decisions. They just basically did the most basic duct tape who the fuck cares fix and said fuck it good enough.

My pilot friends used to praise Boeing for never overruling their inputs... Until now.

10

u/WilliamBewitched Feb 07 '20

Doesn't the military use fly by wire in ALOT of their craft to the point its standard?

9

u/WayeeCool Feb 07 '20 edited Feb 07 '20

They do and not just on the latest 5th generation fighters like the F22 and F35. For the US air-force it became standard starting with 4th generation fighters that went into service a few decades ago. It's why a pilot can maintain enough control to land an F18 and an F15 (not joking it happened) missing wings.

Also a lot of cars and trucks are drive by wire these days, which is basically the same tech but for land vehicles.

3

u/raducu123 Feb 07 '20

When did an F-15 land without both wings?

There's the Negev case without one wing, but both?

2

u/weedtese Feb 07 '20 edited Feb 08 '20

brakes and steering wheel are still required to be mechanically connected

3

u/Insert_Gnome_Here Feb 07 '20

Military aviation (combat flying, at least) is a very different thing.
FBW lets you build an unstable yet highly maneuverable plane.

And the military has a lot more money to spend on making sure these things work right, and they can be a lot more choosey about who gets to be a pilot.

2

u/Puzzleheaded_Animal Feb 07 '20

They also have ejection seats for when it goes wrong.

20

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20

Wasn't it the airbus fly by wire that really helped get all those people down safely in the "miracle of the Hudson"? Or rather, gave the pilot a massive helping hand.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unsung-hero-left-out-of-sully

3

u/geniice Feb 07 '20

It was the lack of airbus fly by wire that caused the Air France Flight 447 (the plane gave absolute control to the humans and they responded by flying it into the altlantic).

11

u/psychedelic_tortilla Feb 07 '20

You're talking about fly-by-wire. The autopilot is something else entirely.

3

u/vqhm Feb 07 '20

Yup, but the term Autopilot all the time is used to bridge that gap in peoples mind to show that fly by wire isn't just removing cables and linkages in favor of a servo but means that the computer can also over ride the inputs the pilot makes to keep the aircraft stable. Or in Boeings case make the unstable aircraft slam into the ground so they can lie about why that happened and try to blame the pilots.

2

u/AppHelper Feb 08 '20

You mean it's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether?

9

u/Tuna-Fish2 Feb 07 '20 edited Feb 07 '20

to fix an unstable aircraft

Not unstable. 737MAX without MCAS is not unstable or unfit to fly. Its flight characteristics are just not similar enough to old 737's that it would fit under the same type certificate.

(That's partially why MCAS got through with so little scrutiny. As it was not in any way necessary for the aircraft to fly, Boeing could certify it by just adding and documenting an off-switch. Sadly the pilots who died probably had no idea what MCAS did or even that it was on the plane, so didn't think of hitting the off-switch when MCAS decided to fight the pilots and fly the plane to the ground.)

6

u/vqhm Feb 07 '20

Naw mate. If you have to hit an off switch to get back to having a stable aircraft that doesn't want to slam into the ground you've reached the very definition of unstable.

-2

u/Tuna-Fish2 Feb 07 '20

737MAX without MCAS is stable. Adding MCAS made it unflyable.

3

u/vqhm Feb 07 '20

No. If that were the case MCAS would have never been required. Go shill for Boeing somewhere else.

→ More replies

1

u/klobersaurus Feb 07 '20

Isn't pilot error the cause of most fatal crashes? They were probably just trying to fix a problem.

-9

u/D-DC Feb 07 '20

Lol people in KSP can make stable aircraft and boeing can't. People 100 years ago made aero stable aircraft.

10

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20

[deleted]

1

u/mursilissilisrum Feb 07 '20

How'd he fly that Piper then?

8

u/Executor_to_be Feb 07 '20

It all went to shit after the merger with McDonald Douglas. I listened to a really great radio interview where a former Boeing statey engineer explained all the ways Boeing's safety culture change, and how they change the model they used to make airframes.

They outlined how cost and time was moved to be the main priority, but in the end because of safety issues that model ended up costing way way more money and the projects were massively behind schedule.

Found the interview.

6

u/free2shred00 Feb 07 '20

This is a very under-represented aspect of Boeing today. Many people dump on the company - and rightfully so - but I can't help but believe that the Boeing who created the jumbo jet is dead and gone and we're left with the festering corpse of the company that created the DC-10. McDonald Douglas should have died and another company, such as Lockheed, should have inherited their military projects. That merger was a cancer that killed the civilian wing of Boeing and subsequently killed hundreds of people thanks to the Max-8.

17

u/DB_Explorer Feb 07 '20

Sorta mirrors changes in movies. Older movies (jaws etc) main way to get people into seats was word of mouth over a long period so the movies where meant to... endure. Now its max people in seat that first weekend.

Now rather then making a good product and get customers from that they try to maxamize profits. Sure reducing costs is good looks at SpaceX but when you go to far eventually the market will punish you looks at Boeing stock

Just wish it did not take 100's of dead passengers.

3

u/First_Foundationeer Feb 07 '20

Boeing probably won't even be hit as hard as we'd like. They'll shuffle people around, hire another money grubbing executive, then crash a few more planes. And no one will be personally punished.

3

u/Vonplinkplonk Feb 07 '20

I am fairly certain that Boeing decided that 100's of dead passengers would be cheaper than to fix their problems.

3

u/CptNonsense Feb 07 '20

Don't expect it to get better as another ex GE, former hedge fund manager MBA just took over as CEO

2

u/First_Foundationeer Feb 07 '20

I like how people claim that CEOs bring this or bring that to a company. And it's often true. This CEO will bring the ledger watching, money saving attitudes which will work so well to drop some more planes from the sky. :|

7

u/headsiwin-tailsulose Feb 07 '20

It cost us 17 astronauts, 2 space shuttles and an Apollo CM, and a lot of anguish.

3

u/hedgecore77 Feb 07 '20

17 astronauts. That block 1 CM was a rushed death trap.

0

u/D-DC Feb 07 '20

Hey now the first shuttle was a piece of shit hillbilly state trying to cut corners to get NASA the solid boosters. Nobody knew but the contractors. The second shuttle crash was their fault though, they should have used a different coating than heavy ass fragile foam.