Can We Trust the Boeing Starliner or Even Orion to Carry Astronauts to Orbit or the Moon?

Boeing's reputation has gone so far down hill that it would be hard to expect them to produce a reliable trashcan.

Correction Boeing bought out Mcdonald Douglas for thier military buisness. I know a bunch of old guys who worked at Douglas which then became Boeing and they said the exact opposite, that when Boeing took over the safety culture disappeared and quality took a nose dive. Workers would have to inspect their own work and training was cut way back.

If orion really does end up meeting starship in Leo as rumours recently indicated, even if its only once, and even if its only for testing... we end up with a architecture that doesn't really need Orion or SLS anymore.

I don't trust Starship getting to the Moon, or anywhere else beside Low Earth Orbit. This because the refueling in orbit is still unproven; but what gives me the shivers is the number of launches necessary to refuel the orbiting Starship. Initially SpaceX said six launches were enough. Then, I heard maybe ten were required. Then, I saw a video of Destin (SmarterEveryDay) giving a lecture at NASA, and there transpired that the launches required were fifteen, and the people there just avoided talking about it. Fifteen launches must go ahead without an hiccup, without aborted launches, without failed launches. And if a couple of Starship Tankers happens to fail en-route to orbit, SpaceX must have a number of spares ready for launch. And if the experimental ship-to-ship fuel ducts fail to mate, because of debris or thermal deformations, without some astronauts ready to go on an EVA, the Starship launch mission from Earth orbit is cancelled. I don't want to sound like a Cassandra, I'm all for Space Exploration at 100%, but I have the feeling that Elon Musk has over promised, and NASA bought it whole. In detail, SpaceX glossed over the logistics of refueling in orbit, and NASA didn't enquire. I hope that my doubts are out of place, and orbit refueling will prove to be a cakewalk...

I dunno if he has a team but if you are indie then i salute to the efforts and animations on the video even with a tam this is remarkable better than everyday astronaut

Not sure why people are confused about your title...? Great job, made sense and alot of information. Ty

Thank you for all the hard work in making these excellent videos.

Best to you Joseph and Chi!!! Kevin

A thicker Crew Dragon heat shield would probably do the job. Instead of spending $4B and going to the Moon, just launch a mockup of Crew Dragon with the thicker heat shield using Falcon 9 and put it in an elliptical Earth orbit and then fire a kickstage to bring the re-entry velocity to 25,000 mph. They could launch one a week until they proved out the heat shield. They could probably have it working in 6 months. This is what Apollo 4 and 6 did (both unmanned)

Thank you for all your efforts! Stay safe!

I will wait for the bus this round

Boeing is not running with their A team.

Ultimately, Sierra Nevada will prove NASA wrong and Dreamchaser will prevail, both in cargo and human rated version.

Have you ever done a geoengineering video for Mars? It would be a great topic.

I hope Sierra Space gets the DC-200 operational, it seems to me like a much more safe and reliable way to carry crew to the ISS than the Boeing Starliner. I guess we'll learn more when the DC-100 launches (hopefully soon) Great video, as always!

It's Dreamchaser that should get the funding. One thing is for sure: in the first ten Starliner flights the allowed crew must only consist of robots, which if they burn up in the atmosphere, no one will mourn. I wonder if people should ever board the Starcoffin of their own free will🤔That's what happens when engineering board is replaced with the greedy board🤷‍♂

I can only hope that the plug door is bolted in properly. I certainly wouldn’t want a window seat in that thing… lol. Great content.

Great video as always!

Great analysis thanks 👍

Dragon had a lot of similar problems in earlier years and continues to have issues today, yet nobody doubts it is safe to fly. Regarding Starliner, NASA ASAP which in recent years had raised concerns with Starliner recently said they are more than satisfied with the due diligence from NASA and Boeing regarding crew safety and working out previous issues. Regarding the heat shield on Orion, it is not expected to be a showstopper. The heat shield for Artemis 2 is already long installed on the spacecraft and replacing it would be a huge schedule hit, measured in years. NASA has said the root cause investigation is nearly closed and they don't expect any hardware changes will be needed at least for Artemis 2 and 3. The heat shield itself on Artemis 1 worked very well with a lot of ablator margin available. What happened wasn't that it ablated more, more so that the ablation patterns were different than pre flight models expected. The heat shield did not have cracking or anything of the sort, I don't think anyone from NASA has said that. What we have been told so far is that the ablation wear patterns were not as predicted, and that they saw more uneven ablation in some areas than pre flight models expected. They want to figure out why, and then update their models to make sure they can predict the heat shield behaviour better in the future. From what we've heard so far, what was seen on Artemis 1 was NOT an issue for crew safety. I do think it's funny that people would rather fly on a theorized crew Dreamchaser, and somehow are certain it would be safer than actual real world vehicles. The grass is always greener on the other side I guess.