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Comment by indoordin0saur | Hacker News Reader

Why did they wait so long to make the decision to not use the Starliner for the return? Seems like an obvious choice, if the thrusters on the ship aren't functioning properly and we've got a well tested alternative ready to go in SpaceX.

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NASA wanted to understand if the malfunctioning thrusters could operate within a margin error for safety. Boeing spent a month running a study that produced non-definitive answer as to the root cause of the problem. Had Boeing definitively demonstrated the root cause of the thruster issue NASA probably would have sent the Astronauts home on Starliner. It’s not that NASA necessarily thought that Starliner was unsafe. It’s more like they lack confidence that Boeing actually understands the problem.

Just seems weird they aren't getting picked up until February. Oh well, I guess from the astronauts' perspective this is sorta great because you spend your whole life preparing for this one great moment in your career and to get to stay up there for longer can't be a terrible thing.

To be entirely fair to Boeing, while it’s too bad they do not understand the problem, props to them for admitting that.

Or at least, realizing that saying it’s totally safe only to have the thing explode would cause irreparable reputational harm.

It landed safely, the astronauts would have been fine returning on Starliner. Given the absurd number of thrusters that Starliner has, it's still safe with a couple thrusters missing. So the question was "is it safe enough"? It's a hard judgement call. They made the right call, and making it at the last minute while waiting for more data from tests both on the ground and in space was also the right call IMO.

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