""While this anomaly was corrected in flight, if it had gone uncorrected it would have led to erroneous thruster firing and uncontrolled motion during SM separation for deorbit, with the potential for catastrophic spacecraft failure," Hill said during the meeting."<p>I guess some things just never get old, citing from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_5" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_5</a> :<p>"The flight was also memorable for its dramatic re-entry. The craft's service module did not separate, so it entered the atmosphere nose-first, leaving cosmonaut Boris Volynov hanging by his restraining straps. As the craft aerobraked, the atmosphere burned through the module. But the craft righted itself before the escape hatch was burned through."<p>This actually happened three times so far with the Soyuz (in all cases without the loss of crew):<p>"An incomplete separation between the Service and Reentry Modules led to emergency situations during Soyuz 5, Soyuz TMA-10 and Soyuz TMA-11, which led to an incorrect reentry orientation (crew ingress hatch first)."<p>(from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)#Service_module" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)#Service_mod...</a>)<p>One would kinda expect that past crewed vehicle emergencies would be studied in detail when designing a new one & that the developers would make extra sure they can't reasonably happen with their design.
"Given the potential for systemic issues at Boeing, I would also note that NASA has decided to proceed with an organizational safety assessment with Boeing as they previously conducted with SpaceX"
> According to the source, Boeing patched a software code error just two hours before the vehicle reentered Earth's atmosphere. Had the error not been caught, the source said, proper thrusters would not open during the reentry process, and the vehicle would have been lost.<p>Uh, that's <i>extremely</i> concerning for a CREWED capsule.
So we know there were catastrophic bugs in the 737 Max, they've found additional bugs that haven't been catastrophic yet and now we hear that the Starliner also has software bugs. I'm going to order a copy of "The Mythical Man-Month" for Boeing ... they need to get way back to the basics.<p>(Where's Margaret Hamilton when you need here?
What I would like to know is what the software bug was. Unfortunately the article does not say it, and I am sure no information online exists about this.
On a certain blog that is completely outside acceptable standards for wrongthink and political correctness, a very popular topic of late is why NASA seems to have it in for Elon Musk Personally and SpaceX generally. The commonly stated reasons, and I will be paraphrasing and transliterating freely, are: HR culture defining administration wide objectives and methods and reasoning, professional embarrassment over languishing reputation, gross incompetence, turf defense of budget and status, and a desire to stay firmly planted on Terra while being lauded for dreaming of the stars.<p>I am always skeptical of any argument that is unfamiliar, but more and more it does appear that NASA has lost its way. The shuttle was an obvious mistake in retrospect; there may even be some credibility to the obscure theory that NASA only did it to further separate themselves from DoD. I think NASA has become a political creature that is less concerned with science and more concerned with SCIENCE™. If this is the case, they will fight tooth and nail against any expansion of manned space exploration (because it will be both private and military in nature), the will fight against innovation that doesn't spring from their own workshop(s), and they will use Cape Canaveral (and their heritage facilities/infrastructure) as a way to bully "adversaries" into submission.<p>I hope this isn't the case, and if it is, I hope they can reverse whatever practices and policies that have led us to where we are. As it stands though, it appears NASA is more like OSHA then it is like its historical instance.