Yep, the backup lifeboat plan then will be for them to ride back without suits on the floor of Dragon. That's apparently less risky than riding back on Starliner, which says a lot. Known risks vs unknown unknowns, I suppose.
That's apparently less risky than riding back on Starliner
Not necessarily. The dangers involved in coming home packed like unsuited sardines in the back of a Dragon only come into play if they need to evacuated the ISS to begin with, so they're saying the odds of abandoning the ISS and the Dragon capsule loosing it's atmosphere are better than the odds of a catastrophic failure of the Starliner
Me too. I had thought we were talking about a 1% chance or something like that.
But at the press conference, one of the journalists seemed to be asking about the probability of disaster, and gave 10% as an example. None of the NASA people took the opportunity to say "no that's far too high", or "I'm very confident the uncrewed return of Starliner will be successful", or anything like that.
I'm hoping this doesn't make me a bad person but now that there are no lives at risk I'm kinda hoping it does? I'm so fed up with corporate cost-cutting (even when it affects people's safety!) and companies surviving just based on inertia. I feel if the legal system isn't powerful enough to set a precedent against this sort of corporate practices, maybe the Starliner is. Maybe that's its purpose, and maybe that's how it makes space travel better.