In space no one can hear Starliner pulse anymore. The cause of the strange pulsing noise in one of the speakers on the Boeing crew capsule reported by astronaut Butch Wilmore on Saturday has been found and turned off. "The feedback from the speaker was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner," NASA said in an X post. "The speaker feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner’s uncrewed undocking from the station no earlier than Friday, Sept. 6."
“Strange or mysterious sounds coming from Starliner”. Oooooo, such triggering headlines in the media to light up the general public’s imaginations.
Meanwhile, it’s just audio feedback. Sheesh. Just like a billion other understandable noises and things and issues and occurrences and phenomena that technical people understand.
I wish we could all just calm down, or is it just me?
At my first airline we were flying factory new Jetstream 31’s. Every airplane was being written up for its prop sync system which, when turned on in cruise, would cause a terrible harmonic. As a musician I started questioning what might be interfering with the sound waves between the two props when it dawned on me that we actually had a third prop on the airplane, a model airplane prop that blew air forward, from the overhead rear of the cabin. That small diameter two blade prop actually sent a sine wave forward that caused the two four bladed propellers to go out of sync! The simple fix was to change the diameter of the little prop.
Big problems sometimes only require small fixes.
Yeah, I doubt the high frequency and low intensity pressure waves produced by a cabin fan prop would do much for or to a prop sync beat as perceived within the cabin. I think the Jetstream just had a wandering prop sync problem.
No. The little prop (an actual model airplane prop) was attached to a Freon pack that blew cold air into the cabin. I personally flew on three new airplanes which had the very same issue. Once I figured it was a harmonic, I turned off the Freon pack and the engine propellers synced. Turning the pack on caused the props to go out of sync again. MX control sent a lead mechanic on our next flight who verified my observations. After changing all the Freon pack props with a different diameter, the sync problem was resolved. My belief is that the little prop produced a frequency virtually identical to the engine driven props but just enough different that it caused a very noticeable harmonic when the prop sync was selected on. (Made a “Waa-Waa-Waa” sound) Like I said, an easy fix to a big problem.