Codraroll

You don't get low gravity in a Gravitron on Earth, though. You get the regular 1G gravity downwards, plus the centrifugal component of rotation, for a total >1G, no matter what you do. If you want to test partial gravity in a centrifuge, it must be stationed in space or on the Moon.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines strikes again. If they were, there'd be better sources than a clickbait video on YouTube.

f'dubar, if we're being technical.

Rather, the choice they made was the one that gave them the least backlash regardless of the outcome of Starliner's descent. Even though there are risks associated with leaving the astronauts up there for six more months, those risks can be viewed, at least by the public, as unrelated to that of the Starliner question. Even if they had to evacuate the station before Crew-9 gets there with the extra lifeboat capacity, I doubt NASA would face a lot of public outrage over the choice of sending away Starliner. That would be an "unforeseeable accident" (even if NASA had long ago mapped out the risks of it happening) and simply bad luck that it occurred during the same three-week window that Butch and Suni had no return ride available. If any of the station modules were in the middle of severe or accelerating failure, it might have been different. But as it stands, I think most people consider it an acceptable risk to undock Starliner long before Crew-9 comes along. Or in other words, the capsule had been delayed in its departure for so long that risking the ride would seem more reckless than another six months facing the "background risk" of space travel. Of course, this is how I view it as a layman, and my interpretation of how the media would spin it. An investigating report after a catastrophic or risky evac mission from the ISS might be a lot more damning to the careers of those involved in the decision.

That's roughly the same as (well, within 10% of) the cost of a 1550 -foot residential skyscraper in Manhattan, including the cost of land and air rights in one of the fanciest streets in the city (and by extension, in the world). If Artemis comes out at $12.5 billion per launch, it means each launch would be roughly as expensive as building such a tower, giving away all its apartments for free, buying them back at market price, then dismantling the tower again, twice.

So by next year, they would be doing as many orbital launches in a week as Russia does in a year. Hopefully more.

My best guess: it's a problem that needs to take into account a lot of factors for accurate calculations, and many of those factors can be hard to obtain good data about in operation. That means the calculation has to rely on assumptions piled on assumptions until you can't really create a reliable answer. So the whole complicated problem, including the maintenance frequency, is simplified to a single factor and counted as a constant inefficiency. The average of a sort of "sawtooth curve" as the heat exchanger is fouled over time and cleaned occasionally. The factor you end up with could be based on some old research projects or a collection of industry data. Such things are done all the time in standardization, and it can be quite a rabbit hole to dig up the original source of a number.

There's also the ongoing pressure from having extended the mission duration by an order of magnitude already. The story of the "stranded astronauts" have already made it around the mainstream news and into public consciousness. That means that any mishaps involving Starliner would be a lot more damning to NASA than what would otherwise be the case. I mean, the loss of a crew on day 8 of the 8-day mission due to a vehicle fault would have been a catastrophe in itself, but if it happened after a dozen weeks of examining the spacecraft and giving the thumbs up, heads would roll all over the administration (more so than usual, that is). It would be spectacularly bad PR. Risk is, after all, a combination of probability and consequence. Even if the probability of failure wasn't significantly higher than for a normal mission, the consequences of it have still kept rising all summer. Never mind that it's an election year. By moving the return to Crew-9, NASA has offloaded quite a bit of risk. If Starliner fails to align and burns in the atmosphere on the way back, it'd be a massive loss of face for Boeing, but NASA's decision would be vindicated and they'd be applauded for making the right call. If it returns without a single hitch, NASA still would not face much blame. "We couldn't know that for certain, we couldn't take the risk" would still be an acceptable justification. And even if the Dragon capsule of Crew-9 were to fail for whatever reason, that'd be on SpaceX and largely unrelated to the current debacle (and, thinking cynically, it'd be after the election). Boeing leaves this with a soiled reputation either way, though. At least they've avoided the very worst-case scenario, a loss of vessel with crew on board. But if the empty vessel were to fail, everybody could quickly surmise what would have happened to the crew if they had been on board. And if it were to succeed without a hitch, well ... the fact of the matter is that NASA has decided they couldn't take the risk, which is a damning conclusion in itself. A vote of no confidence, as you put it. I bet there are currently a lot of higher-ups at Boeing who bitterly wish they had never gone into this whole Starliner business in the first place. There's no way it will be certified for operations now, without another - and flawless - demonstration flight.

Well, Gump did become an astronaut in the original novel ...

Your call as the thread owner. I think I'd take out the "737 Max" bit and just leave the rest. "The saga continues" is an apt summary of the situation Boeing is in, really.

I think RCgothic was referring to Soyuzes carrying an entire crew, not the exchange program where singular astronauts join the launches of the other space program.

That's a remarkably apt summary of the history of the Soyuz (and the various programs to replace it) in general.

That being said, if Starliner gets certified and proven to work like it should, it would probably be considered for further spaceflight missions after the end of the ISS too. More space stations are planned, and (except for Lunar Gateway, which is specifically designed to give Orion a purpose) they wouldn't need a completely new craft design to ferry astronauts to them. If Starliner can fly six flights to the ISS, it can fly a seventh and further flights to Orbital Reef or Axiom or whichever station gets up there first. As shown by Soyuz, once a workable LEO taxi has been developed, it can be used to fly to any conventient LEO destinations its launch vehicle can reach.

Let's just hope the lack of consensus is due to group A saying "We are as certain as we can be that everything is fine, save for the inherent background risk of space travel" and group B saying "Just to be sure, we should send it down empty", instead of group A saying "we shouldn't do this" and group B saying the 2020's equivalent of "The O-rings have disintegrated before without issue ..." Either way, though, Boeing doesn't come out of this looking good. This was supposed to be the certification flight. The quick shakedown cruise to show that the capsule is working as intended and ready to use. Instead, it has become a test flight, running close to two months overdue. I wonder whether that certification is attainable now or that another flight would be required. Which would be a bit of a bummer, since the spacecraft is only contracted for a handful of flights *ever*, so a delay now would cut a substantial chunk out of its operative service life. If it really needs to be reworked and go through more certification flights before operability is declared, it might not be worth to continue funding it at all.

Summary of Russian orbital launches so far in 2024 (8) and the planned missions for the rest of the year (6, although I suppose more could be announced on short notice - although so could delays): https://www.russianspaceweb.com/2024.html At least the numbers seem to be going the right way compared to 2023.