In case you hadn’t heard by now, Butch and Sunita are going to be on arguably the longest flight delay ever. What was a 10 day test flight to space is now going to be a multi-month mission, and they’ll be flying home on a SpaceX Dragon rather than the Boeing Starliner. For all the details, I recommend checking out Diana2cats’ diary about it. There are serious recriminations about Boeing that will no doubt happen, and noted Space Reporter and Commentator Keith Cowing is asking whether we’ll see Starliner ever fly again.
But I wanna talk about something else that is actually amazing. In previous missions, when there was a concern, NASA would study the problem, and try solutions, but ultimately, all astronauts were stuck coming home on the vehicle they road to space on, even if it was potentially unsafe (see the Columbia tragedy or Apollo 13). But this time? We have options — Sunita and Butch get to come home on a different vehicle that we know is safe. And this is one of the reasons we are poised to remain a leading spacefaring nation — because we are developing a robust commercial spaceflight industry.
It’s called Dissimilar Redundancy.
When Commercial Crew was first proposed, one key aspect of it was to have 2 providers be brought to operational status. This was because advocates for the program wanted to have dissimilar redundancy as well as competition — that means that you have multiple separate systems that can do the same thing, and in the event one has to stop because of technical trouble, you have a backup system that can take over completely. In this case, Dragon can give the astronauts a ride down.
This isn’t the first time dissimilar redundancy has played a role in spaceflight. Back in 2014, the Orb-3 mission to deliver cargo to the ISS exploded shortly after lift-off. Fortunately, we had the Dragon capsule that was also delivering Cargo to the ISS, and that picked up the slack.
This is in stark comparison to countries such as China and Russia. While both countries have human spacecraft, they only have one type of spacecraft (Soyuz for Russia, Shenzhou for China). If something happens to either vehicle, they will face some sort of temporary stop on their human spaceflight program. Think what happened to the U.S. after the Apollo 1 tragedy or Challenger accident. Again, this is why having a robust commercial spaceflight industry is important when it comes to flying in space.
And who insisted on having 2 providers so we would have competition and dissimilar redundancy? President Barrack Obama and his administration. People like Lori Garver (deputy Administrator of NASA) argued loud and wide for this, much to certain members of Congress’ consternation.
So, long story short — Butch and Sunita have a safe ride home. Thanks Obama!
