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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Atlas V + Starliner vs Falcon + Dragon is SLS + Orion vs Starship with the stupid dialled to eleven.

Starliner is meant to be reusable, except its components can’t even make it through one run uneventfully [1]. It’s mated to the Atlas V, a buggy, disposable stack that’s already been EOL’d [2].

NASA’s money would be so much better spent—even now!—on literally anything else. The amount of practical redundancy provided by Starliner is zero.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Orbital_Flight_Test_2

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V

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The Starliner stack is way less stupid than SLS.

It's less than 2x the price of SpaceX, whereas the SLS vs Falcon Heavy cost ratio is like 20x.

> It's less than 2x the price of SpaceX, whereas the SLS vs Falcon Heavy cost ratio is like 20x

Starliner is directly comparable to Dragon. SLS can technically do things Falcon Heavy can't (e.g. more payload).

Starliner is specced to be able to boost the ISS. Dragon (today) can not.

At least this time it wasn't scrubbed for a Starliner issue. The capsule isn't responsible for the booster's valve issues. I'm guessing the Boeing reps in capcom were wiping their brows

> capsule isn't responsible for the booster's valve issues

But Boeing is responsible for putting it on an Atlas V. Why?! There are fewer than thirty of them left! Why aren’t they practicing on a modern stack?

I’ll eat my words if Starliner can rapidly transition to another booster. But given its track record in software alone, I’m incredibly sceptical.

Probably because Boeing is also part of ULA, so they have a vested interest in using their booster. Looks like "if it's a Boeing, I'm not going" isn't just for airplanes any more.

If it's worth it, they'll transition to Vulcan. But given the timeline of the ISS, unclear their will be demand.

Boeing leadership has blamed fixed-price contracts like the Commercial Crew Program for their inability to make a profit, so I doubt they'll be looking to get themselves into another. Starliner might continue to fly if they can bribe/blackmail the government into giving them an unlimited money tap (aka "cost plus") contract for more Starliner missions. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but time will tell.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/boeing-says-it-cant-ma...

Dissimilar Redundancy. Say the Falcon 9 suffers an in-flight failure. The last time that happened, there was a stand-down for quite some time, and I suspect that there would be a similar amount of time before people could be flown on it, even if I'd think Starlinks could resume right away.

Starliner/Atlas wouldn't be affected, and so ensure the US and our allies have access to the station without getting Russia involved.

> Starliner/Atlas wouldn't be affected

Every launch of the Atlas V has already been sold [1]. They can't make more because it uses the Russian RD-180 engine.

If the Falcons were grounded, we wouldn't have the capacity to replace them with Starliner + Atlas V.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/26/22641048/ula-boeing-lockh...

Ignoring the issue of Atlas being EOL: At the rate Starliner is progressing, it would be faster to wait for SpaceX to fix whatever was ailing Falcon 9 than to wait for Starliner to be ready.

> have access to the station without getting Russia involved.

Except for the Russian engine on the Atlas V.

I think it's clear that Boeing, ULA, and all of the "old guard" space companies are still trying to catch up to the disruption from SpaceX and the ensuing boom of innovation that followed it. Let's face it - Starliner would not have even been thought of without SpaceX bringing competition. They were caught flat footed and had to scramble to catch up. Now we see the results of that - a capsule that's only partly baked.

> Starliner would not have even been thought of without SpaceX bringing competition

I may be wrong, but I believe both Starliner and Dragon were commissioned when Russia invaded Ukraine, thereby threatening NASA’s access to Soyuz.

The first time presumably, in 2014.

You are I think wrong. IIRC commissioned ~2010-ish, and first (failed) flight test in 2019.

I do not think there is a world where NASA commissions something from Boeing, and it's kind of ready-ish 2 years later. There are meetings to be head! Congress folk to talk to! Overruns to be budgeted!

I can't think of a larger moat in any industry where the leader has such a gigantic head start than spaceX. The "old guard" is so far behind why would the US Govt. or NASA give those companies any money now as it would be akin to setting it on fire. I mean spacex had 96 launches last year compared to ULAs 3. It just shows how much bureaucracy can just kill a companies innovation.

Head start? Boeing has 108 years of vast aerospace history and culture.

The mistakes on this project are well summarized by an Ars article this week, mostly coming down to the well known management issues plus an inability to operate in a fixed price procurement setting; everything about their organization depended on cost plus structures.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-th...

SpaceX absolutely has a head-start now on reusability, launch costs, etc.

Boeing's century of experience was supposed to give them a head start on Commercial Crew; they squandered it, and recent history has the resulting gap getting bigger, not smaller.

exactly, I mean Boeing can't even make planes with doors that don't fall off in flight. I wouldn't look to Boeing for any engineering excellence in 2024.

They can obviously do that. They just can't do it fast enough or profitable enough to satisfy their managements' sales goals.

Profit, manufacturing speed, reliability: pick 2.

Horse breeders had millennia of accumulated history and culture at the end of the 19th century.

Boeing today is not the same Boeing of yesterday. All that history means nothing if you can’t execute now.

Access to space is a vital enough national interest that it cannot be left to the whims of a single company. The alternative to giving money to the competitors would be installing a politruk in SpaceX and authorizing them to override any decision made by the company. Spending a few billion dollars a year inefficiently is probably preferable to that.

What you have here is a false dichotomy: Giving money to ULA or nationalizing SpaceX to penalize them for success.

Here's a third option: Give that money to Rocket Lab so they can develop their capabilities instead of giving it to ULA for their executives to snort it up their noses.

Public money goes to companies that can make plausible bids when the government has a need for some capability. For the Commercial Crew Program, that was in the early 2010s, when SpaceX was the upstart with a new unproven rocket. Rocket Lab has won some government contracts, but probably less than $1 billion in total, because it has been in serious business with big rockets only for a few years.

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