NASA pares back Boeing's Starliner deal after 2024 calamity

NASA has modified its Commercial Crew contract with Boeing, dropping the order from six to four missions, of which one will be uncrewed. The uncrewed mission, Starliner-1, will be used for in-flight validation of the upgrades made to Boeing's Calamity Capsule following the disastrous test flight in 2024 that left the crew, …

[Uh, Mike]

MIssion Accomplished

The point of having two independent designs,

is if one design fails,

you can fall back on the other.

Mission Accomplished.

[GenuineArticle]

Re: MIssion Accomplished

By happy chance, multiple providers also spread cash amongst more congressional districts!

[gecho]

Re: MIssion Accomplished

Except the human rated rocket that Starliner is designed to launch on is no longer in production. Boeing bought just enough Atlas V to cover the contract. Vulcan could be human rated but ULA is waiting for someone to cut them a check to pay for it.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: MIssion Accomplished

But the US has almost 3 crew vehicles:

1: Dragon / Falcon 9

0.9: Starliner(perhaps now with thrusters that will not overheat) / Atlas V (buy now before stocks run out)

0.6: Orion (Heat shield? Life support? Docking hatch is an optional extra for Artemis III+) / SLS (Limited edition, nearly two in stock. Beyond that: ?)

0.3: Dream Chaser (Cargo version available RSN. Crew version promised) / Atlas V Ariane V ... Vulcan?

0.1: Blue Origin Crew Vehicle (Offered NASA funding but Blue chose Bank of Bezos instead. No announcements for years) / New Glenn?

[MachDiamond]

Re: MIssion Accomplished

"0.1: Blue Origin Crew Vehicle (Offered NASA funding but Blue chose Bank of Bezos instead. No announcements for years) / New Glenn?"

Jeff offered $2bn of investment in a moon lander after SpaceX was awarded a sole contract and NASA didn't take it.

New Glenn may not be the ideal vehicle for ISS missions. It seems like it would work, just overkill.

If NASA offered money to Blue Origin, the terms of the contract may have been problematic. Blue Origin hasn't needed outside investors and that's kept them free of entanglements, compromises and others dictating what they do and how many corners they cut. It's not like Jeff will run out of money anytime soon (unless he gets divorced again).

Blue Origin prototype lunar lander launch is not that far off.

Elon was banging away about not making anymore crew Dragon craft when he broke up with his orange buddy. Of course, if he did that, he'd immediately have to increase his personal security from the ~100 it is now to asking China to borrow the Red Army for some "training missions".

[JimmyPage]

You can start to understand

How later generations looked at the pyramids and could only conclude they were built by aliens.

[spold]

Capsule might only manage three crewed missions to the ISS....

The question being how many it can do from the ISS...

[Return To Sender]

Re: Capsule might only manage three crewed missions to the ISS....

Technically, if they can get the damn things to the ISS, all of them can come back. Eventually. The real trick is doing it 1) without having to rely on orbital decay 'cos the thrusters are FUBAR again and 2) returning everything/everybody in one piece rather than millions of tiny ones, or vaporized...

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Capsule might only manage three crewed missions to the ISS....

Technically, if they can get the damn things to the ISS, all of them can come back. Eventually.

Ah yes. In the same sense that every ship can be a minesweeper. Once.

The Fighter Pilot podcast's Vincent Aiello has two questions he always asks his interviewees. One is, "does your number of take-offs equal your number of landings?" Ideally this should be true...

The second is: "how did you get your call-sign and what stupid thing did you do to earn it?"

On the second he was talking about a young Academy trainee. Not even graduated and gone into pilot training yet. Who'd gone to the fleet in the Summer for a bit of "work experience", I'm sure there'll be a much more military term for it. Guy is in the backseat of an F-18 with an instructor who's doing practice dogfighting with trainee pilots. When the trainees manages to crash into them, forcing them to eject. Before the ambulance has even arrived to pick them up, this new guy has now been assigned a call-sign by this officer, for if he makes the fleet. O'Tool. Which stands for one take-off, zero landings.

[Spherical Cow]

Father Ted would be proud

Okay, one last time. These goalposts are small, but the goalposts out there are far away.

[MachDiamond]

It did come back

The Starliner that took the astronauts to the ISS did make it back ok. It was decided that the risk was a wee bit more than a committee found acceptable. The Chinese capsule currently at their station with damage to a window is in the same position. A difference is that China has a backup craft ready. They don't want to take the risk of having taikonauts on board when then send it back due to elevated risk of problems.