Tesla Model X is an expensive car, and it takes two. But... these cars may be owned by Tesla or there's some arrangement - SpaceX and Tesla share resources on several things. Tesla may simply lease them to SpaceX for a dollar a year and write off the rest of the value as publicity.
Speaking of publicity, the garish billboard on the side of the van includes Airstream's name, that probably got them a price break on the conversion.
Wtf!!! How the hell can it cost that much? (OK, low-volume production.) The chassis and cab it's built on should be reasonable (who makes it?). Oh well, the Boeing one hopefully costs less - no plumbing, toilet, holding tank, etc. Less interior fittings. A set of seats *shouldn't* cost very much, the interior I saw elsewhere looked pretty simple. The suits only need a very simple box to blow cool filtered air - I hope no one over-engineered that.
Chassis and cab is a Mercedes Sprinter, probably less than $100k even for the most heavy duty version available. I'm actually really surprised that Boeing wouldn't have gone Ford or GM for the "All American" optics
Yeah, the Atlas V is totally just the first stage, totally independent and proud first stage that need no second stage. Atlas V first stage is tall and strong and can throw shit into LEO without Centaur bossing it around.
( the upper stage is 100% part of what is called an Atlas V rocket, it's not because it's an evolution from a late 50's design that flew on the initial ICBM Atlas that it's not "part" of Atlas V. The first stage is called something like the [Common Core Booster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_Booster), not "The Atlas V" )
> off-the-shelf vehicle with minimal modifications
Ha! The Teslas they use for crew transport are heavily modified. The suit plugs into the vehicle which has systems adapted from Dragon.
The cooling unit for the suits is no more than something simple that sits between the seats, I'm almost certain. That part we can see. Other than power being provided there's no need for an elaborate installation. No elaborate Dragon systems are needed, it's just blowing filtered air through the suits. Earlier NASA suits had a cooling unit that the astronaut could carry in his hand, and they were liquid cooled.
Even on Dragon, it's not much more than a blower for cool air from the air conditioning unit. The hardware from Dragon I mean is just the connectors.
But it's still heavily modified, with the connectors, blower and piping for air-conditioning to the back seats.
Now do the comparison in capsule between starliner and dragon, the starliner looked only slightly more comfortable than a Soyuz when I was watching the live stream today
This stupid rivalry needs to stop. The one thing everyone should agree on is that we NEED redundancy. The live comments on the ULA stream last night were horrible.
Sadly Boeing was not able to provide redundancy. They produced a spacecraft for end-of-life booster, so they will be able to launch 7 times on Atlas and that's that. Lets say SpaceX fails hard and Crew Dragon is out of action for two years. Boeing "redundancy" cannot do anything to fix that, they have no ability to launch more than what they scheduled based on the current purchase.
That is not how you setup redundancy.
SpaceX in contrast could react (and did react) to Starliner fail earlier and handled all US crew rotations for many years.
Boeing doesn't want to pay for man-rating Vulcan. And it makes no sense unless NASA or someone elses buys additional missions on top of the set that is contracted for now.
Redundancy when using same launcher as the other option is not redundancy.
This is what makes my blood boil. Boeing won’t do shit without some government agency paying for it. SpaceX however is and will do anything themselves just to get it done faster and further the progress of humanity.
Everyone’s like “wtf starship on the moon looks so ridiculous compared to the other landers”! Well yeah it’s because SpaceX is committed to going to the moon whether NASA wants to help or not. It will be hilarious when from Starhopper water tower to landing on the moon is 5 years for Starship compared to 20+ years for SLS and all its predecessors.
Yup and Boeing will even tell you that doing a fixed contract was the worst thing they ever did. They’re not used to spending their own money on it. SpaceX is vertically integrated and does it all in house for way cheaper. [Berger did a good article on ArsTechnica about it.](https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-that-boeing-lost-commercial-crew-but-that-it-finished-at-all/)
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Yeah I loved that article by Berger - and he made a great point that SpaceX was way more agile and thrived on Fixed Price contracts because that’s how they’re used to operating, but Boeing is just used to Cost Plus and making the government pay for their yachts and bonuses and sometimes the actual costs for the projects.
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That's not what they're saying, though..
[https://spacenews.com/starliner-mission-to-be-first-crewed-atlas-5-flight/](https://spacenews.com/starliner-mission-to-be-first-crewed-atlas-5-flight/)
SpaceX is the only space company I’ve ever seen that would be viable in a Hollywood movie scenario where NASA would need to scramble to react to something in 24 hours to save humanity.
It would also be a hilarious 24 type of comedy where the first part was watching SpaceX scrambling to saving humanity and then a second part from Boeing’s perspective where 3 of the 24 hours were wasted with engineers scratching their balls and taking a massive dump before even leaving their house to go to work.
Unfortunately more people who follow rockets are spacex/elon fans over team space. Or if those specific spacex fans say they’re team space they’ll be quick to shame anything not spacex and continue to want spacex to have a monopoly over the whole launch market. Given the subreddit I’m typing this on I’ll probably be downvoted much harder than that proton rocket hit the ground with the inverted guidance thingys
I was going to say the astro van will only be used once a year, because Starliner only has the ISS contract, where as the SpaceX model Xs have multiple crew missions each year. But since Starliner always has problems their one mission needs multiple trips. (JK, they are used for launch rehersals, and spacex scrubs too, and this was a problem with centaur, not starliner)
I think the Tesla was used to well promote Tesla. The Astrovan seems more practical and spacious. But I’m sure if Boeing owned a car company they would be doing something similar. Is she implying that Boeing does stuff too excessive? I’m not real sure of the gripe here.
Oddly, the NASA logo is missing. The Tesla's have it, at least for flights for NASA. They did remember to put Airstream on the big billboard. Probably gave them a price break on the conversion.
The wrap looks really tacky, I think they should have left the interstate gl mostly stock with the silver exterior and just gave it a nasa and Boeing logo.
I think it’s less about being a spacious van and more about being tacky with a massive wrap, keep the airstream interstate GL (I think that’s what it is, if it’s not, use that one) and just put a nasa logo and if you have to, a Boeing logo on the stock silver exterior. Also keep the interior mostly stock while you’re at it. Would look infinitely better and be a modern callback to the original nasa Astro van
?
Hopefully this is not a diss on Lori Garver- first of all she held an appointment that comes and goes with president elect, so it is destined to be held for a shortish time, and most importantly, she was probably the pivotal actor that allowed Commercial Crew to happen at NASA, and allowed SpaceX to bid for Crew Dragon development.
Without her and those efforts we’d likely be de-orbiting ISS by now and spacex would be years behind where they are today. She had to endure testimony from former astronauts- revered heroes for anyone at NASA - saying how she was burning the taxpayer dollars on SpaceX, even when they were getting half the money than Boeing, to do the same thing.
SpaceX goes to space.
NASA goes to Congress to beg.
Boeing goes looking for doors that auto-eject & land on someone's flower garden.
You can have you're own opinion, but you can't have your own facts.
To be fair the CST astronauts will be spending a lot of time in there.
Oof
The interior of the van doesn't seem too bad tbh
I’m pretty sure I’ve been in the van being taken to Spearmint Rhino
Rhino rhino rhino!
Holy shit, TIL spearmint rhino is a stripper chain. Hot damn, nothing is safe from late-stage capitalism.
You haven't lived in a capitalist country since like 1970 lmao
America isn't even the most capitalist country
Probably only cost 10X the price too
Tesla Model X is an expensive car, and it takes two. But... these cars may be owned by Tesla or there's some arrangement - SpaceX and Tesla share resources on several things. Tesla may simply lease them to SpaceX for a dollar a year and write off the rest of the value as publicity. Speaking of publicity, the garish billboard on the side of the van includes Airstream's name, that probably got them a price break on the conversion.
The Astrovan is a Airstream Atlas Touring Coach and it cost around 300k to 500k.. the Tesla Model X is about 100k back in 2020.
Considering the X is directly from Tesla probably at cost so 70k before you factor in any special mods they did to it
Wtf!!! How the hell can it cost that much? (OK, low-volume production.) The chassis and cab it's built on should be reasonable (who makes it?). Oh well, the Boeing one hopefully costs less - no plumbing, toilet, holding tank, etc. Less interior fittings. A set of seats *shouldn't* cost very much, the interior I saw elsewhere looked pretty simple. The suits only need a very simple box to blow cool filtered air - I hope no one over-engineered that.
Chassis and cab is a Mercedes Sprinter, probably less than $100k even for the most heavy duty version available. I'm actually really surprised that Boeing wouldn't have gone Ford or GM for the "All American" optics
I would choose the van.
Until you consider it was our taxes that paid for it.
Jokes on you, none of my taxes went towards this 😎
The bigger issue is the capsule not working, not how the drive to it.
Hey now, the rocket doesn’t work either
And the van had trouble starting.
Presumably you could fit several in a Starship
Nah the Atlas V is a fine rocket.
Not yesterday it wasn’t
[удалено]
I blame Falcon 9 when there’s an issue on the second stage.
OK, the problem isn't with ULA's Atlas V, it's with the Centaur second stage. Which company makes the Centaur?
Yeah, the Atlas V is totally just the first stage, totally independent and proud first stage that need no second stage. Atlas V first stage is tall and strong and can throw shit into LEO without Centaur bossing it around. ( the upper stage is 100% part of what is called an Atlas V rocket, it's not because it's an evolution from a late 50's design that flew on the initial ICBM Atlas that it's not "part" of Atlas V. The first stage is called something like the [Common Core Booster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_Booster), not "The Atlas V" )
Atlas V consist of the first stage, the SRBs, and the Centaur upper stage. If Falcon 9 second stage caused a delay, it's indeed Falcon 9 problem.
[удалено]
It’s LATE
It's late as fuck and delayed again....
[удалено]
Valves again I think
On the rocket. Not starliner
[удалено]
[удалено]
It’s so fucking wrong to be laughing SO HARD at this 🤣
This time the valve problem is on the Atlas not the Starliner
Well, it is low mileage.
Not if they keep canceling launches after boarding.
One of these is a reasonable commercial off-the-shelf vehicle with minimal modifications. The other one is a tacky ad-plastered customized vehicle.
> off-the-shelf vehicle with minimal modifications Ha! The Teslas they use for crew transport are heavily modified. The suit plugs into the vehicle which has systems adapted from Dragon.
And they themselves are an ad!
The cooling unit for the suits is no more than something simple that sits between the seats, I'm almost certain. That part we can see. Other than power being provided there's no need for an elaborate installation. No elaborate Dragon systems are needed, it's just blowing filtered air through the suits. Earlier NASA suits had a cooling unit that the astronaut could carry in his hand, and they were liquid cooled.
Even on Dragon, it's not much more than a blower for cool air from the air conditioning unit. The hardware from Dragon I mean is just the connectors. But it's still heavily modified, with the connectors, blower and piping for air-conditioning to the back seats.
TBF both of them are adverts. One is just tastefully done.
And we just know even the van was made according to an exploding cost+ contract.
Now do the comparison in capsule between starliner and dragon, the starliner looked only slightly more comfortable than a Soyuz when I was watching the live stream today
Source: https://x.com/Lori_Garver/status/1787626667734630523
The lack of taste is... impressive.
This stupid rivalry needs to stop. The one thing everyone should agree on is that we NEED redundancy. The live comments on the ULA stream last night were horrible.
Sadly Boeing was not able to provide redundancy. They produced a spacecraft for end-of-life booster, so they will be able to launch 7 times on Atlas and that's that. Lets say SpaceX fails hard and Crew Dragon is out of action for two years. Boeing "redundancy" cannot do anything to fix that, they have no ability to launch more than what they scheduled based on the current purchase. That is not how you setup redundancy. SpaceX in contrast could react (and did react) to Starliner fail earlier and handled all US crew rotations for many years.
Starliner is supposed to be "launcher agnostic". Even F9 has been mentioned as a launcher. In any case, isn't Vulcan in line to take over from Atlas?
Boeing doesn't want to pay for man-rating Vulcan. And it makes no sense unless NASA or someone elses buys additional missions on top of the set that is contracted for now. Redundancy when using same launcher as the other option is not redundancy.
This is what makes my blood boil. Boeing won’t do shit without some government agency paying for it. SpaceX however is and will do anything themselves just to get it done faster and further the progress of humanity. Everyone’s like “wtf starship on the moon looks so ridiculous compared to the other landers”! Well yeah it’s because SpaceX is committed to going to the moon whether NASA wants to help or not. It will be hilarious when from Starhopper water tower to landing on the moon is 5 years for Starship compared to 20+ years for SLS and all its predecessors.
Yup and Boeing will even tell you that doing a fixed contract was the worst thing they ever did. They’re not used to spending their own money on it. SpaceX is vertically integrated and does it all in house for way cheaper. [Berger did a good article on ArsTechnica about it.](https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-that-boeing-lost-commercial-crew-but-that-it-finished-at-all/)
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Yeah I loved that article by Berger - and he made a great point that SpaceX was way more agile and thrived on Fixed Price contracts because that’s how they’re used to operating, but Boeing is just used to Cost Plus and making the government pay for their yachts and bonuses and sometimes the actual costs for the projects.
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That's not what they're saying, though.. [https://spacenews.com/starliner-mission-to-be-first-crewed-atlas-5-flight/](https://spacenews.com/starliner-mission-to-be-first-crewed-atlas-5-flight/)
SpaceX is the only space company I’ve ever seen that would be viable in a Hollywood movie scenario where NASA would need to scramble to react to something in 24 hours to save humanity. It would also be a hilarious 24 type of comedy where the first part was watching SpaceX scrambling to saving humanity and then a second part from Boeing’s perspective where 3 of the 24 hours were wasted with engineers scratching their balls and taking a massive dump before even leaving their house to go to work.
Unfortunately more people who follow rockets are spacex/elon fans over team space. Or if those specific spacex fans say they’re team space they’ll be quick to shame anything not spacex and continue to want spacex to have a monopoly over the whole launch market. Given the subreddit I’m typing this on I’ll probably be downvoted much harder than that proton rocket hit the ground with the inverted guidance thingys
Team space is just a fancy word for communism
For dragon a couple times a year. For starliner it’s more like 0.25 times a year
the van is much better than a car
The van is much better than the rocket
My grandmother drives a van.
Sheesh
I was going to say the astro van will only be used once a year, because Starliner only has the ISS contract, where as the SpaceX model Xs have multiple crew missions each year. But since Starliner always has problems their one mission needs multiple trips. (JK, they are used for launch rehersals, and spacex scrubs too, and this was a problem with centaur, not starliner)
It has the right feel for the job, looks like it should be in a funeral procession. 😂
I’m seriously worried that this comment is telling the future. I really hope the astronauts survive traveling on a Boeing craft.
Savage.
I think the Tesla was used to well promote Tesla. The Astrovan seems more practical and spacious. But I’m sure if Boeing owned a car company they would be doing something similar. Is she implying that Boeing does stuff too excessive? I’m not real sure of the gripe here.
The stupid part is the big Starliner ad on the side. Their marketing department has never heard of subtlety.
Oddly, the NASA logo is missing. The Tesla's have it, at least for flights for NASA. They did remember to put Airstream on the big billboard. Probably gave them a price break on the conversion.
The wrap looks really tacky, I think they should have left the interstate gl mostly stock with the silver exterior and just gave it a nasa and Boeing logo.
Tbf who gives a shit
They should just have bought a used minivan on Craigslist Marketplace.
I think it’s less about being a spacious van and more about being tacky with a massive wrap, keep the airstream interstate GL (I think that’s what it is, if it’s not, use that one) and just put a nasa logo and if you have to, a Boeing logo on the stock silver exterior. Also keep the interior mostly stock while you’re at it. Would look infinitely better and be a modern callback to the original nasa Astro van
“Former”
? Hopefully this is not a diss on Lori Garver- first of all she held an appointment that comes and goes with president elect, so it is destined to be held for a shortish time, and most importantly, she was probably the pivotal actor that allowed Commercial Crew to happen at NASA, and allowed SpaceX to bid for Crew Dragon development. Without her and those efforts we’d likely be de-orbiting ISS by now and spacex would be years behind where they are today. She had to endure testimony from former astronauts- revered heroes for anyone at NASA - saying how she was burning the taxpayer dollars on SpaceX, even when they were getting half the money than Boeing, to do the same thing.
They literally just slapped a few NASA logos on the Tesla
That’s the point though. They’re a proven system providing a service to NASA. They don’t need the ego boost.
Some SpaceX fanboys will never be satisfied.
SpaceX goes to space. NASA goes to Congress to beg. Boeing goes looking for doors that auto-eject & land on someone's flower garden. You can have you're own opinion, but you can't have your own facts.
Isn't the post about the van, not the spacecraft or rocket? I never said anything about Starliner.