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Boeing's Starliner set to fly astronauts for the first time on May 6
(techcrunch.com)
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Why get there economically when you can get there for ten times the price?
They want redundancy. What if Musk goes crazy in a new direction and decides to retire Dragon.
They should have thought of redundancy for the HLS. For one, you have a space fuel depot with cryogenic boil off that has to be refilled by multiple (at least 12?) starships. And then you have a slender long full rocket stage that has to land vertically on soft and unprepared lunar regolith. For some reason, my engineering instincts are revolting just at the thoughts of it.
NASA wanted redundancy, and will eventually get it.
2020: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/nasa-awards-lunar-lander-contracts-to-blue-origin-dynetics-and-starship/
2021: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/nasa-selects-spacex-as-its-sole-provider-for-a-lunar-lander/
SpaceX is the only affordable option, but BO makes a fuss: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/heres-why-blue-origin-thinks-it-is-justified-in-continuing-to-protest-nasa/
2023: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/05/blue-origin-wins-pivotal-nasa-contract-to-develop-a-second-lunar-lander/
They could shoot the occupants for free. Same glorious Boeing (tm) results fo no money.
They could probably get the human up there in 10 smaller cheaper launches for the same result.