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Crew-9 Returns to Earth

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Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#261

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

croes wrote: post #251
bheadmaster wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't very convinced by his arguments - the main one being: Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons. To be a little snarky here - so Senior NASA officials: honest, Musk: liar? If, hypothetically, NASA was pressured for political reasons,…

Didn’t know that the accused must prove their innocence? Where did Musk show his proof it was political? Given how often Musk and Trump tell BS, bend the truth and even lie I tend to believe NASA officials

> Didn’t know that the accused must prove their innocence?

I thought this was sarcasm when I first read it.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#262

Post by pavlov »

weberer wrote: post #183
pavlov wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berger is an excellent journalist. He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past. When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.

>"We're going to stand by for splashdown located in the Gulf of America," she said. >Ah, yes. The Gulf of America. >This is why we can't have nice things. That doesn't sound like an "excellent journalist". It sounds like a Redditor.

Yeah, instead of evaluating a journalist by looking at over a decade of high-quality work he has done writing about this space, let’s pull up a joke from one article and judge that.

Do you realize that you’re the one behaving like a low-quality Redditor here.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#263

Post by acdha »

rdtsc wrote: post #107
concordDance wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard rumors that SpaceX suggested another mission to bring them back earlier, but as it would only have been a couple of months earlier NASA very sensibly declined (not worth >100 million to reduce their time in space by a third). Know if there's anything to that? Might explain some of the odd rhetoric.

> I've heard rumors that SpaceX suggested another mission to bring them back earlier, but as it would only have been a couple of months earlier NASA very sensibly declined (not worth >100 million to reduce their time in space by a third). I guess it came down to money more than politics? But interestingly that part is missing from reporting about this. Which, if true, reporters hiding that yet saying “let’s not make…

It’s been widely reported since Musk attacked that Dutch astronaut but only in the sense that he claimed something with no evidence that it ever happened.

Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said “I think there may have been some conversations that I wasn’t part of.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/04/starliner...

https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/nasa-spacex-c...

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#264

Post by Symmetry »

pavlov wrote: post #86
pveierland wrote: post #76

Eric Berger has a good summary on the narrative: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...

Berger is an excellent journalist. He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past. When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.

I think the author probably made a mistake in using that subheading. For those familiar with the meme[1] it's saying that this isn't that important but read straight it says the opposite. I'm all for playful subheadings, I love when The Economist uses them, but they shouldn't radically alter the meaning when a big fraction of the audience won't get any particular subtle reference and I think that makes this a failure of writing.

[1]https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-sit-on-a-throne-of-lies

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#265

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

pie_flavor wrote: post #211
pveierland wrote: post #76

Eric Berger has a good summary on the narrative: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...

Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces. It's just as grating, and when every other news org is reporting it more measuredly you should be very cautious before calling their summary 'good'. For example, this article claims the political reasons are unspecified, but they were in fact discussed at length (I think Musk even mentioned them on a…

> Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces.

You have to go a long way back to find Ars articles on Musk that aren't derogatory. They were ahead of the curve on this, apart from their rocket articles (usually). I've always found it unprofessional and off-putting.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#266

Post by somenameforme »

echoangle wrote: post #178
cryptonector wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a docked ship is not enough. There must be a docked ship on station at all times for evacuations. The thing that was needed was another ship to take some people back and not everyone (well, all but any Russians, since they have their own ships).

Wrong, they could have packed all 4 astronauts (the 2 that came to the ISS on the dragon and Suni and Butch) into the docked dragon and returned at any point. They only waited for the next dragon (crew 10) so that not only the 3 people using the Soyuz would be left on the ISS. But this would have absolutely been possible. The remaining crew would have used their Soyuz in emergencies anyways, they don’t need the drago…

There's way more than just them. Thanks to all the delays the 4-man SpaceX Crew-8 [1] stayed on the ISS until October 23rd, becoming the longest Dragon stay ever. And the 3-man crew from Soyuz MS-26 got there on September 11th, and is still there.

In fact reading the Soyuz MS-26 Wiki, one of the many records this whole debacle ended up breaking is that when the MS-26 entered into space, there were more humans in space than ever before, with a total of 19!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-8

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-26

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#267

Post by esskay »

concordDance wrote: post #186
esskay wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody was stranded.

This is a really fascinating case of words having a venacular meaning that become fuzzy out of their normal domain. Could the astronauts have gone back to Earth in an emergency? Yes. Did they have the freedom to leave earlier? Sortof but not really. Could NASA have paid SpaceX another $200 million for an extra mission to pick up in December/January? Probably. If your car breaks down a couple of miles from home and yo…

This has the same flaw as the other person who replied to me.

Using the car anology only works if you also say you've got another car following you at all times, fully fuled and capable of getting you home, in which case, no, you are not stranded.

Stranded implies they cant get home. Not that it costs more, or is inconvenient. The litteral definition is "left without the means to move from somewhere".

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#268

Post by somenameforme »

troupo wrote: post #256
bheadmaster wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't very convinced by his arguments - the main one being: Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons. To be a little snarky here - so Senior NASA officials: honest, Musk: liar? If, hypothetically, NASA was pressured for political reasons,…

> To be a little snarky here - so Senior NASA officials: honest, Musk: liar? We know for a fact that Musk a serial liar with a very tenuous grasp of truth. Can you say the same about the Senior NASA official? Also, the burden of proof lies on Musk, not on NASA which literally has contingencies upon contingencies for such situations.

NASA in practice isn't what most people think it is. A lot of stuff they're doing is just a mixture of a terrible idea (SLS) and will never go anywhere (Artemis), amongst others. People in-the-know in space are fully aware of this, including NASA officials.

But they keep cheerleading it all and pretending that everything will just be awesome. The reason is that NASA is basically forced to be political (at least their heads seem to feel that way), or their funding will get cut. And this also trickles all the way down to the astronauts who play politics for the sake of being able to keep flying.

It's become a highly dysfunctional organization, so yeah - "Senior NASA official" is certainly not a reliable source on anything remotely related to politics, and this is hard in that domain.

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