Re: They're going to use both systems so there's redundancy in case of a problem with one.
In that case, Boeing should still be required to demo their launch abort system at some point before carrying people. No matter how much that costs them. If Boeing's rockets are single use, that's Boeing's problem, not NASA's.
Yup, fair's fair. Whatever else I might say about Musk/SpaceX, his firm has demonstrated a working abort system that appears to work very well (assuming the acceleration is within the scope of human survivability which I have no doubt it is).
And SpaceX did this at their own cost, using a method they themselves developed (again, well done and clearly successful) which reduced the costs to them.
Boeing cannot claim "to hard" because we already know it can be done, and should the claim "to pricey" then they should be told that it's a minimum requirement for product approval. Not a theroetical test as Boeing should know well enough by now that stuff working on paper often fails in unexpected ways in practice (that's why we test things). (I've also seen stuff that on paper cannot possibly work at all can actually work quite well and reliably in practice - eg fitting car tyres to the rear wheel on bikes (aka "Darkside"))
Biting the hand that feeds IT
