<story><title>NASA says Boeing Starliner astronauts may fly home on SpaceX in 2025</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/science/boeing-starliner-nasa-spacex.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>Being unable to deal with risk means the end of the space program.</text></item><item><author>mannykannot</author><text>Everyone closely involved with making the decision will be well aware that the subsequent inquiry, and quite a bit of the public&amp;#x27;s reaction, will be personally brutal if they opt for Starliner and it fails catastrophically, no matter how small the odds seemed at the time.</text></item><item><author>HarHarVeryFunny</author><text>It seems it&amp;#x27;d be a massive reputational risk to NASA to bring them back on Starliner, just in case anything does go wrong. Given all the deliberations, NASA is going to be seen as at least 50% to blame if they make the wrong decision.</text></item><item><author>trebligdivad</author><text>Listen to the actual conference:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;live&amp;#x2F;DYPL6bx87yM?si=W5UzfyiYzPX3KgGr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;live&amp;#x2F;DYPL6bx87yM?si=W5UzfyiYzPX3KgGr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;IMHO summarising it like the title is a little unfair; yes they&amp;#x27;re making provision for use of Dragon; but they haven&amp;#x27;t made any decision yet.
The thing that seems to have confused them is that all the Starliner thrusters are working in their tests - given their idea of some teflon deformation somewhere, I think they thought they&amp;#x27;d still be problematic, which is making them wonder if the teflon thing is the full story?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>HarHarVeryFunny</author><text>Sure, it&amp;#x27;s inherently risky, so managing that risk becomes key to success.&lt;p&gt;The thing here is that NASA has a choice.&lt;p&gt;1) Use Starliner with it&amp;#x27;s dodgy development history, no track record of reliability, and with the problems experienced with this specific unit.&lt;p&gt;2) Use Dragon, tried and tested, with an excellent history of reliability&lt;p&gt;This should be a no-brainer.&lt;p&gt;If Starliner can&amp;#x27;t safely autonomously undock at the moment (and anyways needs a month for software reload&amp;#x2F;verification apparently - not sure why verification takes so long), then leave it there until there&amp;#x27;s a solution to do it safely. In the meantime the ISS has 6 docking ports, currently all in use with 3 supply vessels and 3 crew (Starliner+Dragon+Soyuz), so presumably there is some flexibility there.</text></comment>
<story><title>NASA says Boeing Starliner astronauts may fly home on SpaceX in 2025</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/science/boeing-starliner-nasa-spacex.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>Being unable to deal with risk means the end of the space program.</text></item><item><author>mannykannot</author><text>Everyone closely involved with making the decision will be well aware that the subsequent inquiry, and quite a bit of the public&amp;#x27;s reaction, will be personally brutal if they opt for Starliner and it fails catastrophically, no matter how small the odds seemed at the time.</text></item><item><author>HarHarVeryFunny</author><text>It seems it&amp;#x27;d be a massive reputational risk to NASA to bring them back on Starliner, just in case anything does go wrong. Given all the deliberations, NASA is going to be seen as at least 50% to blame if they make the wrong decision.</text></item><item><author>trebligdivad</author><text>Listen to the actual conference:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;live&amp;#x2F;DYPL6bx87yM?si=W5UzfyiYzPX3KgGr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;live&amp;#x2F;DYPL6bx87yM?si=W5UzfyiYzPX3KgGr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;IMHO summarising it like the title is a little unfair; yes they&amp;#x27;re making provision for use of Dragon; but they haven&amp;#x27;t made any decision yet.
The thing that seems to have confused them is that all the Starliner thrusters are working in their tests - given their idea of some teflon deformation somewhere, I think they thought they&amp;#x27;d still be problematic, which is making them wonder if the teflon thing is the full story?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pfdietz</author><text>If the space program is not willing to kill some astronauts, there shouldn&amp;#x27;t be a space program.&lt;p&gt;From a purely economic point of view, the cost of killing an astronaut is small compared to the cost of these missions.  The statistical value of a human life is around $12 M.  Astronauts may be a bit more expensive, due to cost of training, but not enormously so.&lt;p&gt;Making space flight much cheaper will shift the economics, making safety relatively more important.  It will also enable that safety by enabling many more launches to reduce risks.&lt;p&gt;People anguish over the 14 astronauts killed in the Shuttle, but the economic value destroyed by that program was in the end a much greater loss.</text></comment>