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> In parallel, my pet theory is that NASA has probably already made up its mind (astronauts are not going to return on Starliner), and have been dragging this o
by TMWNN 2y ago
> In parallel, my pet theory is that NASA has probably already made up its mind (astronauts are not going to return on Starliner), and have been dragging this out mostly to make it look like they aren't just going to throw their contractors under the bus (even if they deserve it).
The longer NASA pushes out a decision on what to do with Starliner, the more it becomes likely that people within the Biden administration don't want to go with the obvious choice of bringing home the crew on a Crew Dragon, because they don't want the resulting headlines shouting "Elon Musk rescues astronauts from space".
- thefourthchime 2y agoI hadn’t thought of a political angle for this, but that does make sense. Announcing “Elon saves NASA” certainly helps the GOP more.
- WillPostForFood 2y agoIt clearly helps SpaceX, Musk mostly indirectly, and GOP not at all.
- booi 2y agoElon is the maga crowd's newest talking head so it helps the GOP at least a little.
- Covzire 2y agoWhy does this kind of partisan bickering only ever go one way on HN? Why does every decision have to be a careful calculus when one political party instead of another might get credit? Do people not realize how blatantly biased and partisan they sound?
- allenrb 2y agoMaybe because there’s a larger overlap between HN demographics and those of the Democratic Party versus those of the GOP? That’s beside the point, though. NASA is an agency of the United States Government. The idea that politics do not come into play is naive at best.
- kcplate 2y agoIt’s my opinion that you have been unfairly downvoted on this comment. This was a reasonable and astute analysis, but I suspect peoples political allegiances and Musk opinions create knee jerk downvote reactions on here. Your comment is probably a casualty of that.
- panick21_ 2y agoDead austronauts would hurt Biden/Harris 10000x more.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoI think the likely delayed return in February is just because NASA want to make this seem as routine as possible, so will have them come back as part of a planned Dragon trip rather than scrambling an unnecessary and expensive unplanned one sooner that screams "rescue" and "we messed up".