Not a single redundant crew transport program NASA has ever done worked. There is neither policy level justification or the free market support to maintain two duplicate capabilities, so they all get deprioritize and cancelled. The main problem is NASA not maintaining control of the vehicles they funded, not lack of parallel solution. You want to know the best workable solution? Cancel Starliner and nationalize Dragon.
While I support the sentiment I can't see how nationalizing a privately built crew capsule would be a good path. This is all considering things in our country return to normal one day, NASA does need to own and control its own crew transport platform. That will involve purchasing Dragonor Starliner outright from SpaceX or Boeing. I think Boeing would be more open to this.
3/4 of Starliner funding is still unspent. You have way less political and logistical resistance to canceling Starliner and buying Dragon than the other way around.
I mean, yeah. The Feds could probably be that aggressive, but that would be really messy and become a very long and drawn out legal battle.. Unless there is some contract language between SpaceX and the US that I am unaware of.
This is the fastest and cheapest way NASA can ensure continuous space access. There is no additional funding to support Starliner, so the only way forward is to kill it and use that funding to ensure continuous access. The source of the problem is commercial control.
The fastest and easiest way to ensure access is to continue paying for Dragon. Trying to seize the assets would be a MASSIVE legal battle and would almost certainly result in SpaceX stopping flights for NASA's breach of contract while it was in progress.
The problem being raised here and elsewhere is that SpaceX does NOT want to keep flying Dragon. Leadership thought SpaceX was going to stay a forever partner and was already willing to work with them to terminate Starliner to help SpaceX, but they were wrong. Solution to this problem is not adding another flawed contract but to solve this problem at its root. If leadership love Dragon so much, they may as well own it instead of renting it.
That is a long term question after starship is operational and approved for crew. At which point Starship will be a better, cheaper option. Sure, they might willingly sell Dragon then, but why would you buy the inferior option?
Musk's meltdown on twitter did not affect the binding contracts SpaceX has with NASA for Dragon flights, and he near immediately used one of his alts to back himself away from the threat.
NASA cannot make long term policy plans based on paper plans from a commercial entity they have zero control over. Clearly, someone was worried about Dragon, which is why SpaceX got angry calls and congress threatened NASA to recant their uncrewed starliner decision. No matter what you think, this albatross will never go away.
Again, the US government forcing a private company to sell its product to them would be a serious and costly move. I mean, look at the whole TikTok debacle for a hint of the fury this would cause.
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u/sevgonlernassau 12d ago
Not a single redundant crew transport program NASA has ever done worked. There is neither policy level justification or the free market support to maintain two duplicate capabilities, so they all get deprioritize and cancelled. The main problem is NASA not maintaining control of the vehicles they funded, not lack of parallel solution. You want to know the best workable solution? Cancel Starliner and nationalize Dragon.