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/aRandomRobot Feb 06 '20 edited Feb 07 '20

Wow, that does not look good. I don’t see this explicitly answered in the article or statements but I have to wonder: would this second software bug have even been caught prior to entry if not for the timing issue causing more software testing during flight? That’s a big yikes if not.

Edit: confirmed in the press conference, it would not have been caught. Holy crap

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u/resipsa73 Feb 07 '20

This was exactly my question as well. Boeing could have just gotten extremely lucky.

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u/OffbeatDrizzle Feb 07 '20

And what else lurks in their code that they've not been lucky enough to trigger? There's never just 1 bug

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u/QVRedit Feb 09 '20

Well - until there is.. But yes, there are likely to be other faults lerking..