Slight Rescramble of the Week's Big Launches

The headline launches this week are Starliner and Starship. As of the end of last week, both were scheduled for Wednesday, June 5, with Starship from Texas at 8:00 AM EDT and Starliner at 10:52 AM EDT. Starship has now been moved to Thursday morning at the same time.  

Along the way I saw a headline today that made me think, how bad is the public perception of Starliner anyway, when you see a headline like this from a guy who isn't a regular space writer? In this case, the political commentator: Stephen Greene at PJ Media AKA VodkaPundit:

Starliner: Is This Thing Cursed?

He actually covers the situation well. He goes back to 2011 and the end of the Shuttle program, how NASA put aside some money for the brash Commercial Crew Program, then brings the story forward to the present. 

After the competitive bidding process ended in 2014 — for a fixed-price contract, if you can believe that — SpaceX eventually received $2.6 billion to develop Dragon Crew, and Boeing won $4.2 billion for Starliner. Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin was shut out, but that was probably for the best, as I might get into in a future column.

Dragon Crew flew its first manned mission to ISS in 2020 and has since delivered astronauts there (and back!) about half a dozen times. ...

Thanks to that fixed-price contract, Boeing has lost an estimated $1.4 billion on the company's manned spaceship that has yet to fly a man, woman, or Other into space. As a result of the endless delays, Boeing seems unlikely to earn back their losses. Starliner will get at most six ISS missions while Dragon Crew has been awarded 14. That's what happens when your spaceship won't fly.

The free market answer here, that he doesn't go near, is that SpaceX beat Boeing thoroughly and completely. They practically “crushed their enemies, saw them driven away, and heard the lamentation of their women!” to quote Conan. They got a contract for 62% of what Boeing got, delivered just over four years ahead of Boeing (the flight was May 30, 2020), and while SpaceX very likely profited at 62% of what Boeing got, Boeing still hasn't flown after spending over twice what SpaceX initially flew on. 

While I'll be watching for Starliner and praying for the crew, the real excitement to me is Starship. 

Starship 29 and Super Heavy B11 ready to fly! Image credit to Elon Musk at X. Posted at 1:24AM today, June 3. Might have been taken yesterday morning, but it's not stated.

There just isn't much left to be said about this vehicle or this flight other than "go, baby, go!"