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.
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’
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?
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.
Please don't lower the value of conversation on HN with tacit politicizing like that, thank you.
Watch the Starliner crew entering ISS. Williams is very, very, very happy to have survived the ascent. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsURePrNTx0>
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?
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"?