Crew-9 Returns to Earth

The normal process is that you always have at least one US and one Russian Vehicle docked to the ISS. In emergencies, each crewmember uses their spacecraft to return to earth. The normal rotation is that an additional spacecraft arrives at the ISS (so there are now 3 vehicles docked in total) and then the older spacecraft leaves with its crew. So before the single dragon leaves, a new dragon would arrive.

I think the general idea is to always have at least some Russians and Americans on the ISS at all times (although they are doing swapped missions now so even having only one vehicle left would ensure that most of the time) and to always have crew on the ISS, even if one vehicle needs to return early due to technical problems.

Awful anology.

The constant in all the news cycles is about how they've been stranded all this time. Which isn't just a bit misleading, its a flat out lie.

Even when starliner departed, they werent standed. There was litterally an emergency plan prepared for how they'd get them home if they had to, and made modifications to the existing crew 8 ship to allow for this. This was all covered in the briefing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc

So once again, nobody was stranded. They could've come home at any point if they needed to.

The definition of stranded is litterally "left without the means to move from somewhere." which is VERY clearly not the case.

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 you call a friend and tell him you're stranded, are you lying? What if it's 20 miles away? But uber exists? What if uber is extremely expensive right now at $2000? But there's a guy next to you offering to sell you a bicycle?

In the end, to ask the question "were they stranded?" we have to unpack "stranded" and figure out what is the question we actually want answered. Is it about the feelings of the astronauts? Their preferences? The danger level they're in? Is it about Boeing's culpability? Is it about whether we can safely call Trump a liar? Musk?

The classic: https://www.readthesequences.com/Disguised-Queries

Did you read Trump's post about the mission calling the previous administration incompetents? That predates Berger's post?

NASA awarded the deorbit contract to SpaceX during the Biden administration. The ISS is coming down whether you like it or not.

The more you knew about this, the more you'd be okay with it. The station was obsolete before it was even built. NASA likes to justify the space station as a laboratory studying the effects of longterm space flight on humans; the results were in decades ago: it fucks people up. Human bodies begin to deteriorate in microgravity, even one year isn't healthy and there's nothing we can do about it. No exercise regime can fix it, the only possible solution is a station which spins. This was known before the ISS was built, but they didn't build a spin station. They built Mir 2, using the Soviet DOS-8 module. Mir 1 had the DOS-7 module, the previous modules were the Salyut stations. When the Soviets got tooled up to build something they liked to keep building it forever, and that's what happened here. The Salyut stations came from a period in time when space stations actually had a rational purpose; being a platform for humans to take reconnaissance photos of other countries. This role was quickly made obsolete by recon satellites, but the Soviets were tooled up to build them so they kept at it, while the equivalent systems in America were canceled. If you're familiar with Robert Crippen, the computer specialist and nominal pilot of STS-1, you'll know that he was originally training for operation with the Manned Orbital Laboratory before joining NASA. That was America's Soyuz. It was canceled when satellites proved their capabilities. The Soviets started using satellites but kept their station program anyway, due to the wonderful efficiencies of their system.

NASA tried to use space stations as a justification for continuing Apollo levels of funding (Skylab) but that didn't work out for them and American apace station activities ended there. Some Americans were later sent to Mir and found it to be in a horrific state, a veritable death trap that got lucky on numerous occasions.

The only reason America got involved with Mir 2, rechristening it as the ISS, is because America wanted to prop up the Russian space industry to prevent total collapse and a subsequent diaspora of talent to less friendly nations. It is at least not quite as dangerous as Mir 1, but it's still a dead end technology that serves no genuine scientific purpose, with a political justification which is now just as obsolete.

But the science experiments! How could I have forgotten something so important. All kinds of very important pharmaceutical science or something, I am told. So important, that when companies fielding proposals for replacement stations go looking for customers, they come up empty. NASA wants commercial partners for the next station but the whole thing is a slowly unfolding boondoggle.

Edit to add: Starship isn't going to Mars. Its a satellite launcher surrounded by aspirational propaganda to keep young engineers motivated. And Lunar Gateway, originally the "Deep Space Gateway" before Artemis came up, is meant to exist only to give ISS mission control staff new jobs when the ISS is gone. Soviet style pork.