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SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

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Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#91

Post by EgregiousCube »

eth0up wrote: post #33
addaon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the situation normal, or common? They went up on an experimental spacecraft on its shakedown cruise. They’re coming down on a different spacecraft than planned — a different make of spacecraft, even. That’s never happened before, and is neither normal nor common. The spacecraft type they flew up will almost certainly never fly again because of how badly the shakedown went. That’s never happened before to a manne…

Because I cannot upvote comments on HN, I'll clutter the thread by thanking both you and the other fellow who gave pretty good explanations.

Why can't you upvote comments on HN?

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#92

Post by raspasov »

unethical_ban wrote: post #51
joe_the_user wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It isn't a rescue mission, it's a regular crew rotation mission with modifications..." Rescue definition: an act of saving or being saved from danger or distress . The mission to take astronauts off the space station clearly fits this definition - an extended, unplanned and indefinite stay in space has to be distressing at the least. Has the HN standard become that you can argue the most ridiculous thing if you make…

If my car breaks down while I'm at my fully-loaded villa on day 2 of my 30 day vacation, my friend coming to pick me up isn't a rescue mission. You shift from talking about danger or distress, to "not regular or expected". Which is it? I think danger and urgency are marks of "rescue". If they had supplies and were in no immediate danger, I don't see how the term or the alarmism qualifies.

I would describe rescue as:

Whenever I travel to a location, the planned return transport fails AND I would eventually be dead without outside human assistance. That’s a rescue.

In your villa example that is correct: your friend helping you is not a rescue. It’s a convenient helping hand. A space station is a different beast though.

If your villa was on a remote isolated island without anyone else on it, it would be closer to the space station but still not exactly the same. The island, depending on its size might have bountiful food/animals you can hypothetically harvest, not to mention attempting to plant and grow some seeds from the hypothetical fruits and vegetables you already have.

Very little of this is realistically possible in a space station like the one we have.

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#93

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ghodith wrote: post #89
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> normal and expected crew rotation, they just kicked a few people off the mission so that there would be open seats That’s neither normal nor expected! Go back to the age of exploration. A crew’s ship strands them on an island. Another ship was due to come anyway in 6 weeks, and the crew have enough food to last them that interval. They use witches to tell the coming crew of their problems, and that ship agrees to l…

Only seems like a rescue if you specify that they're alone on the island to be honest. If you had said that they were left at an outpost with other people for six months it somewhat loses it's "rescue" vibes.

> If you had said that they were left at an outpost with other people for six months it somewhat loses it's "rescue" vibes

When a country pitches into instability and nations evacuate their citizens, are they not rescuing them?

I suppose I’d invert the question: why does framing the mission as a rescue bug you?

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#94

Post by sneak »

LeroyRaz wrote: post #87

To everyone saying "oh, the astronauts like having to be up there. It is an opportunity." You get that they have no choice, right? And that for multiple reasons they are going to put the best spin on the event. For one, for their own sanity, they are going to be as positive and optimistic as possible. For two, there is likely a huge PR pressure to be as positive and optimistic as possible. Being in space is a pretty…

It’s still an opportunity. You can have more kids, but most people probably only get maximum one chance in their life to spend half a year in space, even if they are extremely lucky.

It’s also not like they didn’t know that death or delay or anomalous/inconvenient conditions weren’t possibly on the table. They’re test pilots, after all. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, even if it takes a year.

Sunita Williams (one of the two stranded) is up there for her fifth(!) trip to the ISS. I can’t speak for her but if I had to guess I don’t think she minds being in space, even if it’s unplanned.

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#95

Post by tw04 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90
LeroyRaz wrote: post #87

To everyone saying "oh, the astronauts like having to be up there. It is an opportunity." You get that they have no choice, right? And that for multiple reasons they are going to put the best spin on the event. For one, for their own sanity, they are going to be as positive and optimistic as possible. For two, there is likely a huge PR pressure to be as positive and optimistic as possible. Being in space is a pretty…

> It comes with lots of health risks It also means their forward flight time is curtailed. The near future holds manned missions more exciting than the ISS. There is a real possibility someone who might have gone to the Moon or even Mars doesn’t, now, because of Boeing.

Mars??? That’s more than a bit of a stretch. The astronauts in the ISS right now weren’t up there for a significantly longer period of time compared to their peers. Absolutely no way it would disqualify them from a mission happening a decade from now which is an absolute best case scenario for mars and frankly even the moon the way the current political climate is in the US.

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#96

Post by dotnet00 »

sneak wrote: post #85
dotnet00 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a disaster for Boeing, it was not a disaster for the astronauts. Extending stays at the station is not unheard of for test flights, the Crew Dragon test flight also involved the crew staying longer than initially intended, as NASA decided that it'd be a more effective use of resources to do so. SpaceX did not have to bump 2 trained astronauts to return them to Earth. That was simply the cheapest, least disrupt…

They could also pay Russia to bring them back to Kazakhstan on a Soyuz. Another American ISS astronaut, Tracy Dyson, came back in this manner last Monday.

[flagged]

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#97

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tw04 wrote: post #95
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It comes with lots of health risks It also means their forward flight time is curtailed. The near future holds manned missions more exciting than the ISS. There is a real possibility someone who might have gone to the Moon or even Mars doesn’t, now, because of Boeing.

Mars??? That’s more than a bit of a stretch. The astronauts in the ISS right now weren’t up there for a significantly longer period of time compared to their peers. Absolutely no way it would disqualify them from a mission happening a decade from now which is an absolute best case scenario for mars and frankly even the moon the way the current political climate is in the US.

> Absolutely no way it would disqualify them from a mission happening a decade from now

Astronauts have lifetime radiation limits. Crewed Mars missions already push the envelope; the margins are especially meaningful.

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#98

Post by [deleted] »

sneak wrote: post #88
neverrroot wrote: post #8

Thank you Elon!

How much of SpaceX’s boring day to day stuff (including ~all of the F9 stuff) do you think he has a hand in anymore? Isn’t he running Tesla, Twitter, Neuralink, The Boring Company, Starlink, and the Starship R&D, including its first-of-it’s-kind Raptor engine design which just hit major version 3? And also raising the remainder of his 12 kids (~8?) that are still speaking to him? I’m fairly certain that most of the “…

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#99

Post by [deleted] »

nimbius wrote: post #83
dotnet00 wrote: post #3

Man the reporting on this ordeal has been so awful and so representative of how media misleads the public into thinking things are worse than they actually are. It isn't a rescue mission, it's a regular crew rotation mission with modifications to account for the extra crew left on the station, and those crew are 'stuck' only in the sense that they're expected to stay there as part of their duties and it would be unne…

Occhams razor might say the reasons to downplay this incident are overwhelmingly more attractive. - Boeing is a fortune 50 company and is a direct contributor to news media advertising revenue. - Boeing is a darling of US aerospace and a bulwark of us international projection of soft power and defense. Telling the truth will destroy the us aircraft market. - china does not have this problem with its space program. Th…

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the ISS

#100

Post by sneak »

dotnet00 wrote: post #96
sneak wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could also pay Russia to bring them back to Kazakhstan on a Soyuz. Another American ISS astronaut, Tracy Dyson, came back in this manner last Monday.

[flagged]

I don’t think the geopolitical issues directly affect ISS operational stuff whatsoever. The missions of the Roscosmos and NASA (and ESA and JAXA and CSA) teams have nothing to do with nationalism or geopolitics and I assume everyone managing them and participating in them is smart enough to realize that.

They didn’t fuck with NASA when Dubya invaded a country, after all. Every spacefaring superpower has its fingers in a bunch of mass murder pies somewhere.

There is no geopolitical upside to Russia or geopolitical downside to the US for NASA to contract Roscosmos to rescue some Americans from space. I imagine SpaceX was just faster and cheaper and already had a mission scheduled.

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