tater

The fixed price contract is $2.9B for landing people and returning them, with a test landing uncrewed first.

Ages ago Musk said that that tanker would look strange, so clearly they had some offbeat ideas on table a few years ago.

So tanker available for other vehicles that use methalox.

C'mon, man! They need to blow up expensive rockets to endanger people for the LULZ, since that's where all the sweet cash comes from. [snip]

Don’t think so. 2+ providers is still in DOS’s interest for launch services, and NASA is no different. SpaceX is only where it is because of relative competence. The sausage still gets made the same way, Money comes from Congress, and reconciliation is how anything gets moved that doesn’t have bipartisan support, and only 1 per year. Seems unlikely. ObStarliner: Boeing already has their fixed price contract, it’s for them to back out of it or not, anyway, nothing the gov can do, though NASA could make them refly the last mission which might force them to cut their losses. If they have to refly, vs jumping through some hoops with NASA to move on will be what to watch for I think.

For any of y'all who live up the eastern seaboard, the right launch time and you can see this pretty far north, amazing.

Thanks!

Nice!

WT F does ^^^ that have to do with Boeing or Starliner, exactly? SLS is a crappy program (Boeing runs the core stage part and EUS) partially because of Boeing, and partially because the entire design is garbage. Starliner is in trouble entirely because of mismanagement by Boeing. I mean, it's their vehicle, they took the fixed price contract at almost 2X the SpaceX bid for the same services, have provided ZERO missions, and have already lost money. Not sure how the program can be seen as anything but an epic fail, even if I want it to succeed (I do). The other commercial providers are behind because they are not as good as SpaceX, it's not more complicated than that. I long to see a capable competitor. ULA can launch stuff reliably, which is great, but they can't do cost competition, it's a competence they lack. Nothing related to current politics changes the math WRT SpaceX. They already effectively own the launch market. It's in the US interest to have multiple providers, so we will continue to see inferior contractors rewarded with contracts just to keep them afloat, regardless.

All of this. Well said.

It should be meant for that, or the route changed. Nonetheless, they were required to fly at or below 200' (bumps up to 300' several miles south) along that route (which was their flightplan, as I understand it). Better ATC might have vectored them out of the way in numerous ways, but they didn't. I have to wonder about the fidelity of their radar when not fed data from the aircraft. Did they even know where PAT25 was? ATC in this case might not have even know where they were as far as I can tell. At least altitude wise. We have to wait for NTSB. The CRJ had ADSB, I don't think the helo did. So their ATC radar might be crap. I doubt they'd have crossing aircraft that low, seems far-fetched. I agree that ATC needs to know where every aircraft is, but the proximal cause of a collision (vs a possible helo down alone) was the helicopter being someplace they were explicitly disallowed (>200'). Someone posted or put in a vid a chart of the glideslope, and the tracking data shows the CRJ following it. Manley, maybe?

Those eyes might have noticed the problem caused by their pilot flying way too high, true. Someone needed to be looking at the instruments. There's clearly Swiss cheese here that could have had holes filled in and prevented the accident by allowing others to correct for the failure of the Blackhawk pilot, but I'm pretty sure that altitude issue will be the primary cause. It's important to come up with systems than can deal with negligence/error, so in this case maybe it's not allowing these helicopter routes any more that are that close to DCR final.

My point is they were at the wrong altitude. Look at the instruments, go, "Oh, ****" and drop ~100-150 feet pronto. 200 was the max allowed altitude, this was not somethign they wait to hear from ATC about, they should have never exceeded 200ft unless they asked ATC first those corridors are on the charts, they fly this all the time. Arguably they should have been closer to 150' to be safe. That alone makes it their fault, the pilot was not looking at the instruments. And yeah, that vertical separation gives them serious problems from the CRJ's wake turbulence. Sucks to be them, but at worst we're talking about 3 deaths in that case—and to the people in the aircraft at fault.

Juan Browne either in the vid I embedded, or his followup says he thinks it was spacial disorientation for exactly the data reasons @K^2 mentioned above. I watch his channel, and there are sadly so many cases of it.

Yeah, if they're where the helo should have been, they're taking a swim. Incredibly unlikely, and NTSB seems confident in the alt to ±25 ft, so the Blackhawk was 100% in the wrong place. ATC didn't vector them into the CRJ, and they had an altitude cap, the fault lies entirely with the helicopter pilot, IMO. Is it possible the accident could have been prevented by better ATC? Sure. Would better overall procedures in that crowded, constrained airspace have prevented it? Absolutely. I see no fault but whoever was flying at that time. Do we know who that is yet? (surely NTSB knows)

Yeah—by only concern would be that there was not some system in place near DCR to make sure any helo is in that corridor for any routine operations (which includes routine training). That has to be possible for a $6M+ vehicle. 100%. Like I said, it's still a near miss incident, even if the Blackhawk was not grossly higher than allowed—but then it's a near miss incident, not an airliner of dead people. I saw a post from a Navy Seahawk guy who said they flew everywhere near the carrier at 150' to deconflict with aircraft though. Better would be for that "Route 4" to be at least 1000' under final—which means flying away from the river a decent distance. That of course carries its own risk, now the low flying helos are over people's houses, etc. Alternately, within some range they simply have to act like every other aircraft, and let ATC tell them where to go.

Yes. I don't buy the altitude for the CRJ being off by that much, they were on short final, being 100-150' low that close seems incredibly unlikely, they have visual cues for glide slope (PAPI).