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Comment by trebligdivad | Hacker News Reader

Listen to the actual conference: https://www.youtube.com/live/DYPL6bx87yM?si=W5UzfyiYzPX3KgGr

IMHO summarising it like the title is a little unfair; yes they're making provision for use of Dragon; but they haven't made any decision yet. The thing that seems to have confused them is that all the Starliner thrusters are working in their tests - given their idea of some teflon deformation somewhere, I think they thought they'd still be problematic, which is making them wonder if the teflon thing is the full story?

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Interesting tidbit: Talking about the upcoming Crew Dragon flight being moved around: "We will let SpaceX use our first stage booster, they'll go fly a starlink flight, ahead of our flight to get a little shakedown of that booster. It had some moisture intrusion and we want to go ahead and get that booster flown. And so there's a win win there - flying our booster on a starlink flight before our crew flight."

The complete 180 here is great to see. For the crewed demo flight of Crew Dragon, they used a brand new booster. It seems NASA didn't like the idea of flying on reused boosters, thinking they had an increased risk. Now they're liking the idea of a booster being flown an extra time.

I worked at SpaceX for almost 8 years, starting before we'd ever landed a Falcon, and I cannot tell you how good it feels, deeply in my soul, to have watched this turnaround. The culture we were fighting against early on was so entrenched. This is great.

Congrats to you guys. SpaceX has done incredible things.

> Now they're liking the idea of a booster being flown an extra time.

"Flight proven"

"Flight secured."

It seems it'd be a massive reputational risk to NASA to bring them back on Starliner, just in case anything does go wrong. Given all the deliberations, NASA is going to be seen as at least 50% to blame if they make the wrong decision.

Everyone closely involved with making the decision will be well aware that the subsequent inquiry, and quite a bit of the public's reaction, will be personally brutal if they opt for Starliner and it fails catastrophically, no matter how small the odds seemed at the time.

Being unable to deal with risk means the end of the space program.

Sure, it's inherently risky, so managing that risk becomes key to success.

The thing here is that NASA has a choice.

1) Use Starliner with it's dodgy development history, no track record of reliability, and with the problems experienced with this specific unit.

2) Use Dragon, tried and tested, with an excellent history of reliability

This should be a no-brainer.

If Starliner can't safely autonomously undock at the moment (and anyways needs a month for software reload/verification apparently - not sure why verification takes so long), then leave it there until there's a solution to do it safely. In the meantime the ISS has 6 docking ports, currently all in use with 3 supply vessels and 3 crew (Starliner+Dragon+Soyuz), so presumably there is some flexibility there.

Having competitors trying to out do each other is good for the space program. Having only one solution available leads to problems as well.

Sure, and NASA are also nurturing Blue Origin who may be a good option in the future.

I don't think anyone looks bad here if NASA go with Dragon and Starliner flies home autonomously and without incident. It makes Boeing look good, and everyone in the room look like adults. OTOH given the poor Boeing performance to date, killing a crew would probably take them out of the NASA program for a very long time, if not forever, and even having a non-fatal failure on way back would make the judgement of both Boeing and NASA look very poor.

But Boeing isn't trying to "out do" SpaceX -- except when it comes to political connections.

Maybe Dream Chaser will be that competitor. We'll see.

They have to undock either Dragon (Crew 8) or Starliner to dock the next Dragon (Crew 9).

What about the port currently used by the Northrup Grumman supply ship - is that not compatible with Dragon ? Is there no adaptor to make the Russian Soyuz/Progress ports usable by Dragon ?

I believe there's a difference between the cargo ports and ports suitable for manned vehicles.

[Edit] The difference, is that Cygnus berth by Candarm to a berthing port, while Crew Dragon, Starliner and Cargo Dragon dock to a docking port.

Thanks!

Googling more about this, it seems the Russian portion of the ISS has 4 docking ports, but US portion has 2 docking + 2 berthing ports, and the Russian ports are not compatible with the US ones.

There is also apparently a US "pressurized mating adaptor" (PMA) that adapts a "common berthing mechanism" (CBM) port to a docking one, which sounds as if it might (if one were available, and could be installed) be able to adapt one of the US berthing ports for use by Dragon.

You have two choices, one has a risk of 15 units, one has a risk of 3 units.

The outcome is the same.

You go for the risk of 3 units.

As Kirk says, "risk is our business". Doesn't mean you don't need to minimise the risk to achieve the goal. The goal here is

1) Return the crew

2) Return the capsule and gather more data

If those goals can be achieved with less by bringing the crew back on dragon, then that's a sensible move.

If the space program is not willing to kill some astronauts, there shouldn't be a space program.

From a purely economic point of view, the cost of killing an astronaut is small compared to the cost of these missions. The statistical value of a human life is around $12 M. Astronauts may be a bit more expensive, due to cost of training, but not enormously so.

Making space flight much cheaper will shift the economics, making safety relatively more important. It will also enable that safety by enabling many more launches to reduce risks.

People anguish over the 14 astronauts killed in the Shuttle, but the economic value destroyed by that program was in the end a much greater loss.

There's a massive difference between astronauts dying in the process of testing something innovative and risky that pushes the envelope, and astronauts dying because a company has let its engineering deteriorate.

In the latter case, we might as well just shoot those astronauts instead, it'd give about the same meaning to their deaths.

If what they are doing is not enough to give meaning to their deaths, then to a much greater extent it's not enough to give meaning to the very large amount of money being spent on the mission.

That makes no sense. The meaning of the very large amount of money being spent on the mission is of accomplishing the mission.

Starliner is doing nothing innovative, and dying with it would not be accomplishing the mission or adding anything new towards accomplishing it past this point (that is, all the testing past this point can be done without putting people onboard, with just the comparatively small cost of a software swap), there is no meaning to dying on it.

You might as well be arguing that SpaceX should put crew on IFT-5.

So, the meaning of the deaths is the accomplishment of the mission. Why does the mission give meaning to money, but not to the deaths? Meaning is meaning.

Starliner may indeed not be worth deaths involved in its testing, but that would be because Starliner would not be worthwhile as a program at all.

Starliner serves the purpose of NASA not being dependent on a single launch provider.

If Starliner needs additional testing, as it appears to do, then it makes no sense, and serves no purpose, to test it in a way that endangers human lives when that is completely unnecessary.

If NASA/Boeing need to test if Starliner can fly back home (whether this unit, or future ones, until they get it reliable) then have it fly back home autonomously.

Your argument makes zero sense - it's exactly like saying that cars would only be worthwhile if we used humans for crash tests rather than crash test dummies. It's a bit like some ancient culture thinking that human sacrifice is needed to placate the gods.

This is a silly take. There are two options, Starliner with X units of risk, Dragon with Y units of risk. Given what we know, X is greater than Y. The only reason to choose Starliner at this point is because in the event of it not killing them, some mid level managers at Boeing don't look as bad.

Is that a good enough reason to gamble with someones life? I don't think reasonable people can come to different conclusions here.

If we're pushing the envelope of technology and humankind's ability to do cool shit and people die in the process, you can argue that it's worth it, and that's fine, reasonable people can disagree. But that's just not what is happening here.

The value of an astronaut is at least 10x the value of the “statistical human life”. Probably closer to 100x. Maybe even more.

The statistical human life is meant to represent the average person. The average person is not qualified to become an astronaut. Selection alone, nevermind training, is stringent enough that maybe 1 in 100,000 people meets the bar. And the difference between a qualified astronaut and the average person here isn’t small; it’s a power law relationship.

Interesting! Since it doesn't cost that anywhere close to that much to create an astronaut, clearly we can make the nation incredibly wealthy by simply training more of them. By the magical transmutation of astronaut creation, this increases their value enormously. What a brilliant free wealth concept you have created! It's the greatest idea since Beanie Babies.

It’s a selection effect. If you trained all of the people qualified to become astronauts into becoming astronauts you would incur the opportunity costs of those people not applying their talents and ambitions elsewhere.

So, you're saying we're actually losing value by training an astronaut, since their talents are not available or elsewhere? Or that astronauts should be chosen from the otherwise useless? Trying to understand here.

I'm sure we can find plenty of low value people to transmute into incredibly valuable secular saints of space. No need to waste the otherwise useful.

> So, you're saying we're actually losing value by training an astronaut, since their talents are not available or elsewhere?

This is called “opportunity cost” and it’s a basic concept.

> Or that astronauts should be chosen from the otherwise useless?

That wouldn’t work because those people couldn’t become useful astronauts.

> I'm sure we can find plenty of low value people to transmute into incredibly valuable secular saints of space. No need to waste the otherwise useful.

The smug, superior attitude here doesn’t really work when you’re mocking basic concepts like opportunity cost or being qualified for a job. It just makes you come across as an anti-intellectual clown. If you tried engaging in good faith you might learn something.

Here (with parent sources mentioned at the link) it is claimed that training costs 15 million, a bit more than a bit eh?

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/35431/how-much-doe....

"Not enormously so". In particular, it doesn't counter the argument I was making. For the Shuttle, for example, the value of the astronaut lives, even including $15 M in training costs, was an order of magnitude less than the cost of the orbiter itself.

Most of the science results from the space program are from proves. The experiments that the astronaut run in space are fully automated, because they are not experts in all topics, so they get a box that they have to plug, turn on and off later. The value of astronauts is to get some data about the human body in space and mostly to get support from the public. (It's almost like pilots in F1. Nobody would go to see a robot version of F1.)

I would very much pay to see F1 cars being controlled by computers beyond the limits of humans. Especially if they removed many of the limitations intended to keep the drivers safe.

You need to keep the audience safe as well! Most of the people who have died in motorsport are spectators.

I'd like to see F1 revert to 1960s technology (with safety improvements) because those cars required a lot more driver skill.

Mee too! But I think we will be the only two spectators in the stands.

this is a really sad and disappointing perspective for someone to have. if you are putting people's lives at risk for the sake of economic value when they have trusted you with their lives then you don't deserve that trust.

The money spent on making astronauts safer could save more lives if spent elsewhere. That's how the statistical value of a life is set: it's the marginal cost of saving a (age adjusted) life used to justify government actions, say in worker safety, pollution control, road improvements, medical spending, etc.

Why do you think astronauts are so much more important than the common persons saved by these other efforts? Why do you advocate spending patterns that increase the body count for a given expenditure?

We all know that society applies almost arbitrary values to all these things.

42,000 road deaths annually? Meh. 3,000 people die in the terror attacks of 9/11? Multi-trillion-dollar, 20 year war.

Politicians only fund NASA manned launches because the average voter thinks it's kinda cool and maybe it inspires some kids to work hard at school. Too many high profile, fear-inducing deaths and politicians are liable to decide the money spent on NASA could be better spent elsewhere.

Yes, the point I'm working toward is the manned space program is not worth the money spent on it. The willingness to suspend the thing for years when a few astronauts die is a tell. If what they were doing was actually important this would not be allowed to happen.

Just because something is important (although I'm not saying that manned space exploration is), doesn't mean it has to be done tomorrow.

e.g. It's important you save for your kids college, but you don't need to have all the money saved up by time they are 10 years old.

Rushing an important task can also cause it to fail. Being overly aggressive with college savings by putting it in high-risk investments would not be conducive to meeting goals, and NASA losing public support by getting crew killed unnecessarily would not be conducive to them getting funding for future manned missions.

> Why do you think astronauts are so much more important than the common persons saved by these other efforts?

Because they're being asked to do something extraordinarily dangerous. I think it makes sense that the higher the risk, the more accountability (and expenditure) there should be for reducing said risk

> if you are putting people's lives at risk for the sake of economic value when they have trusted you with their lives then you don't deserve that trust.

That happens all the time. If you drive your car to work, you are putting your lives and those of others at risk for economic value. There's no way around it.

There's risk and then there's unnecessary risk.

You could argue that landing on the Moon and even Mars is an unnecessary risk, or human spaceflight as a whole.

The whole moon programme and the space shuttle were extremely high risk by today's standards, but the moon programme was to prove that the US could beat the USSR, and the space shuttle was to transport spy satellites and build the ISS.

But Starliner should really be nearly zero risk with that small goal of docking and drop back home.

Comparing brand new challenges to something that’s been done routinely a hundred times already is rather pointless.

Docking to the ISS and drop home was done ~hundred times already, we compare Starliner with Soyuz in that mission no?

The difference between the two is always a matter of someone's opinion.

Losing public support means the end of the space program too. Especially in an election year.

How many astronauts died in the Apollo era? Nobody wants a Chinese moon base. That's worth a few lives.

I want a chinese moon base

The Apolla era was a completely different animal. I don't think cars at seat belts in those days, society was much more accepting of danger. Also, nuclear annihilation was very real and anything required to beat the Soviet Union was on the table. That level of existential crisis and acceptance of danger in the public mind doesn't exist today.

Three. None in space.

Huh?

First off, the Apollo program was part of the space race - an actual race to show supremacy during the cold war, and even then safety was taken seriously enough that there was the Apollo 10 "dress rehearsal". Cool fact is that the Apollo 10 astronauts were so gung-ho to land that NASA made sure to only provide enough fuel for the lander for them to execute the mission - not enough for an unsanctioned landing!

Second, there is no goal, nor way, to prevent China building a moon base, and given NASA's ridiculous Artemis program that's just as well, since American astronauts will probably be eating moon-cooked Chinese takeout by the time they get there.

Choosing the Dragon capsule option in this case would be neither risk-free nor mean the end of a space program, though it might lead to significant changes (quite possibly for the better) to NASA's current version.

They have plenty of experience with how Congress treats them when they kill astronauts.

The title strikes me as an entirely fair characterization of your own summary of the situation.

It's not unfair given the information provided in this conference that was new. The dialog on conferences has shifted such that the main piece of news is that they may fly home on the Dragon.

Yeah this announcement sounds like the type of thing bad bosses do to look like their decisions till now were sound (they were not). Accepting star liner as a mistake will ask the question what NASA did anyway.

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