Russia to end cooperation on the International Space Station

"If all goes well with the Boeing Starliner, we should have 2 US options to transport crews by the end of the year."

Well, this can happen only if the OFT-2 second flight of Starliner occurs in May 2022. IF it does, then there is a moderate chance that a crewed test flight of Starliner might occur this year.

BUT IF there is yet another delay in the OFT-2 qualification flight beyond May...

OR IF there are new problems with Starliner found during OFT-2...

THEN there will not be the manned Boeing Starliner TEST FLIGHT until 2023.

Frankly, NASA would like to have two private providers of crewed access to the ISS, but SpaceX's performance so far demonstrates that they don't actually need Boeing's success to do everything they want to do.

And Boeing clearly isn't the company they used to be...

SpaceX is already turning a healthy profit with falcon 9 and F9 heavy. They could with very little R&D make the second stage of F9 recoverable for a fully reusable system. The math has been done. A PICA heat shield the same on Dragon would add 250kg of weight , to shift the CG from the day to the front can be done two ways ballast they would need 400kg to balance the weight of the Merlin vac at the tail end. Or use RCS thrusters which are already onboard just need more nitrogen gas for exoatmopheric flight till.entry interface at which point drag flaps off the tail end deployed in a Y config would shift the aerodynamic pressure center aft keeping the nose of the stage with its PICA forwards. This option adds 300kg the next choice is powered recovery using Super Drago engines and prop or parachute to a.midair snatch under a heavy lift helo. Total mass of the second stage is small enough to helo recovery. This option adds another 200kg for ring chutes and main canopy. For just over a 1000kg SpaceX can recover its second stage with that Vac Merlin worth 2 million dollars or so every kg you use for recovery comes out of payload as you have to take it through the full orbital delta V. Musk has said they already did the calculations and decided that starship was where the future was at and abandoned stage two recovery. This doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t should they not get starship flying soon. They already dominate the market for medium payloads to orbit with a fully reusable system they would capture virtually all of the market with the absolute cheapest KG to orbit on earth. Fuel for a falcon 9 is a couple hundred grand without throwing away the second stage they only have to referb the stages they don’t release that cost buy estimates are at a million bucks per launch all in. They could then put up 16 tons minus a tonne so 15 tonnes for the cost of fuel and referb or 1.5 million. No other company on earth can touch those costs. There was also a scaled down version of the raptor engine that the DOD paid for the R&D it’s slightly more thrust than Merlin but its ISP using CH4/LOX prop is 30% higher. A falcon sized rocket using the same tanks and total length and 9+1 of those mini raptors puts 22 tonnes of LEO taking one tonne off for stage two recovery is a 21 tonne lifter fully reusable and a few million per launch again no one could touch that not even the chicoms and those heavily subsidised long March V.

I am aware falcon 9 in half reusable land the first stage on barge mode takes 16 tonnes metric to orbit. To bring home the second stage would take a tonne off that as in 1000 kg give or take how they do the heat shielding and how slow you want it at landing ,spashdown or capture in the air.

The methane lox version of F9 would take 23,000 kg to LEO or 23 tonnes. All space flights are measured in metric tonnes by convention since the whole planet uses kg not lbs. It was a typo in my other post.

The really interesting thing happens when you do a mini starship version of the second stage no more dropped nose cones, no more PICA use the same stainless steel and wet cooling from it’s big brother no need for parachutes glide down to a tail flip landing and brake down on ch4/02 pressure fed engines two the size of their former Kestrel engine would do the trick with only 50% down throttling. Kestrel only weighed in at 54kg but put out 2900kg of thrust at 135 psi of chamber pressure not hard to achieve with two propellants that auto pressurize as they warm up. Wrapping a single loop of heat exchanger around the Kestrel engine chamber would pressurize the stage tanks in a simple expander cycle no turbo pump needed use the same pressurized CH4/O2 for RCS and CG control on the way to atmospheric interface. It would be a major redesign vs just adding PICA to the existing second stage , some drag flaps to keep the nose forward and ring parachutes to slow from supersonic to subsonic flight with the rigging lines doubling as your aerial capture points. You could also put in actual Kestrel engines to a second stage since it already has the tanks for kerosene and LOX plus helium pressure bottles needed for stage two flight adding in two Kestrel engines and upping the helium bottle capacity to drive 135 lbs into them let’s you power land a second stage to a zero zero guided point landing. Seems excessive since it would be much cheaper to just deorbit use aerobreaking to supersonic speeds, pop ring chutes and have a helicopter grab your stage as it glides down like the USA did hundreds of times with spy sat capsules that did exactly the same entry type. Either way you have a fully reusable system with fuel and referb costs under two million per launch they dominate every one.

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