This star is going to the moon

Chapter 221 Stubborn Boeing, Elon Musk's Secret Scheme
"What's going on? Was it just my imagination? Did I just hear a classic American curse word, 'WTF'?"

"It shouldn't be a misperception. I heard it too. It sounded like it was that Boeing executive, Smith, who shouted it."

"Something seems to have gone wrong. You can see the atmosphere here is a bit off; several people have gone to report to Smith."

"The data on the big screen is also wrong. They are going to dock with the International Space Station, and the spacecraft should be accelerating to raise its orbit. The current altitude and speed are not right."

"Actually, I felt there was something wrong with the data before; the acceleration time of the spaceship in the middle was a bit abnormal..."

Listening to the employees' analysis, Lu Yun thought to himself that this thing had finally arrived.

The previous "Starliner" failed because the timer was not calibrated and consumed too much fuel prematurely, resulting in insufficient fuel for docking with the International Space Station and ultimately the failure of its first unmanned flight.

This is indeed a basic mistake.

However, the probability of such basic errors occurring is not low.

For example, similar basic mistakes were made when commercial space companies were conducting commercial unmanned lunar exploration missions in 1924 of the previous era.

They were sending an unmanned lander to the lunar surface, but when they were installing it into the rocket fairing, the engineers forgot to disconnect the physical safety switch of the lidar, which was something that could not be fixed by software.

This caused the lander to be unable to measure the distance correctly, and it ended up crashing directly into the lunar surface.

The Starliner was launched in 2019, and the lunar probe was launched in 2024, which shows that such basic errors cannot be stopped.

It is worth mentioning that the company did not lose heart and launched its second lander in 2005.

This time, their engineers removed the physical safety switch from the lidar.

but……

The lidar malfunctioned and failed to provide accurate altitude information, causing the probe to still crash onto the lunar surface.

Moreover, there was a lot of fuel left this time, which meant that the probe's engine continued to work after it hit the lunar surface. The powerful thrust propelled the probe across the lunar surface for dozens of meters before it finally crashed into a small lunar crater with a diameter of 20 meters.

It must be said that humanity's space journey is full of unexpected events. After all, the places that space equipment is going to are too far away from places that humans can actually control, and once a malfunction occurs, it is impossible to repair it in time.

Therefore, the standard for aerospace engineering is to "leave accidents on the ground." Before launch, a thorough inspection must be conducted to ensure that there are no accidents before the spacecraft can go into space.

Lu Yun felt that Boeing was probably doing the same thing as in his previous life: knowing that the spaceship had problems, but still letting it go into space.

Because Boeing can't wait any longer.

Originally, they thought they could overtake, or even surpass, the Crew Dragon spacecraft by leveraging its safety redundancy, and make a name for themselves.

As a result, his buttocks were exposed, and he even pooped a big poop.

Soon, many space enthusiasts in various groups analyzed the general problem, and even those who were just watching the live stream for fun got the conclusion from the comments: everyone knew that Boeing's first unmanned flight test of its spacecraft had encountered problems.

The viewers in the live stream wanted to ask Boeing how they planned to resolve the issue, but Boeing simply shut down the live stream, resulting in a humiliating end to the broadcast.

An hour after launch, the Boeing team announced that the Starliner experienced an anomaly during its orbital flight test mission to the International Space Station.

However, the specific issues are still under investigation.

However, a short time later, the NASA administrator stated on Twitter that the Starliner was unable to reach the space station due to excessive fuel consumption caused by the abnormal conditions.

Boeing: "?"

With such a close partner, how can we not accomplish great things!

Finally, Boeing couldn't hold back any longer. Seeing their stock price start to fall, they took the initiative to hold a press conference.

Smith was still the one hosting the speech.

"In fact, our test was very successful and we obtained a lot of valuable data. It's normal for problems to arise, because that's the point of testing."

"Even this error was a minor problem; it was actually a small malfunction in the 'automation system.' If an astronaut had intervened, the spacecraft wouldn't have consumed so much fuel following the erroneous automation instructions."

"However, for safety reasons, we did not carry astronauts on the maiden flight, so we cannot manually correct it." "Because the spacecraft has canceled its original plan to go to the space station, it will return to Earth tomorrow."

"Our spacecraft has no systemic problems, it is safe, and it will land safely..."

Smith kept insisting that there was nothing wrong with the Starliner spacecraft, naturally for the sake of the company's stock.

Furthermore, the failure to complete the docking mission during the unmanned test flight may not affect the next manned test flight.

However, the lack of a technical verification of docking with the International Space Station will undoubtedly increase the risks of manned flight.

However, the key is how Boeing negotiates with NASA. If they succeed, then everyone will be happy.

If the negotiation fails, Boeing may have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of its own money to conduct another unmanned test.

Smith believes the key is to guard against Elon Musk's interference!

Even though his "Crew Dragon" spacecraft is already ahead, he certainly wouldn't mind being even further ahead.

Elon Musk should be happy to give his competitors something to do.

should?

affim!

"Hahaha!"

Ma Yilong almost died laughing. He hadn't even exerted his full strength yet, and his competitor had already stumbled.

He thought for a moment and said to his assistant, "I'll tell you, and you write it down."

"We will launch a lobbying campaign against NASA as planned, and make sure that Boeing pays for another unmanned test itself."

"After this, we no longer need to target Boeing in terms of manned spacecraft, because it is no longer a match for the 'Crew Dragon', but we still need to pay attention to the SLS rocket."

"Furthermore, we must continue to exert efforts on the manned lunar lander project and kick Boeing's lunar lander proposal out..."

As each command came out of Ma Yilong's mouth, his thoughts gradually became clearer. He was very aware of the problems of these traditional aerospace giants.

That is, it is huge, bloated, and out of touch with the times.

The most fatal flaw is the fact that it "cannot keep up with the times".

Many people talk about returning to nature, but if you take them away from electricity and signals, they can't survive even a short time.

Boeing is like an old wooden villa, looking rustic, elegant and imposing. Even the surface is well-maintained, but the wooden foundation has been eroded and rotten by moisture, and termites have entered other parts of the house. All kinds of wood have been gnawed into a mess.

It could collapse at any time.

Comparatively speaking, Ma Yilong increasingly felt that Lu Yun was the real opponent.

Especially given the current relationship between the two sides of the Pacific, his Space Fork and Lu Yun's Blue Star Aerospace are bound to clash.

After dismissing his assistant, Ma Yilong sat alone in his office, watching Smith's clumsy performance on the live stream. He said disdainfully, "An outdated company and outdated projects should be buried in the annals of history. I am the future!"

"Lu Yun, Blue Star Aerospace, an ancient yet advanced Eastern power—I wonder if the people I've chosen will be able to successfully infiltrate their ranks?"

The next day, many people were paying attention to the return of the Boeing Starliner because of the fun they had the day before.

However, many more people are paying attention to the "Tiangong Classroom" space-based teaching program.

Especially the students who watched the space lecture back then.

Back then, 8 schools and more than 6000 million students across the country watched it simultaneously!
Many of them actually got into aerospace universities.

Looking at it again this time, it's a completely different experience.

(End of this chapter)