Imagine you’re stuck in space… and your two options for getting home are Boeing and SpaceX. Is OceanGate going to branch out into space travel next? I hope these brave souls make it home safely.
Looks like they’re not Boeing To Die.
Although, I gotta say, “Hard pass on that Starliner, I’m putting my faith in an Elon Transport Solution” really speaks to the deplorable state of American aerospace.
Except that there have been 12.5 successful Crew Dragon flights (one is still docked to ISS) and, critically, zero crew casualties.
I’d put my faith in Elon Transport Solution (that realistically Elon has nothing to do with any more, operationally) over Made By A Company Where Sometimes The Door Plugs Come Off Transport Solution any day.
And F9 has the record for 363 successful consecutive launches, and more successful consecutive landings than any other vehicle has (edit: consecutive successful) launches.
The next behind them is 100 launches.
At that point I’d take my chances with a space suit and a parachute. If I live, it would at least break the world record for skydiving height.
And a record for degrees of burning (if surviving), when inevitably meeting the upper layers of atmosphere (especially ionosphere) at supersonic speeds (due to gravitation acceleration as well the current speed of ISS being 7659 meters per second / 17133 miles per hour). Ah, you’d need to find a way to lose horizontal speed in order to fall vertically (orbiting is falling both horizontally and vertically while never actually reaching the ground, at least while the orbiting thing maintains its orbit with subtle periodic adjustments through RCS/ionic thrusters).
That wouldn’t work even a little bit. Not just because spacesuits aren’t heat resistant so you’d burn up on reentry, but because they don’t have enough ∆V to slow down from orbital velocity in the first place.
You’d be like Jebediah in my Kerbal Space Program campaign, floating around the planet without a spacecraft indefinitely.
As much as I detest SpaceX and the literal child in charge of the company, their craft at least has a track record of safely bringing astronauts to and from the ISS. Boeing doesn’t even have that.
I feel the same as you, but you really can’t deny the fact that the engineers at his various companies have managed to design some really great tech despite their CEO.
Not just spacecraft either. Starlink is really the first usable satellite broadband, and Tesla has mastered the art of putting advanced powertrain in terrible automobiles.
Those companies have people whose unofficial job is to manage the child when he throws a tantrum and somewhat isolate him from things that could be damaged. Twitter didn’t have this protection.
SpaceX is Shotwell’s company, and she’s way more capable of driving success than the fuckstick who does their PR. It’s difficult to dismiss the objectively astounding leaps in technical progress that the engineers at SpaceX have achieved.
Musk could take a long walk off a short bridge and it wouldn’t affect SpaceX’s operations at all.
I know you all like to think that Musk does nothing at SpaceX, but that’s not the case. He is heavily involved with Starship, and he was involved with F9 in the past. For example, landing on barges was his push, same as pushing to use stainless steel for Starship.
Whenever someone working at SpaceX says hes involved though, you all just dismiss it as “they don’t want to lose their job”
Shotwell runs the day to day though, he’s not involved with that.
It’s a decision between a spacecraft that sprung multiple leaks on its first crewed flight and one that carried crew 8 times without issues so far.
I hate Musk but he is not the one who designed the Falcon rockets and capsule which have the best track record. I would much prefer to go on one of those than Starliner.
They’ve been transporting American space personal since at least March
Not sure what could have changed since, but when US/Russia relations at some of the worst levels in history, I’m surprised this last lingering relationship has held out as long as it has.
My understanding is that, in retaliation to US sanctions imposed at the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia stopped providing RD-180 rocket engines that were used in the Atlas V. My surprise is that the USA relied on Russian rocket engines to put national security payloads into space.
The agreement between Roscosmos and NASA still exist. Each Soyuz mission to the ISS is carrying an American astronaut and each NASA mission is carrying a Russian cosmonaut.
The next mission with the Dragon was supposed to carry 4 astronauts, 3 Americans and 1 Russian. Now the capsule will only carry two astronaut to leave space for the rescue so only 1 American astronaut and 1 Russian will go up on the Crew-9 mission.
SpaceX has a regular scheduled launch that’s been sitting around delayed waiting for Starliner to leave the ISS, so kicking two people off it and replacing them with the Starliner crew is convenient and minimizes the schedule disruption.
Soyuz only has three seats and launching a Soyuz with only one crew or empty is something Russia hasn’t done since the 60s and would be more work.
I always feel extreme tension during movies and TV if the scene is an oxygen leak from a space shuttle. Now I’m imagining that, but they have to repair things with their janky Xbox controller setup. Holding things upside-down, of course, because they wired the engines backwards.
I’m surprised NASA is letting SpaceX help them. I thought they were gonna say “I’ll do it myself” and twiddle their thumbs for a few more months.
The NASA and SpaceX relationship is just fine. There’s no real rush to bring them back, the ISS can accommodate them just fine.
This was always going to be the outcome as soon as there was a question about safety, regardless of what they said publicly. NASA has lost 14 astronauts due to poor managerial decisions throughout the Shuttle program. They don’t want to get near that if they don’t have to, and there have been alternatives since day one thanks to the Commercial Crew Program (and of course Russia/Soyuz if absolutely necessary).
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NASA’s credibility will also not survive reentry.
Why would this be their downfall when they have controversies like making all the kids in America watch a teacher burn up in the atmosphere because middle management didn’t wanna replace o-rings? Or hiring nazis? Or naming their $10 billion telescope after a guy who presided over a gay purge?
What makes this one special?
Of course they waited until Saturday to announce this while the markets are closed. Boeing will plummet on Monday.
Boeing will take a hit, but less than if the thing has fucked up during reentry and killed them …
