But it seems to me they should fly once more un-crewed.

Astronauts assume risk by the nature of their job. Two is better than one, but no excess risk is justified for this capsule. If something happens the hindsight will be damning.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to disagree: excuses like ISS traffic management, NASA paperwork, and the lowered urgency afforded by Crew Dragon’s smooth operations, do not fully dissipate these concerns. It also helps us to understand why Boeing never liked the Commercial Crew contract terms, and repeatedly tried to get them altered to something closer to traditional procurement terms.

There was a Twitter thread by NASA’s former structural mechanics system manager for the CC program, Karen Bernstein, last year (April 8, 2022, to be exact). On being pressed about it, she noted quite sharply that her experiences dealing with SpaceX and Boeing teams were dramatically different. “Boeing,” she said, “believed it had all the answers, and did not appear to understand the nature of a fixed contract, and treated my team like people they hardly needed. SpaceX welcomed wisdom and guidance and fully partnered with our engineers.” She added, “By ‘Boeing,’ I mean management. The engineers we worked with were as frustrated as we were.”

You hear that, and so much else about Starliner’s troubles makes more sense, alas. It is a shame, because while it is clearly a much more expensive ride to space and in most respects an inferior vehicle to Crew Dragon, I think we should all agree that we’re better off with two American rides to orbit than one. I never want to be dependent on Vladimir Putin for access to ISS again if it can possibly be helped.