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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

>> Curious as to moral in the Boeing division right now.

I'm even more curious about the astronauts. Are they willing to risk it? Are they even part of the discussions? Are they saying "screw that thing, get me a dragon"? I haven't heard a single word about their take on it.

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Astronauts, first and foremost, want to fly. They have been known to hush up health issues, safety issues, vehicle issues if it gets them closer to flying. I'm guessing Butch and Suni are having the time of their lives watching the surface of the Earth fly by outside the window. They will chomp at the bit to manually fly a Starliner home good valves or no just to show their colleagues how awesome they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly:_NASA_and_the_Crisis...

I dunno, they cover up health issues and etc _to get into space_. They're in space now, might as well drag it out as long as they can.

> health issues, safety issues, vehicle issues if it gets them closer to flying

I would take a risk driving experimental motorbike, would not risk driving a normal motorbike on a highway where mechanic checking it was sloppy and stupid.

Even if risks were, hypothetically identical, risk A is honourable, risk 2 is someone’s incompetence or greed.

They're also perfectly eager to cuss out bureaucrats who get them killed by forcing them to fly known faulty vehicles.

  > One report describes the crew as "infuriated" that Mission Control Center seemed unconcerned. When Gibson saw the damage he thought to himself, "We are going to die"; he and others did not believe that the shuttle would survive reentry. Gibson advised the crew to relax because "No use dying all tensed-up", he said, but if instruments indicated that the shuttle was disintegrating, Gibson planned to "tell mission control what I thought of their analysis" in the remaining seconds before his death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-27#Tile_damage

So, you know, it's one thing to be a badass cowboy with the risks inherent to exploration. But maybe don't romanticize the political and technical incompetence in this particular situation.

If you listen to the teleconference, NASA was asked and it really seem to be more that they'll do what they're told; which seemed odd to me. And those conferences have not had either the astronauts or Boeing on; which IMHO is just weird. Having said that, I suspect the astronauts aren't actually that worried by that thruster issue. They managed to dock it OK (manually). It's more NASA getting comfortable that they understand the failure.

NASA has strong military roots and astronauts used to as well; the “do what they’re told” fits that’s motiff.

I mean also they seem smart enough to have some intellectual and epistemological modesty. If I’m the guy or woman floating around in space, I have to imagine that the collective brainpower on the ground is better-informed to make that judgment than I am.

Two issues with that approach:

1 - do they have the right incentives, is there colossal pressure to save face from Boeing? Politics? This happened before

2 - lack of accountability - this is not a question of property that can be compensated if they are wrong. they can’t die instead of you. Your family expects to see you again, and you are responsible. There in no prize for being ‘Dead right’

Very true, but am I, sitting up in space, in a position to have enough information to act on either of these concerns?

I can imagine a situation where I have a gut instinct that “this thing is just squirrelly, I don’t trust it.” But if I don’t have that instinctive reaction, how am I to know which return option is more reliable?

They successfully docked despite the anomalies, and it doesn’t seem to have led them to say “like hell I’m flying that deathtrap back.”

At some level aren’t everyone’s incentives, including Boeing’s, aligned around getting everyone home alive?

Sure Boeing’s risk appetite may look different, but wouldn’t even Boeing rate the loss of the return capsule as a catastrophic outcome? Wouldn’t I, as an astronaut, have priced Boeing’s incentives in to my decision not to put my foot down? And don’t I have to trust the ground team with my life before I let them strap me onto a space rocket in the first place?

If you listen to the teleconference, NASA was asked and it really seem to be more that they'll do what they're told; which seemed odd to me.

It seems vanishingly unlikely that NASA is free to decide on their own solution. Orders along the lines of "Don't get any astronauts killed before the election" wouldn't be all that surprising, balanced against the problem of making the newly-GOP-friendly Elon Musk look like the hero of the day.

Bottom line, those astronauts aren't going anywhere for a few more months.

Do you have any proof that NASA is making decisions to avoid making republicans look good or is that good old-fashioned biased editorializing?

Please don't lower the value of conversation on HN with tacit politicizing like that, thank you.

Proof? No. But higher echelons in NASA are political creatures by necessity. You can bet that the coming election is factoring into their behavior.

> Having said that, I suspect the astronauts aren't actually that worried by that thruster issue. They managed to dock it OK (manually).

Watch the Starliner crew entering ISS. Williams is very, very, very happy to have survived the ascent. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsURePrNTx0>

That or she's just happy to be back in space for the 3rd time. I know i would be. That and i'd be thrilled to get to spend 9 months on the ISS instead of two weeks.

> That and i'd be thrilled to get to spend 9 months on the ISS instead of two weeks.

Yes, flying in space is cool. No, most people don't want to do this indefinitely. Astronauts retire all the time even when they are 100% guaranteed more flight time if they didn't retire; a whole bunch did that in the 1960s and 1970s (some, like Frank Borman, 100% guaranteed to walk on the moon), and more during the shuttle era.

It's one thing to have a mission extended by a day, as happened to the shuttle routinely because of bad weather at the landing site. Skylab 4's mission I believe got extended by 28 days, but that was a known possibility before launch. To have an eight-day mission be possibly extended to eight months is in no way shape or form OK.

Wilmore is going to miss his 30th wedding anniversary and other family events <https://www.wvlt.tv/2024/08/09/family-reacts-tennessee-astro...>. Do you really think he is thrilled by that? Really?

> Williams is very, very, very happy to have survived the ascent

That is quite a bit of projection. I see that Williams is happy. I give you that. But what gives you the idea that she is happy "to have survived the ascent" as opposed to "happy to see her colleagues" or "happy to be in microgravity" or "happy to be back at the ISS"?

If the crew publicly suggest they would rather not join their Columbia forebears on the list of incinerated spacefaring heroes their careers at NASA (and opportunities afterward at Boeing or another contractor) would be over. And until the engineering decision is made there is no need to take that risk now.

If they're are worried for their lives, then a career at Boeing may not be that important. They're extremely skilled engineers/scientists. It's unlikely they'd have issues finding serious work.

But few opportunities to go to space

Based solely on age this is probably their last hurrah in space

Really?

They're both about 60. Since they're both fit enough to be astronauts, I think we can say their life expectancy should be at least 85. Perhaps substantially longer with some medical advancements or age reversal.

Look at what SpaceX is working on these days (Starship), consider that AI & robotics will likely accelerate progress, and I would say that you can definitely expect affordable and perhaps even relatively comfortable space travel within their lifetimes.

Sure - but paying for that on an astronaut's pension??

I've no doubt that the astronauts are involved in the decision making. They are highly intelligent and highly trained individuals. They are unequivocally part of a team that also includes hundreds of highly skilled people on the ground. This is quite literally their job. Talking about all of this publicly is not their job. At least, not right now.

They've been standing by the process in the statements they've made. I'm sure they're confident they're going back on a Dragon by now so their personal risk is minimal.

It's probably cooler to fly back on a different vehicle instead of re-using the same one.

Its worth noting that NASA astronauts are gifted, but often more working class than equivalent organisations. I wonder if their humble social status (relatively speaking) makes it easier to coerce them into doing dangerous things?

IMO it is probably more that people that work their entire lives to be astronauts and then wait years, sometimes decades, to get a flight slot are not the type to be risk averse. Lots of them were test pilots as well. So, these types of folks are naturally risk takers and I am sure have full trust in their supporting teams.

I doubt they need to be coerced into doing dangerous things. All space flight is inherently risky.

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