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Goregue t1_je8kwc5 wrote

Reply to comment by fnorksayer in NASA delays flight of Boeing’s Starliner again, this time for parachutes by thawingSumTendies

Redundancy in case something goes wrong with Dragon/Falcon 9. NASA basically doesn't want a repeat of what happened in the 2010s after the space shuttle was retired and they were forced to buy seats on Soyuz for 10 years.

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TbonerT t1_je999qe wrote

The space shuttle had failure throughout its program. If something goes wrong with Falcon 9, we’ll be flying again relatively quickly since we know it is a reliable rocket. The AMOS-6 explosion happened on September 1 and SpaceX flew again in December, just 3 months later.

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bullett2434 t1_je9cy90 wrote

I mean spacex could go bankrupt one day out of nasas control, or they could abandon the F9 based on a business decision. And then nasa would be screwed. Not saying it would happen but crazier things have

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TbonerT t1_je9dimu wrote

Those aren’t things that would suddenly happen. NASA could probably afford to keep SpaceX afloat with contracts for the rockets it wants. It isn’t helpless to SpaceX’s whims.

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photoengineer t1_jefgn2h wrote

That wasn’t with people though. The shuttle down times were years.

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