NASA and Boeing say Starliner astronauts ‘are not stranded,’ but will be on the ISS for a few more weeks
NASA and Boeing say Starliner astronauts ‘are not stranded,’ but will be on the ISS for a few more weeks
NASA and Boeing plan to spend the next few weeks conducting tests on the ground in order to better understand issues with the Starliner spacecraft’s thrusters before giving its crew the go-ahead to fly back to Earth, officials said in a press conference Friday.
Totally not stranded, according to Boeing.
They aren't stranded because there is the emergency capsule to get them back.
Classic corporate doublespeak and half truths.
They’re not stranded because the part of the capsule that isn’t working has multiple redundancy and is intended to burn up on reentry anyway.
Starliner is perfectly capable of leaving the ISS whenever they want, but they would be unable to continue collecting data on the thruster shutoff (again, because it would burn up in the atmosphere).
Completely untrue. There are currently only 3 human-rated spacecraft docked to the ISS and none of them are set aside as some sort of emergency capsule. There's no trickery here. The number of astronauts on board is equal to the number of seats available for them to ride back home in. The only reason they aren't stranded is because Starliner is still fully capable of undocking and taking them home whenever necessary. If it wasn't, then they would actually be stranded with no alternative way back beyond straping them to the floor of Dragon.
Except the "emergency capsule" is all of them, including Starliner. Because Starliner is perfectly capable of returning to earth safely.
Because every thruster that has shut down has hot fired okay, and the known helium leaks still leave enough margin to cover several multiples of the 5 hours or so of RCS operation that you need to get to landing.
As long as they didn’t bring any whistles with them they’ll be fine!
Just pining for the microgravity.
I mean, Boeing hasn't killed them in a fireball of death, hurtling at 18 thousand kph to the earth. The media has this totally wrong, for now. Everything is totally fine, at this time.
The people in every one of these Starliner threads seemingly hoping for the worst case scenario to occur just so they can dunk on Boeing for it are disturbing
Seriously, some of the comments and their phrasing actively gave me flashbacks to my days on stan twitter.
I wish Stan Twitter had never started his company, at all.
Lol. People want Boeing to fail, because they're corrupt, lying, poorly engineered pieces of shit riding on bribed politicians. They've already deliberately caused the deaths of hundreds of people due to willful and deliberate negligence to save a buck.
Nobody's wanting the astronauts to die. And they won't, they're safe on the space station, and there are multiple options to get them home safe even if they have to abandon the POS Starliner to do it.
I'm not talking about people who just want Boeing to fail, I'm talking about the ones who think the best path to changing things is if they publicly kill two astronauts. eg. See the "morally gray" comment below
The best case scenario is that boeing is put out of business and nobody else dies for some CEO's paycheck.
It’s a weird moral grey zone. Everyone has forgotten the hundreds of people Boeing murdered as a result of their desire to skirt modern safety regulations. I just flew my family across the country yesterday on one of these end-stage-capitalism products for lack of any other option.
Were I to be ash this morning, I would be forgotten too.
But if astronauts were killed, maybe the outrage would finally be enough for all the greased palms to be sheepishly shoved in pockets just long enough to get justice, ground all those affronts to safety, and jail enough executives to maybe make Boeing stop being a global safety risk and a national security concern.
Call me crazy but hoping for two innocent astronauts to die on the off-chance things improve isn't something I would consider morally gray.
But if astronauts were killed, maybe the outrage would finally be enough
Nope. The news would die off in less than a week, short attention spans and all that.
There are 16 thrusters on the service module and they only need like 4. One is malfunctioning. They're trying to diagnose the problem to fix it for next time since the service module burns up on reentry.
Also, they totally know where their luggage is, it'll just take a couple of days to show up.
People in prison aren't locked up, they're just taking their time to come out.
Boeing:
Guys!! Good news! You're not stranded! We just can't get you back for a couple of mo...er...weeks! Yeah! That's the ticket!
Astronauts:
.....
"Apollo returns, a Boeing story"
"Huston, we have a problem.... "
....ok we figured it out, now guys you'll have to build a few things. First thing, you'll have to go into the garbage disposal and using plastic bags please collect small bundles of poop. Mix the poop with hydrochloric acid and make them into hexagonal shapes 6" tall by 2" thick. Now we'll need one of you to get the flu... Go find a vial left by the ruzzians. Don't worry, we got the antidote down here. Okay next collect all the snot and mix it up with 10% gelatin. Finally, you'll have to go outside and patch the heat shield using the gelatine as glue....
As it turns out, actually, WE are the ones who are stranded.
Space, the safest place from Boeing assassins.
SPACE!
The one place uncorrupted by capitalism!
That is clearly a meaning of "not stranded" I was previously unfamiliar with.
They're not. The ship has 1 bad thruster, but need like a dozen to fail to make re-entry impossible. They could leave right now and everything would be just fine.
The thing is the module that's malfunctioning doesn't survive re-entry, so the only time to investigate the problem is before they head back.
will there be hunger games at the ISS if supplies run thin ?
I hope they sue.....
Boeing: yes, they got no chance at all.
Maybe space stations should have lifeboats. Ocean liners must have them, why not the ISS?
They functionally do, at almost all points in time there are enough capsules docked to the station for all astronauts to be able to return to Earth. The starliner capsule is currently able to return if needed, they are having it stay up there a bit longer to check things out to better understand why the one thruster is bad.
If I were thw astronauts I'd refuse to take the starliner back down.
