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TbonerT t1_je98viz wrote

Reply to comment by JungleJones4124 in NASA delays flight of Boeing’s Starliner again, this time for parachutes by thawingSumTendies

It is good to be concerned about Falcon 9 but it has proven to be highly reliable. The current version has flown 158 missions with complete success. Dragon 2 has 16 successful flights under its belt. Backups are good but Boeing has a long way to go to show that it can be a reliable partner in the program.

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JungleJones4124 t1_je9t2os wrote

It doesn't matter how reliable the Falcon 9 and Dragon are. It's great that they are reliable, but anything made my people will eventually fail. I'm not going to speculate on how/when because we could be here for the rest of the week.

Boeing has had a lot of difficulties and I'm not a fan of Starliner. The only way for Boeing to even start to get close to the reliability of Falcon and Dragon is to launch when its safe to do so. Will this be a long term spacecraft? Absolutely not. It will be rarely used, but it is still necessary.

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TbonerT t1_je9uy4b wrote

>It's great that they are reliable, but anything made my people will eventually fail.

Even if there is a failure, it won't be a huge setback for manned missions. SpaceX was back to flying just 3 months after AMOS-6 exploded on the pad.

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Layer_4_Solutions t1_jeawnzk wrote

SpaceX has several Falcon 9s, with significant bandwidth from Starlink missions even if something happens to one.

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JungleJones4124 t1_jeaxatb wrote

That isn’t how the rocket launch industry works. If there is an a failure with one. They have to inspect them all. That’s not to say it would be a long process, but quantity of Falcons is not important here

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