The US now has two independent launch systems to ferry astronauts
between Earth and LEO. If one of the two must be grounded, the other one
can step up to replace it. Is this the first time this has happened?

Alain Fournier

Alain Fournier submitted this idea :

> The US now has two independent launch systems to ferry astronauts between
> Earth and LEO. If one of the two must be grounded, the other one can step up
> to replace it. Is this the first time this has happened?

Definitely the first time for the US. There was a year between Gordon
Cooper's Mercury flight and the unmanned test flight of Gemini 1, and
another year before Gemini 3 (Grissom, Young) became the first crewed
flight of the "sports car", and Gemini XII (Lovell, Aldrin) took place
after 2 unmanned Apollo Block 1 flights and 2 1/2 months before the
Apollo 1 fire (A1 launch was to be in another month). And after
Apollo, there was ... well, 9 years to Shuttle and STS-1.

For the Soviets, Vostok was built 10 times 1960-1963, Voskhod 5 times
1964-1966 (2 human crewed missions, 1 canine crewed, and none had an
LES). The first version of Soyuz, Soyuz 7K-OK, first flew unmanned at
the end of 1966, and manned 4 months later (Komarov died in the
landing) and Soyuz 2 & 3 (uncrewed 2, Beregovoy in 3) after another 18
months.

Buran had only 1 spaceflight, uncrewed, in 1988, but overlapped the
Soyuz 7K-STM era. The non-orbital jet-powered Buran OK-GLI had 25
atmospheric flights.

I think China has had just one capsule, similar to a Soyuz (which
versio?), but with its own enhancements.

India has not yet crew-rated its capsule.

ESA has not produced a crewed vehicle other than test articles.

/dps

--
"What do you think of my cart, Miss Morland? A neat one, is not it?
Well hung: curricle-hung in fact. Come sit by me and we'll test the
springs."
(Speculative fiction by H.Lacedaemonian.)

Alain Fournier <alain245@videotron.ca> wrote:
>The US now has two independent launch systems to ferry astronauts
>between Earth and LEO.

Given that the hydrogen leak is back and getting worse I think we need
to wait quite a bit more before we know if it'll be "operational" at
the end but I consider that relatively unlikely at this point.

Now, it also seems unlikely to get bad enough to require emergency
measure like stranding the austronauts up there until another
(Dragon?) capsule can be sent up but I do expect Starline system will
be grounded for a while after the landing.

I expect that Boeing will be required to figure out what went wrong
and propose out a set of remedial actions, get NASA (and possibly FAA)
approval for them and then apply them - similar to how SpaceX has
worked on Starship & SuperHeavy.

At which point Starliner either finally become operational OR Boeing
need to do yet another test flight if the changes are big enough - I
doubt this will happen but it's *possible*.

>If one of the two must be grounded, the other one can step up to
>replace it.

That sounds more like 2025 and 2024...

On 2024-06-06 9:43 a.m., Torbjorn Lindgren wrote:
> Alain Fournier <alain245@videotron.ca> wrote:
>> The US now has two independent launch systems to ferry astronauts
>> between Earth and LEO.
>
> Given that the hydrogen leak is back and getting worse I think we need
> to wait quite a bit more before we know if it'll be "operational" at
> the end but I consider that relatively unlikely at this point.
>
> Now, it also seems unlikely to get bad enough to require emergency
> measure like stranding the austronauts up there until another
> (Dragon?) capsule can be sent up but I do expect Starline system will
> be grounded for a while after the landing.
>
> I expect that Boeing will be required to figure out what went wrong
> and propose out a set of remedial actions, get NASA (and possibly FAA)
> approval for them and then apply them - similar to how SpaceX has
> worked on Starship & SuperHeavy.
>
> At which point Starliner either finally become operational OR Boeing
> need to do yet another test flight if the changes are big enough - I
> doubt this will happen but it's *possible*.
>
>
>> If one of the two must be grounded, the other one can step up to
>> replace it.
>
> That sounds more like 2025 and 2024...

It is kind of happening now. Starliner is not yet declared operational.
Dragon is there to take up the Starliner rides.

Alain Fournier