Russian roulette is safe! I played once and didn't die!

The point that half this comment section is missing is this is the sort of thing we want to encourage.

The US spent extra money funding two separate vendors.

One vendor exhibited a high level of risk in their first return.

The astronauts were able to be returned on the second, already proven vendor.

That's a great place to be in!

The alternative, having to return astronauts on a high risk vehicle because it's the only option, is not a place we ever want to be in.

What is not great is the fact that vendor 1 exhibited a string of concerning anomalies and accidents. Vendor 1 may be institutionally unfit to be a leg on which the US space program stands.

Year reading the starliner wikipedia page was eye opening, every single test phase had issues, and repeated issues over a long period with the same systems (thrusters) is really damning.

  > One vendor exhibited a high level of risk in their first return.
  > The astronauts were able to be returned on the second, already proven vendor.

Anyone reading this five years ago would be absolutely shocked to discover which vendor is which.

The most underrated and impressive achievement of SpaceX, IMHO, has been their designing missions for higher technical risk while managing safety impacts.

It's easy(ish) to go fast and break things.

It's much harder to go fast and break things, except also never break things when it really matters.

They didn't come back, though. It's still a success in the sense that it was a test mission and determining there was a problem is valuable, but Starliner is not ready

Considering both recent US vehicle losses have been on re-entry, I feel NASA is vindicated on being ultra-conservative around that stage.

So anomalies that might be acceptable during ascent would be unacceptable during decent.

Personally? I'm glad Boeing launched.

I wish they were perfect technically, but I also realize that an infinite amount of time and money doesn't protect against unknown-unknowns.

IMHO, they should be operating more like SpaceX (and the earlier days of the US space program) -- using calculated risk and engineering to decide when it's reasonable to do an inherently risky thing, when doing so is needed to move the entire program forward.

This is actually an incredibly stupid thing to say which reflects poorly on NASA management