Boeing’s Starliner started making a repeating ‘pulsing’ sound Saturday
www.theverge.com
It’s probably nothing.
  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1251·
    13 days ago

    I mean, it is incredibly disconcerting.

    But it isn’t a mechanical noise. It is a noise coming through the speakers themselves. As many have pointed out, it is almost definitely feedback of some form.

    Definitely something to get sorted before you do anything TOO critical (feedback can potentially be a precursor to electrical or systems failure) but not a sign that doors are going to fall off imminently.

    • booly@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      59·
      13 days ago

      It is a noise coming through the speakers themselves. As many have pointed out, it is almost definitely feedback of some form.

      Like back in the day when leaving a 2G GSM phone next to some computer speakers, it would make certain buzzes as it was receiving a text message or phone call.

    • weew@lemmy.caEnglish
      55·
      13 days ago

      2 months after thruster issues: check engine light finally comes on

    • Wooki@lemmy.worldEnglish
      72·
      13 days ago

      but not a sign the doors are going to fall off imminently.

      I don’t know about that, with explosive bolts being a legitimate rocket part I would not put it past Boeing to mix them up

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      13 days ago

      I’m wondering if it’s not some kind of assistive thing that got turned on randomly because it was up there too long.

      For example, for docking, playing a sound that changed pitched as you got closer, etc.

      That or an Easter egg engineers buried as a joke among themselves.

          • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            2·
            13 days ago

            Hey now, you can burn yourself with compressive heating just fine down here on earth. Specifically by accidentally touching the pipe between the pump and tank on my air compressor the other day.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        13 days ago

        I’m wondering if it’s not some kind of assistive thing that got turned on randomly because it was up there too long.

        Boeing levering the high technology of my refrigerator automatically alerting when I leave the door open.

          • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            13 days ago

            I know we’re joking here, but if you leave an airlock open exposed to hard vacuum you’re not going to hear any kind of audio alerts because there’s no air to transmit the sound.

            • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              13 days ago

              sound will also transmit through the physical structure, so you can feel the vibrations if your touching walls.

              But if you really want to get pedantic… you’ll probably notice the whole choking-on-vacuum-thing first.

              • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                13 days ago

                But if you really want to get pedantic… you’ll probably notice the whole choking-on-vacuum-thing first.

                We agree completely!

                • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  13 days ago

                  Although, it probably is the stupid kind of shit Boeing would do. An audible alarm for “oh shit you have no air!”

          • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
            9·
            13 days ago

            I would like to point out that MCAS was only a thing because Boeing wanted to certify the 737 MAX as just another variant with no additional pilot training or certification needed. But the differences made the plane maneuver and react to input differently. So MCAS was developed to try and compensate for that. And then they didn’t train pilots on the new system, because it was being certified as a regular variant that should not have different flight characteristics. The FAA accepted their explanation at face value and rubber stamped it basically, and in the process saved Boeing Billions of dollars of additional development costs.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_certification

            • Crashumbc@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              13 days ago

              It also saved the airlines money because, they didn’t have to pay to have the pilots retrained on a new aircraft.

          • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            3·
            13 days ago

            So, I’m not the best passenger on air planes, I usually just remain in fetal position for the duration of the flight.

            I was taking a flight to Shanghai with Air China and it was a relatively smooth flight. I was in unusually good spirits, even managed to watch a movie. Then we landed. After touching ground the whole plane was flashing in red lights. It took me like 2 minutes of erratic panic to realize that they were displaying a waving Chinese flag on the screens and thus it was flashing red. Should’ve fucking given me a heads-up, man.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      13 days ago

      Given that the greatest amount of issues they had back on the ground and which led to the program being months or years late were software problems, this does not surprise me the slightest.

    • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      12·
      13 days ago

      I thought the Great Exodus from xitter was a matter of critical mass not yet being attained. Enough readers have to be elsewhere to get journalists elsewhere.

      No, I think it’s just lazy journalists not learning new tools like Bluesky.

      • RestrictedAccount@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 days ago

        The only news in that story was that someone tweeted something. That is lazy. They were successful in stealing the clicks from the actual reporter.

        Here is the thing. As of last week, Elon marks news that makes Trump look bad as spam (see NPR’s coverage of the Arlington Cemetery debacle).

        So now the news stories not marked as spam are the news stories that are “Elon Approved”.

        Why are any self respecting journalists still on Twitter hoping to publish things that Elon deems not to be spam.

    • leadore@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      13 days ago

      I enjoyed that very brief period when Elon blocked being able to view an embedded tweet at all without logging into twitter, before they changed it to how it is now, where you can only see that one tweet but no replies, etc.

      Just for that week or however long it lasted, I was so hopeful that we’d reached the end of this kind of shoddy “journalism” (“Look, here are some tweets I saw today that are kind of related to the subject of this article’s click-bait title”).

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
      2·
      11 days ago

      Investigative journalism has just become scrolling social media online because nobody answers the phone or their door to give comments in person to the media. That’s why I just post stupid, silly shit. I’m like that guy behind the “on the scene” reporter making faces and wrecking the shot.

    • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      13 days ago

      The Machine God speaks to us.

      I think it’s not happy with Boeing’s tech-priests.

  • Friend of DeSoto@startrek.websiteEnglish
    322·
    13 days ago

    I’m not qualified in any sense to speculate, and so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

    My first thought is that there is a configuration happening to bring it home which we already knew, and there is a bug or test tone that was activated and since no one writing the code is there, they just didn’t notice it is still running.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      13 days ago

      Ah the assumption that it was tested first before being deployed to prod. Given what we know now about Boeing’s “testing” and “certification” processes, or lack thereof, that may be a big assumption.

      • Friend of DeSoto@startrek.websiteEnglish
        8·
        13 days ago

        I try to always remember People, process and product. PPP. It helps remind me that the people are just like you and I, families and waking up each day to do a job. It’s so easy for things to fall apart when there aren’t the right tools or processes in place. My failures individually or as a team never left someone in outer space but I’ve had some doozies in my career.

        This isn’t addressing your comment but I guess it was on my mind. I do know that the majority of people want to do their best and I feel bad for them and those affected by a company’s poor decisions.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          13 days ago

          100% in most cases.

          On the flip side, there are some employees that also seem to just not take pride in what they are doing.

          There’s a similar major issue with home building in the US, and has been getting a massive viral spike from TikTok and YouTube Shorts posted by Cy Porter in AZ. He just posts short clips showing what he finds on a daily basis doing new home build inspections. The obvious complete lack of care about the end product from the builders is honestly astounding.

          That’s not building an airplane where hundreds of people’s lives are relying on your job, but just the bare minimums not being followed and the attitude when it’s called out reminded me a lot of how it seems Boeing responded to all these whistleblowers when they tried to follow internal processes for quality control.

  • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    14·
    13 days ago

    Starliner boot up noise stuck in a bootloop.

    But seriously, it’s a bit disturbing if a machine attached to your living quarters is malfunctioning.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 days ago

      one that, if it’s already malfunctioning thrusters begin malfunctioning worse, could fuck the entire station… yeah. pucker factor 5/5 when it starts making wonky noises