Boeing Starliner abort test (mostly) a success as SpaceX nears Crew Dragon static fire

On November 4th, Boeing completed a vital pad abort test of its Starliner spacecraft, successful in spite of an partial collapse of its own parachute recovery program. Three days afterwards, Boeing showed what it considered to be the origin of that anomaly in a November 7th press conference.

Meanwhile, SpaceX – having finished Crew Dragon’s pad abort evaluation in 2015 – is preparing for an equally significant In-Flight Abort (IFA) test and is perhaps only a couple of days away from static shooting the Crew Dragon capsule assigned to the evaluation flight.

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According to a NASA press release following the evaluation, it “was designed to verify [that] all Starliner’so systems will operate not just individually, but in concert, to protect astronauts by taking them safely away in the launch pad in the unlikely event of a crisis before liftoff. ” Although the evaluation wasn’t the pad abort test successfully demonstrated the ability of the four launch abort engines and control thrusters to safely extricate astronauts from a rocket.

Two chutes opening is acceptable for the evaluation parameters and team safety although designed using three parachutes. pic.twitter.com/fru36SUMwM

— Boeing Space (@BoeingSpace) November 4, 2019

Those astronauts would have survived the ordeal unharmed despite the deployment of Starliner’s parachutes, testing the spacecraft’s abort abilities and redundancy quite a little more than Boeing intended. To put it bluntly, Boeing’s preceding tweet and PR assert that the failed deployment of 1/3 parachutes is “acceptable for the evaluation parameters and team safety” is a competitive twist on a partial collapse that NASA definitely didn’t sign on.

Boeing and SpaceX have suffered failures while testing parachutes, leading NASA to take more testing. In a November press conference that was 7th, Boeing disclosed that Starliner’s parachute anomaly wasn’t the consequence of hardware failing under circumstances, but rather a consequence of a scarcity of quality assurance that failed to catch a major human mistake. Boeing says that a significant mechanical linkage (a snare ) was installed by a technician and not confirmed before launch, causing one of Starliner’s three drogue chutes to simply detach from the spacecraft instead of deploying its respective primary parachute.

Honestly, this can be *much* worse than a parachute deploying planned but failing due to mechanical pressures. Hardware may be upgraded ad nauseum but organizational failures will soon nullify those improvements 9 days out of 10. This is of course true for SpaceX, also. https://t.co/oEauXaHd48

— Eric Ralph (@13ericralph31) November 7, 2019

Space is Parachutes are difficult

Parachutes are a major subject of concern for your Commercial Crew Program. The two SpaceX and Boeing have suffered failures throughout testing and have been required to execute a variety of tests to verify that parachutes are ready to reliably return NASA astronauts to Earth. Even though the Starliner pad abort test did really demonstrate the ability to property the capsule under two chutes, an inadvertent test of redundancy, the series of Boeing activities that cause the collapse will almost definitely be scrutinized by NASA to prevent reoccurrences.

Here's the moment when @BoeingSpace #Starliner sheds it's parachutes!I'm sure we'll find out why soon. pic.twitter.com/IGQdqfjon5

— Just A. Tinker (@John_Gardi) November 4, 2019

Boeing believes that the parachute collapse won’t delay the launch of Starliner’s Orbital Flight Test (OFT), now targeting a launch no earlier than (NET) December 17th. However, it may be said with some certainty that it is going to delay Starliner’s crewed launch debut (CFT), at least until Boeing could prove to NASA that it has fixed the fault(s) that allowed it to occur. SpaceX is likewise working to be eligible Crew Dragon parachutes to get astronaut launches, even though the firm has thus far just suffered anomalies regarding the collapse of parachute rigging/seams/fabric.

Amazing work by SpaceX Dragon team & Airborne! To be clear, we’t done 1 multi-parachute evaluation of Mk3 designleft to achieve 10 evaluations in a row. https://t.co/Q814zVoW4S

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2019

Abort tests galore

Boeing’s Starliner pad abort test occurred just days before a different big abort test now for SpaceX. SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule C205 will perform a fire test of its upgraded SuperDraco abort program, as well as its own Draco steering thrusters.

SpaceX has made adjustments to the SuperDraco engines to avoid a collapse mode that suddenly reared its head at April 2019, when a leaky valve and faulty layout resulted in a catastrophic explosion milliseconds prior to a SuperDraco static flame test. Before its own near-total destruction, Crew Dragon capsule C201 was assigned to SpaceX’s In-Flight Abort evaluation, and its loss (and the subsequent failure investigation) postponed the test’s launch by at least six weeks. Crew Dragon’s layout by replacing check valves that are reusable together with burst discs, nominally preventing oxidizer or propellant flows, has been fixed.

Evaluation of Crew Dragon’s upgraded launch escape system ahead of inactive fire and in-flight abort evaluations — altogether we’re conducting hundreds of tests to verify the platform 's innovative capabilities to take astronauts to security in the unlikely event of a crisis pic.twitter.com/a4FucMh85l

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 24, 2019

If capsule C205’s static flame testing – scheduled no sooner than November 9th – goes as intended, SpaceX may have the ability to start Crew Dragon’s in-flight abort (IFA) test prior to the end of 2019e. Likely to be a tiny spectacle, Crew Dragon will start atop a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster and a second stage using a mass simulator set of its Merlin Vacuum engine, each of which will almost definitely be ruined when Dragon exits the rocket during peak aerodynamic strain.

NASA made abort evaluations an optional step for its Commercial Crew providers and Boeing decided to perform a pad abort and rely to verify that Starliner’s abort security. Assuming that NASA is happy with the results of Starliner’s pad abort and Boeing can alleviate concerns about the parachute anomaly suffered during the evaluation, Starliner’s uncrewed orbital flight test (OFT) can establish as early as December 17th. Starliner’s crewed flight test (CFT) can happen some 3-6 months then when all goes as planned throughout the OFT.

If SpaceX’s In-Flight Abort (IFA) also goes as intended and NASA is pleased with the outcome, Crew Dragon may be ready for its crewed launch debut (Demo-2) as early as February or March 2020.

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