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by trothamel 769 days ago
Dissimilar Redundancy. Say the Falcon 9 suffers an in-flight failure. The last time that happened, there was a stand-down for quite some time, and I suspect that there would be a similar amount of time before people could be flown on it, even if I'd think Starlinks could resume right away.

Starliner/Atlas wouldn't be affected, and so ensure the US and our allies have access to the station without getting Russia involved.
3 comments
JumpCrisscross 769 days ago
> Starliner/Atlas wouldn't be affected

Every launch of the Atlas V has already been sold [1]. They can't make more because it uses the Russian RD-180 engine.

If the Falcons were grounded, we wouldn't have the capacity to replace them with Starliner + Atlas V.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/26/22641048/ula-boeing-lockh...

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lupusreal 769 days ago
Ignoring the issue of Atlas being EOL: At the rate Starliner is progressing, it would be faster to wait for SpaceX to fix whatever was ailing Falcon 9 than to wait for Starliner to be ready.
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kenny11 769 days ago
> have access to the station without getting Russia involved.

Except for the Russian engine on the Atlas V.

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