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Comment by Tuna-Fish | Hacker News Reader

Even if it's deemed sufficiently safe, there's no way the Starliner is coming down before 6th of November.

Harris is the chair of the Space Council. Even if it's in no way her fault, two torched astronauts with her in some way attached is just too easy to write headlines about. Similarly, if they publicly decide that it's unsafe, that's declaring failure.

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By then enough helium will leak away that it won't be able/safe to return with humans. They can say it just took too long and kinda shove it under the rug. Then if it burns up it's because of the delays.

This is wrong. The helium leaks are currently not active, the leaks are downstream of the main valve, which is closed.

Based on our current understanding of it's problems, Starliner should be able to wait on the station for the full 6 months it's certified for, none of the known issues in it limit endurance when docked to the station.

Of course, there could issues that have not cropped up yet...

I genuinely hope this isn't a massive political issue where the people in charge are risking these two astronauts lives because they simply cannot stand asking Musk for help, and again making it look like the establishment simply cannot match Musk's companies.

Imagine what Trump will say when he finds out Harris is chair of the space council and Musk had to help her...

But that's still not a reason to risk two astronaut's lives.

Good people get stuff done, sometimes by calculating the politics, and sometimes by just doing it, image be damned.

The idea is, if you have enough street cred, and enthusiasm from the public, and genuine shit to do, you can get up on stage and say

"The American rocket we spent $10B on doesn't work."

and every reasonable person will kinda shrug and move on. I don't know if the Harris campaign is at that point, but I'd love to see them get there. Every second spent on optics and politics is a second of thrust not spent on reaching a stable, matter-of-fact orbit

> Every second spent on optics and politics

This whole election is about optics and politics, regardless of which side you're on, so I wouldn't hold your breath

I fail to understand how they can’t come down in a Dragon while Starliner returns unmanned.

Would be egg on the face of Boeing but not Harris or NASA. Seems to me the egg would land where it belongs.

> I fail to understand how they can’t come down in a Dragon while Starliner returns unmanned.

It's not like there are Dragon capsules just floating around up there. Right now, the one docked to the ISS is earmarked for the return of Crew 8. The next one up will bring Crew 9, and it needs to stay on-orbit for their return.

The Dragon capsules hold 4 people, so if these Starliner astronauts need to come down on a Dragon then Crew 9 will have to drop by two in order to equalize the number of astronauts and seats.

They would have to send one up unmanned. Cargo dragon flies unmanned so surely crew dragon can. Expensive but better than losing the crew.

Send Boeing the bill. Not really kidding.

You don't think the chair of the space council bears some responsibility here?

How about the border czar for the state of the border?

Let's turn the question around: do you think the Chair of the Space Council is directly responsible for operational decisions related to complex engineering issues on a developmental space capsule?

I suspect (with heavy irony) that such decisions are delegated to, well... NASA; and indeed, were they not, there's a problem with the whole setup.

Wasn't the whole Boeing thing, the contract, setup during a prior administration?

Yes, this program spans three administrations, and spiritually the push to use commercial contractors dates back to at least 1984.

What part of their duties and authority would lead you to think that?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

The contract was awarded to Boeing in 2011.

Don't they need the docking port for Crew-9?

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