Eight weeks after the Starliner spacecraft launched, NASA is still looking for possible answers to its technical issues—including the possibility of SpaceX lending a hand.
What commercial programs are supposed to do is have multiple competing companies. NASA doesn’t want to rely on SpaceX or Boeing alone, or even NASA’s own rocket building programs.
What we’ve gotten is:
NASA’s rocket building program is an overpriced/overschedule boondoggle
Boeing needs to be taken out back and shot for the good of both space and atmospheric flight
SpaceX is fine for getting to LEO and the ISS
Russian Soyuz is a political land mine, and Russian manufacturing practices have gone to shit
Nobody else is fully capable at the moment
There’s some up and commers around. Most will fail. Maybe one will work out and this will get back on track. It shouldn’t just be SpaceX.
What commercial programs are supposed to do is have multiple competing companies. NASA doesn’t want to rely on SpaceX or Boeing alone, or even NASA’s own rocket building programs.
What we’ve gotten is:
There’s some up and commers around. Most will fail. Maybe one will work out and this will get back on track. It shouldn’t just be SpaceX.