Boeing comes clean on parachute borkage as the ISS crew is set to shrink

[dufus]

Roundup While astronomers winced and Musk's rocketeers cheered the deployment of another 60 Starlink satellites into Earth orbit, there was plenty of other action in the rocket-bothering world.

 

Following the pad abort test of the CST-100 Starliner capsule, which both Boeing and NASA insist was a success, the aviation giant has revealed the cause of the failed parachute deployment. In a statement, the company pointed to "a lack of a secure connection between pilot and main parachute on the third parachute."

 

Boeing: Yeah, about that whole parachute thing

 

The purpose of the pilot 'chute is to pull out the main parachute, so botching the connection between the two means the bigger brother may not deploy, as – embarrassingly – happened during Boeing's test. The red faces were doubtless compounded by the fact that the Commercial Crew team were able to "quickly identify the cause" just by looking at the close-out imagery taken just before the test, showing a pin wasn't inserted properly through a loop on the pilot 'chute. This is something one would have expected an on-the-ball quality assurance team to have caught ahead of time.

 

For its part, NASA said that Boeing would be "validating that its processes were followed correctly on its Orbital Flight Test vehicle."

 

Of course, redundancies in the system meant the capsule descended safely on just two parachutes and had there been a crew onboard, the 'nauts would have been fine. The test, trumpeted Boeing, actually validated that redundancy and highlighted "the robust and redundant safety features" of Starliner.

 

So that's alright then.

 

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