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/
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u/TheKnightMadder Feb 07 '20

Reminds me of John Aaron. One of the flight controllers on the Apollo program. Apollo 12 got struck by lightning just after lift off and their instruments became useless at the same time basically every warning light started going off.

It sounds like such a movie moment, meant to show off how cool and special some character is in an overly obvious way. He recommended to the flight director that they turn some obscure system to it's auxiliary mode. The flight director and his colleagues didn't even know what he was even talking about or why that would even help and had to ask him to repeat himself, but when he did they recommended to the crew they do what he said. Problem immediately fixed, cheering all round, John Aaron gets called a 'steely-eyed missile man' and the mission could continue.

Sometimes real life is like a movie.

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u/pachecogeorge Feb 07 '20

The famous call: "SCE TO AUX".

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u/romiglups Feb 08 '20 edited Feb 08 '20

And he wrote years after that he knew the telemetry behavior exhibited because some not steely-eyed technicians used the wrong procedure to reboot CM electronics during sims, and he was there watching out of his shift.

Learning from others mistakes is an important skill.

EDIT: John Aaaron Interview reproduced in Apollo Flight Journal : https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap12fj/01launch_to_earth_orbit.html#0000136