This article is worth the read. Starliner was in an extremely precarious situation that we didn’t previously know about.

Petition to make all launch failures this pretty.

It’s so disappointing. Now the next person to write valid, honest critiques will have to overcome this author’s selfishness to get attention.

On the one hand, I bet this topic/tweet will never come up again.

On the other hand, I’m taking deep breaths as I prepare for space policy to be like this every day.

WTF, man.

That looked impressively clean! I hope we get high-res onboard footage soon.

Yeah, I’m very impressed by how much they’ve improved since Monday. Maybe they can do rapid iteration afterall :P

I think there’s an interesting comms lesson in how universally grumpy the space enthusiast community is after the clock shenanigans the other day.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that clock style, but it seems to have totally demoralized way more people than a typical scrub does.

I don’t think it’s as simple as “this is different than SpaceX”. My theory is that we feel like Blue was toying with our enthusiasm, and it’s a weird “I am being taken advantage of” instinct.

Ultimately this doesn’t matter - Blue is a rocket company, not a science communicator. But perhaps there’s a lesson for the rest of us as we build science communities.

(I’m bored waiting for this launch)

I hope we’ll eventually get to hear about how their experience landing New Shepard translated to New Glenn. For instance, what parts of the codebase carried over? Naively, it feels like apples and oranges.

Such a pretty rocket. I really hope this launch succeeds; I’m tired of feeling like SpaceX is thirty years ahead of everyone else! Ten years is much more palatable.

Prediction: gets to orbit, no landing attempt. They’re so cautious that there’s no way the software checks will all pass on the way down.

Some seem to think that the Blue Origin website has a higher video quality.

It’s so frustrating that the sky-crane isn’t more affordable now that it’s an established technology. I feel like many of NASA’s problems would disappear if they could figure out how to Build Another One without insane cost overruns (see Perseverence being “another” Curiosity Rover).

The commercial route for MSR seems inevitable.

Wow!! I think most of us assumed cancellation was politically impossible, so it’s going to be very interesting to watch the fallout of this report. What will be the battlelines in Congress?

Wasn’t expecting such beautiful shots at midnight in the desert!

This is probably going to be so boring, but I won’t be able to look away.

This is how I feel. This is a wonderful moment where a switch to Dragon is easy and safe. Starliner is probably fine, but Dragon is clearly safer right now. Who cares about ISS scheduling changes and modified Starliner certification requirements?

I just checked prediction markets and they seem to think Starliner has a 20-30% chance. I think that’s way too high.

I wonder how predictable the thrust reduction is. I would have thought they could account for this in software, but maybe there’s too much uncertainty. Or perhaps ground tests showed the seal can fail in dangerous ways.

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.

I was firmly in the “nothing is actually wrong and the media coverage is silly” camp, so this report is pretty shocking.

If there are real engineering reasons (as opposed to anxious bureaucrat ones) that Dragon needs to rescue them, this seems like one of the bigger crises in the modern era?

Will wait for more details, but clearly I was wrong about media coverage!

What a weird situation. I suppose it’s nice those workarounds exist, even if they’re not ideal.

Interesting! I assume it involves a smart plug and an automation script that monitors battery level?