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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

NASA cannot independent of SpaceX?

NASA hasn't been able since the Shuttle got retired in 2011. They've been relying first on Russian rockets and then on SpaceX ever since. There are several alternatives in development but nothing human-rated yet.

Boeing's Starliner is now expected to have a crewed flight test in April (after two shaky uncrewed test flights, the first nearly disastrous). Of course, by the standards being applied to SpaceX here, that could be described as "relying on Boeing"...

I definitely wouldn't volunteer to be on that first crewed flight of Starliner. Boeing has had some questionable engineering decisions in the last decade and it has shaken my confidence in the ability of their engineers to press back against management when there is an inconvenient truth.

Boeing space flight is on delicious cost plus contracts as opposed to trying to shave it down to the bone in 737 max

Starliner is not cost-plus. It's under the same program as SpaceX.

> After several rounds of competitive development contracts within the Commercial Crew Program starting in 2010, NASA selected the Boeing Starliner, along with SpaceX Crew Dragon, for the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract round.

> ...While the company had received $18 million under the NASA Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) contract by 2010 for early design work, substantial Boeing private funds would be required to complete development, even with Boeing competing for additional NASA contracts. This exposed Boeing to ordinary business financial risk that had not been a large part of traditional cost-plus contracting that Boeing had previously done for work on space capsules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Starliner

Thanks for the correction

In all fairness, NASA provides oversight for the Commercial Crew Program. This is better than the previous arrangements because there is incentive for companies to perform the contracted work on behalf of NASA rather than NASA taking on all the risk.

Edit: Guess down voters don’t like this idea

If this was reddit I would downvote you for that edit ;)

Lol bad habits die hard

Good point. I was responding to the question above but at this point, NASA can legitimately consider SpaceX as part of their manned flight program. It makes way more sense to do it this way.

Yes, exactly. I think they consider Boeing and SpaceX as “one of us”. It’s pitched this way on their website

NASA can do so without SpaceX, they have 2 human-rated vehicles that have flown.

There is the SLS/Orion and Atlas/Starliner - they just havent actually put people in them yet

No, but NASA's on the cusp of regaining the ability with SLS rocket/Orion capsule/Artemis program. First crewed launch targeted for Sept 2025.

They can go to Russia like they did for 10 years after the Shuttle retired.

The sanctions make this harder surely.

Probably not as much as you'd expect. Launches are out of Kazakhstan. Russia still sends cosmonauts to fly on dragon. This remains probably the most robust point of diplomatic contact between the two countries, especially since rogozin allegedly lost his penis (not a joke -- the anti USA rhetoric of roscosmos has decreased since he departed? from his post). I wouldn't be surprised if musk is instructed to at least publically not be too pro-ukraine to preserve this line of communication (I also wouldn't be surprised if musk is just being dumb).

Edit: ok this is slightly incorrect, rogozin was dismissed from roscosmos and then he got injured on the front, not the other order around

They can, on SLS and Orion.

They could and perhaps soon will, but at time of writing, they haven't.

The parent comment is about capability.

I guess it depends on how you define "capable".

I defined it (implicitly) as "have they actually put humans in orbit". That's a pretty simple and objective definition.

If you want to include SLS/Orion and Starliner, you have to define the point at which a system becomes "capable". Is it when they designed it? When they approved the budget? When they tested it uncrewed? When it's less than 1 year from launching with humans?

Depending on your definition, India might already be "capable" of launching astronauts now.

Note also that both Orion and Starliner are working through technical problems. Are they very likely to resolve them in <1 year? Sure. But there's still a non-zero chance that they will delay for 1 year, 2 years, or even more.

You're being a little obfuscatory here. In 2022 SLS flew a capsule around the moon that was human-rated, except that it had mannequins in the seats instead of people. Adding oxygen and some granola bars to this setup is not a big technical leap; the hard part is done. I'm not a fan of either SLS or Orion, but it's pretty clear that they will have no difficulty putting a human crew into space whenever their schedule and budgetary drama allows it.

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