Commercial Crew - Discussion Thread 3

[deadman1204]

Presumably this seat arrangement only applies to Dragon and Soyuz, given the lack of track record and even certification of Starliner at this point.  It took two demo flights and three and a half missions, plus some unknown number of Cargo V2 missions with some similarity (e.g. parachutes) before Russia agreed to fly on Crew Dragon.  If the same kind of track record is required for Starliner it almost doesn't seem worth the effort given the low number of planned flights.

Not having seat swaps on alternating flights (once Starliner is certified by NASA and in rotation) seems non-optimal but unavoidable to me.

Starliner will be easier. This took soo long, because Russia desperately wanted to go back to the US paying them piles of money for flights. Now that they've admitted that it will never happen again, adding in another vehicle will only be technical, not political.

[baldusi]

Presumably this seat arrangement only applies to Dragon and Soyuz, given the lack of track record and even certification of Starliner at this point.  It took two demo flights and three and a half missions, plus some unknown number of Cargo V2 missions with some similarity (e.g. parachutes) before Russia agreed to fly on Crew Dragon.  If the same kind of track record is required for Starliner it almost doesn't seem worth the effort given the low number of planned flights.

Not having seat swaps on alternating flights (once Starliner is certified by NASA and in rotation) seems non-optimal but unavoidable to me.

Starliner will be easier. This took soo long, because Russia desperately wanted to go back to the US paying them piles of money for flights. Now that they've admitted that it will never happen again, adding in another vehicle will only be technical, not political.

Even Russians require three piloted flights before "commissioning" of the spacecraft. I.e., before that it is "experimental/test flights". So,  that would put the earliest Starliner that Russians accept to fly in at the third regular flight. That will probably be second half of 2025.

[deadman1204]

Presumably this seat arrangement only applies to Dragon and Soyuz, given the lack of track record and even certification of Starliner at this point.  It took two demo flights and three and a half missions, plus some unknown number of Cargo V2 missions with some similarity (e.g. parachutes) before Russia agreed to fly on Crew Dragon.  If the same kind of track record is required for Starliner it almost doesn't seem worth the effort given the low number of planned flights.

Not having seat swaps on alternating flights (once Starliner is certified by NASA and in rotation) seems non-optimal but unavoidable to me.

Starliner will be easier. This took soo long, because Russia desperately wanted to go back to the US paying them piles of money for flights. Now that they've admitted that it will never happen again, adding in another vehicle will only be technical, not political.

Even Russians require three piloted flights before "commissioning" of the spacecraft. I.e., before that it is "experimental/test flights". So,  that would put the earliest Starliner that Russians accept to fly in at the third regular flight. That will probably be second half of 2025.

This is the same country that hides any/all near miss/near loss of crews from NASA, because they don't want to look bad. I bet the 3 flight thing can be ignored.

[Lars-J]

Presumably this seat arrangement only applies to Dragon and Soyuz, given the lack of track record and even certification of Starliner at this point.  It took two demo flights and three and a half missions, plus some unknown number of Cargo V2 missions with some similarity (e.g. parachutes) before Russia agreed to fly on Crew Dragon.  If the same kind of track record is required for Starliner it almost doesn't seem worth the effort given the low number of planned flights.

Not having seat swaps on alternating flights (once Starliner is certified by NASA and in rotation) seems non-optimal but unavoidable to me.

Starliner will be easier. This took soo long, because Russia desperately wanted to go back to the US paying them piles of money for flights. Now that they've admitted that it will never happen again, adding in another vehicle will only be technical, not political.

Even Russians require three piloted flights before "commissioning" of the spacecraft. I.e., before that it is "experimental/test flights". So,  that would put the earliest Starliner that Russians accept to fly in at the third regular flight. That will probably be second half of 2025.

This is the same country that hides any/all near miss/near loss of crews from NASA, because they don't want to look bad. I bet the 3 flight thing can be ignored.

No, I don't see any sinister motive here. Roscosmos has not had any insight into the Dragon design, nor Starliner. You would not expect NASA to fly astronauts on a hypothetical Russian or Chinese spacecraft that only had one manned test flight. In this case I think it is a perfectly valid decision on their part.

[AmigaClone]

No, I don't see any sinister motive here. Roscosmos has not had any insight into the Dragon design, nor Starliner. You would not expect NASA to fly astronauts on a hypothetical Russian or Chinese spacecraft that only had one manned test flight. In this case I think it is a perfectly valid decision on their part.

I think part of the reason it took so long to formally sign the seat swap agreement between NASA and Roscosmos for seats on Crew Dragon and Soyuz was the former director of that agency.

Other contributing factors which likely had more effect were the Crew Dragon exploding in testing, Starliner's performance in its first mission and the valve problem that prevented Starliner from launching last year.

[Comga]

No, I don't see any sinister motive here. Roscosmos has not had any insight into the Dragon design, nor Starliner. You would not expect NASA to fly astronauts on a hypothetical Russian or Chinese spacecraft that only had one manned test flight. In this case I think it is a perfectly valid decision on their part.

I think part of the reason it took so long to formally sign the seat swap agreement between NASA and Roscosmos for seats on Crew Dragon and Soyuz was the former director of that agency.

Other contributing factors which likely had more effect were the Crew Dragon exploding in testing, Starliner's performance in its first mission and the valve problem that prevented Starliner from launching last year.

It has been said over and over.
Roscosmos was paid handsomely (up to $93M per ride and lifeboat seat IIRC) and is really impacted by losing that. The Kremlin is not just going to replace those funds one-for-one.
It is likely Rogozin wanted to see just how much NASA wanted “disparate redundancy” in crew transport and how much they would pay for it. Staying off Starliner was even easier than refusing rides on Dragon, seeing as it hadn’t even had a successful test flight.
It turns out not as much as he hoped, so zero dollar seat swapping was all he could get.
When it suits Russia’s purposes, seat swaps will be extended to Starliner, hard-and-fast rules from a bygone era be damned.

[yg1968]

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1550160447088779265

[deadman1204]

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1550160447088779265

This should guarantee the human space flight needs to study a group of people 1 year in space.

[AmigaClone]

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1550160447088779265

Once Starliner has a few operational missions under its belt, that might expand to two crew rotations in a year - provided Russia is still associated with the ISS.