Commercial Crew - Discussion Thread 3

[StraumliBlight]

OIG: Semiannual Report to Congress Spring 2025 [May 30]

Texas Resident Sentenced for Burglary

As the result of a joint investigation by the NASA OIG and Houston Police Department, a Texas resident was sentenced to 12 months of imprisonment for breaking into a SpaceX leased building and stealing five encrypted iPads containing unspecified Commercial Crew Program information.

[thespacecow]

Random thought of the day: With ISS near retirement, the necessity of maintaining two crew transport providers for redundancy is going away. Presumably every one of the new commercial stations can run unmanned for extended amount of time, and they don't need to worry about Russians taking over the station without American presence. If they just rely on a single crew provider, and it has an accident and had to stand down for a while, it's not a big deal operationally. There would be some financial penalties for not being able to use the station for some time, but this needs to be balanced against the higher cost of having 2nd provider, it's not clear to me a 2nd provider would make financial sense.

[DanClemmensen]

Random thought of the day: With ISS near retirement, the necessity of maintaining two crew transport providers for redundancy is going away. Presumably every one of the new commercial stations can run unmanned for extended amount of time, and they don't need to worry about Russians taking over the station without American presence. If they just rely on a single crew provider, and it has an accident and had to stand down for a while, it's not a big deal operationally. There would be some financial penalties for not being able to use the station for some time, but this needs to be balanced against the higher cost of having 2nd provider, it's not clear to me a 2nd provider would make financial sense.

Sadly, we need to worry about politics. There is another crewed spacecraft in operation, and at one point was even rumored to have an IDSS-compatible docking port:
    Shenzhou
Later reports appear to say that is is APAS-compatible instead, but their engineers should be able to modify the design.

[Dalhousie]

I hope nobody is suggesting that Shenzhou is a threat

[DanClemmensen]

I hope nobody is suggesting that Shenzhou is a threat

Not a threat. In a rational world, spacefarers would try to help each other in an emergency, and this would include emergency rescue for any stranded crew using any spacecraft with the capability to do so. This has been historically true at sea for hundreds of years.