One informed source said it was greater than a 50-50 chance that the crew would come back on Dragon. Another source said it was significantly more likely than not they would. To be clear, NASA has not made a final decision. This probably will not happen until at least next week. It is likely that Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, will make the call.
Asked if it was now more likely than not that Starliner’s crew would return on Dragon, NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars on Thursday evening, " NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible. No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning."
If NASA defers to its fallback plan, flying on Dragon, it may spell the end of the Starliner program. During the development and testing of Starliner, the company has already lost $1.6 billion. Reflying a crew test flight mission, which likely would be necessary should Starliner return autonomously, would cost much more.
Through this lens, I get why they’re taking their time with the decision.
Even if they return the crew on Starliner I feel like this has gone badly enough to warrant another test flight.
another test flight
On which rocket though? All of the remaining Atlas Vs have already been sold:
- Six for the operational Starliner missions
- Eight for Amazon Kuiper
- One for ViaSat
Boeing would either need to reduce the total number of operational Starliner missions, or ask one of the other customers to pretty please sell them an Atlas V launch. They could also pay to crew-rate Vulcan, but I doubt they would want to do that.
Most likely buy one of Amazon’s slots; that seems like it would be easiest to move to Vulcan, especially considering Blue Origin’s involvement in Vulcan. I had thought the plan always was to crew rate Vulcan, though.