Orbital mechanics are TIGHT!

A lot of things went right with the Titanic’s maiden voyage, too.

It was a complete success until the moment of absolute failure.

"Our American Cousin" was a good play.

Here's the part I don't get - the part that "went right" involved an Atlas V - a platform that's been successfully launching stuff into space for something like 40+ years! The engineers who designed it are retired, if they're still even alive. The part that DIDN'T go right was designed quite recently - at vast expense and supposedly tested to a fare-thee-well. What's wrong with today's engineers?

Atlas V has only been operational since the early 2000's. The early Atlas had plenty of far more catastrophic failures - just getting it to the point of being reliable enough that they felt kinda sorta confident that John Glenn would survive riding it saw numerous failures - and more have happened since as the Atlas rocket family evolved.

But that evolution has seen continuous improvement over decades - the Starliner spacecraft, by comparison, has some early NASA capsule development to call upon, but there's a 40 year gap in development of such craft. Even satellites with no aspirations of one day carrying people occasionally end up in the wrong orbit, including a couple instances this past decade. So it's embarrassing, but it does occasionally happen.

‘A Lot of Things Went Right,’ NASA Chief Says After Starliner Anomaly.

Yes, and I've heard that the first-class food on the Titanic was excellent on that voyage.

Blame Russia.

The project had diversity, all genders felt included, and I'm sure that Boeing included a means of bringing self-esteem to the Islamic world. So yes, the IMPORTANT things went right. The rocket reaching its target was strictly secondary.

I don't get the negative comments. Space is not going to be explored without a LOT of failures first. A lot of people died trying to sail over the horizon for thousands of years.

How many of those early ships sunk because someone forgot to close a hatch?

If by close you mean lock, the Edmund Fitzgerald, for one.

This was a simple satellite. It's not like they were aiming for Alpha Centauri.

I had an engineering professor in college who refused to give partial credit if the answer was wrong.

This is pretty much why.

"Boeing's great!", said my broker. "All these supposed problems with the 737 are just because Third Worlders can't read the instruction manual!", said my broker. "I've got an in with some pilots, and they say Boeing is in great shape!", said my broker. "Plus they're right on the verge of recreational flights to space!", said my broker.

I've got to have another little talk with my broker.

Yeah - you have to tell him you're changing brokers.

They got twice the money as SpaceX to build the same capability, took far longer to get metal bent and then forgot to set the clock.

The Boeing engineers from the 1940's and 50's are rolling in their graves...

I once spoke with a NASA engineer who told me a story about an old malfunctioning satellite. After trying all the software fixes they could think of, the scientists asked a senior (as in grey hair) engineer to work on the problem. He sent a signal to the satellite to make a sudden clockwise rotation, immediately followed by a sudden counterclockwise rotation and then a sudden stop in rotation. This fixed the problem. When asked what this maneuver accomplished, the successful old engineer said it was as close as he could come to remotely smacking the device, like one might do to an old television with a bad picture.

More recently too. I've heard from some that when Boeing bought McDonnell, that the culture of the latter took over Boeing corporate and 'safety first' no longer ruled. I lived in Seattle at the time of the move of the corporate move to Chicago and many suspected that the company's executives did so to distance themselves from their engineers and developers, so they could dictate market dates unhindered by those who know how to build planes. The 737MAX is the result.

We're seeing confirmation of that. So far no Boeing executives have been fired following that disaster and the CEO has only had to give up his parallel post as head of the board.

Seriously, the fleet action off Samar started off really well...

For the Japanese, you mean? Not so much even at the start.

For the USN, considering what everyone had a right to expect would happen, it went fantastically well. Seriously, the 3" fantail gun on a jeep carrier took an enemy cruiser out of action!

I would much rather see them keep trying than suck their thumbs.

The landing at Anzio went really well untll the troops hit the sand. A lot of things went right...

"A lot of things went right..." Didn't the Luftwaffe say that after they accidentally bombed London for the first time?

‘A Lot of Things Went Right,’ NASA Chief Says After Starliner Anomaly.

It's the things that go wrong that need attention.

This puts me in mind of the case we had in my city many years ago. A toddler was killed by
his mothers live in BF. The kid was colicky so BF bounced him off the wall on the other side of the living room. Took him a day or so to die. The head of child protective services said, “The system worked, unfortunately the child died”. Seriously. And kept his job.

The only thing that matters in the modern bureaucracy, whether it is public project engineering, edumakashun, or running city gubmint is that the correct process be followed. If the correct, approved process is followed, failur is nobody's fault.

This is because employees aren't trusted to use judgement. Experience has shown they will not reliably conform to the Official Lies.

'A Lot of Things Went Right,' NASA Chief Says After Starliner Anomaly

This may go down as the euphemism of the year.

NASA’s Germanic history/heritage on display/coming home to roost maybe? There are none better - but they’ll get the BIG things wrong anyway.

"When the rockets go up, who cares if they come down, that's not my department..." said everybody at Boeing and NASA...

And the paper clips cost $1500 each and catch fire.

Now come the smoke and mirrors.

Things went right, huh? Here's an idea, let's recall Brennan, Clapper, and Comey to Federal Service, make them Astronauts, load them up in the Boeing product, and cross our fingers that "A lot of things go right".

Put Hillary in there with them.

Do you want it to lift off or not?

To put things in some kind of perspective, think of the untold numbers of lives that were lost exploring earth’s oceans over the centuries in tiny, leaky boats. D’ya think it’s going to be different over the decades we’re going to spend going into space, even with all our super-duper technologies?

There have been fewer than 100? lives lost in space....partially because the tech is so much better, but mainly because our tolerance of failure has become so .... timid.

Rand Simberg has a good book about it: Safe is Not An Optionhttps://www.amazon.com/Safe...

" There have been fewer than 100? lives lost in space....partially because
the tech is so much better, but mainly because our tolerance of failure
has become so .... timid. " <-- No, it's because it has cost so much to even try that only the timid bureaucrats had the money to attempt it.

When it gets to $20~$55/lb to LEO, then we'll see.

“ There have been fewer than 100? lives lost in space....partially because the tech is so much better, but mainly because our tolerance of failure has become so .... timid.”

Also because losses here are very expensive in terms of equipment.

And because so few people have been to space at all. Wiki says less than 600. Imagine if every 6th shuttle launch failed with total loss of life (and mot likely shuttle). We’d have launched less often ... partially because of the loss of life, but also because shuttles were expensive!

Well, it's true that any flight test where you learn about problems you can correct the next time out is a useful flight test. (It's why flying early and often is historically the fastest way to develop advanced new vehicles.)

The problem here is that THIS flight test took place only after years of delay while Boeing implemented the trad NASA approach aimed at eliminating all problems ahead of time via hugely intensive analysis and simulation.

And they found a serious problem in flight anyway. So, why did they spend the last few years/billions on agonizingly nitpicking NASA analysis again? (The answer of course is that this part of NASA insists on it.) If they'd just flown three years ago to see what breaks and fixed it, Starliner would probably be in routine safe service by now.

Ditto SpaceX - the difference being SpaceX *wanted* to fly their Dragon 2 commercial crew ship early and see what breaks and fix it, while Boeing was happy to give NASA whatever process NASA wants and will pay for.

And keep in mind that NASA/Boeing had a failure of their parachute system just last month....

Yeah, they are on a roll - no?

A lot of thing went right, the failures were few, then complete.

Anybody check to see what kind of shirts they were wearing? Just wondering.

Hey, the kid in the bikini shirt did his job perfectly. Maybe we should pass more of those shirts out.

At least they can spell, right?

write.