[HN Gopher] SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who ar...
___________________________________________________________________
SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck on the
ISS
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 351 points
Date : 2024-09-28 22:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| dotnet00 wrote:
| 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 unnecessarily disruptive to operations to bring them
| back early. Starliner was still deemed to be safe enough to be
| the emergency escape option while it was docked, then the
| emergency escape option became seats setup in the cargo portion
| of the Crew-8 capsule.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| This is a matter of perspective. The mission is what you call
| it.
|
| Sure, it's not a "rescue", it's just an "unplanned itinerary
| change to another vessel".
|
| Also, they're not "marooned", they're "getting an extended work
| opportunity".
| dotnet00 wrote:
| "Rescue" conveys a much more negative situation than
| "unplanned itinerary change where the astronauts are safe and
| which they are happy about because they get to spend more
| time in space".
| natch wrote:
| Bone deterioration equating to decades in a matter of
| months, heart health impact, time away from family... it's
| negative.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| I bet if you asked each of them if they could extend such
| a unique experience - one they're unlikely to experience
| again - would they say yes? IN. A. FCKING. HEARTBEAT.
|
| The postive's overwhelm the negatives by an infinite
| amount.
| natch wrote:
| You might be right, only they can say. I just don't take
| their statements in a press conference at face value, but
| yeah there is that silver lining.
| tw04 wrote:
| So if you ride a ferry on a regular basis (which I'm sure at
| least a handful of HN folks do) - if that ferry breaks down
| before the return trip, when you catch the next ferry is that
| a "rescue mission", or are you just catching the next ferry?
| Replace ferry with bus, car, taxi, airplane, your
| transportation mode of choice.
|
| Calling this a rescue is, to OPs point, just dramatizing the
| situation for clicks. In pretty much any other circumstance,
| it wouldn't even make the news.
| macinjosh wrote:
| You are leaving out the tiny detail that compared to a
| ferry there are very limited opportunities to catch the
| next ferry. If a ferry breaks down you aren't stuck in the
| island for 8 months. You could charter a boat, get a
| helicopter, go for a swim.
|
| Significant unexpected planning and spending have to go
| into getting them a different ride home.
|
| It's closer to your car breaking down in a remote area.
| Would a tow truck be a rescue? I would think so.
| Loughla wrote:
| It's similar to your car breaking down in a remote area
| only if you've trained extensively for that area (almost
| your entire life), have food and supplies for the entire
| duration, have friends and entertainment, and can do your
| job as well as novel career options the entire time as
| well.
|
| It's overly dramatic to call it a rescue mission. It just
| is. It's not great that they're up there longer than
| planned, but they're not going to explode or fly off into
| space.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I agree that calling it a rescue is a bit much, but this is
| hardly a case of missing a bus or ferry and catching the
| next one.
|
| If you missed a ferry, expecting to be away from your
| family for a week, only to find you are stuck on a desolate
| island for 8+ months you would probably feel like you were
| being rescued.
| jwagenet wrote:
| My understanding is the astronauts don't mind staying
| longer because they enjoy it and for some (all?) it may
| be their last mission in space, in part due to the
| decommissioning.
| blackoil wrote:
| And most people like visiting islands. That doesn't
| change the fact that this was supposed to be 8 days not 8
| months.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| We don't really know. Some of them may have missed out on
| something personally important back on Earth (graduation,
| wedding, funeral, birth) etc.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| It's a downsized crew, right? As in they purposely are
| sending up fewer people so that there is room to bring back
| everyone?
| wpasc wrote:
| I respectfully partially disagree. Sure, the term "rescue"
| is a bit over the top and evokes "Apollo 13" vibes. OTOH,
| Boeing has "$14.8bn in Pentagon contracts in 2022" [1].
| Boeing has plane crash issues for years now across more
| than 1 model. And its space program just had an
| embarrassing failure. Given their failures, the amount of
| revenue they get from the US federal gov, and their level
| of influence over various aspects of defense
| funding/spending, I do not think this story should be
| dismissed as an overly sensational, run-of-the-mill story
| that does not make the news.
|
| IMO, US citizens/taxpayers would be very justified to be
| pissed about the failures of a company that their tax
| dollars heavily fund (from the same article I referenced
| above, its like 37% of their revenue). The series of very
| public failures that affect people directly (planes) and
| affect their tax dollars (recent series of failures of
| their space program) certainly warrants outrage and
| coverage. that's my 2 cents
|
| [1]: https://www.airforce-technology.com/features/boeing-
| pleads-g...
|
| or
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/01/02/h
| o...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| If you're on an island, the ferry breaks down and the next
| one is in three months, yeah it's a rescue mission.
|
| I don't know why people want to quibble about usage that
| seems clear.
| mkl wrote:
| I'd just call it the next ferry. If there was an extra
| boat sent before the next ferry was due, that could be a
| rescue mission (or just a replacement boat).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _just call it the next ferry_
|
| The next ferry doesn't have room. It has to change its
| plans to accommodate you.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| When my friend's car broke down on the mountain 15
| minutes from both of our homes and I brought them a
| jacket and McDonalds while they wait for a tow, that was
| a rescue.
|
| Like it's not much, but come on.
| elteto wrote:
| A more apt analogy would be:
|
| You are the captain and pilot of the ferry. And it is such
| a complicated ferry that you are extensively trained on how
| to navigate it. It is, in fact, so complicated and
| different that there are other ferries around but you can
| only sail yours. You can't just hop on another one and do
| the same trip.
|
| You took this ferry to an island in the middle of nowhere
| and after you got there you realized the ferry was broken.
| Nobody knows how bad... it might snap in half in the middle
| of the return trip.
|
| You have plenty of provisions for the next few months and
| you are not alone on the island. Other ferries still come
| and go but you can't just hop on those, you don't know how
| to operate them.
|
| They sent one of those other ferries just for you with a
| smaller crew to accommodate you. Without it you are not
| coming back.
|
| Is it a rescue?
| glenstein wrote:
| > Replace ferry with bus, car, taxi, airplane, your
| transportation mode of choice.
|
| I mean I've certainly been stuck at an airport because I
| had a ticket for a flight that ended up getting canceled,
| which necessitated me remaining at the airport for an
| extended period of time. I had an expectation of getting a
| new ticket for a new flight, but none of that changed the
| fact that I was indeed stuck.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| If you're in the ocean and your ship breaks down and
| another ship adjusts its plans to come pick you up, is that
| a rescue?
|
| If there were no changes needed to the subsequent flight to
| accommodate two additional riders, sure, not a rescue. But
| there are, and that's important from multiple perspectives
| (not least of which is cost)
| eth0up wrote:
| I guess I'm a victim of this reporting to some extent, because
| I remember this situation going on for months, and I keep
| thinking every time it's mentioned (often) how terrible it must
| be for these astronauts and why something isn't done about it.
| But I know almost nothing regarding details. I know I despise
| Boeing and that I admire astronauts and that reading this
| headline, I thought 'its about fucking time!'
|
| But if I realize the entire situation has been misrepresented,
| I think I will be annoyed with myself. Is this really all
| nonsense? Is the situation normal, or common?
| a1445c8b wrote:
| "Normal" and "common" would still be the last words on my
| mind considering the amount of planning and money that goes
| into sending people to space and back. The only normal
| situation would be they go there and then back alive on the
| same mission as originally planned. Any divergence from that
| is totally abnormal.
| addaon wrote:
| > 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 manned design to my knowledge --
| certainly not normal or common.
| eth0up wrote:
| 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.
| samatman wrote:
| It appears you're referring to this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30742539
|
| The most likely explanation of the effect you're
| observing is that the server, having done a database
| fetch to get you the profile once, is not interested in
| doing it over and over again.
|
| It's cached. You do not have a uniquely broken upvote
| button.
| eth0up wrote:
| No. Definitely no.
|
| I've tested this many times by up-voting predictably
| stable comments, noting the karma number before and hours
| later. No effect. No exceptions. Additionally, there was
| a time where this limitation didn't exist. I am pretty
| sure I triggered a flag for my tendency to up-vote
| controversial and underdog content.
|
| I don't think dang is right about everything, but I get
| the impression that he's honest and expect he'd confirm
| this limitation on my username. Ask. But I'm not
| grovelling for equal rights on HN and will make no
| inquiries to insiders.
|
| Also, if your interpretation was correct, there's this
| really big parallel contrary reality where the upvote
| system works and entries are accepted and processed,
| hence the ever changing karma number of each active user.
| Perhaps it's the ad blocker, but it's not normal
| samatman wrote:
| As an experiment, I upvoted your comment.
|
| But first, I loaded your profile.
|
| Then I refreshed it several times.
|
| At no point did your karma score change on your profile.
|
| It's caching.
| philipkglass wrote:
| _I don 't think dang is right about everything, but I get
| the impression that he's honest and expect he'd confirm
| this limitation on my username. Ask. But I'm not
| grovelling for equal rights on HN and will make no
| inquiries to insiders._
|
| I once had this limitation on my own account. It was
| because I had upvoted certain grayed out comments that
| were flamewar fodder. I did that because there were
| equally bad counter-comments in the thread that weren't
| voted down (grayed), and out of a misguided commitment to
| balance I wanted to fight for the losing side.
|
| When I emailed dang to ask about my voting limitation he
| explained why my account had been penalized. I said I
| wouldn't vote up bad comments in the future and he
| restored my comment voting. Now when bad arguments
| attract bad counter-arguments I just downvote instead of
| trying to boost the somewhat-less-bad side.
|
| You don't have to send email about this if you don't want
| to, but it doesn't require groveling to fix.
| eth0up wrote:
| Thanks a bunch for this comment. It clarifies and it
| helps, especially with the samatman types obsessed with
| caches... and proving me wrong for reasons I'm quite
| content never knowing.
|
| I think some folks see the apparent simplicity of HN and
| assume it's primitive and clean, with nothing too
| sophisticated running in the background.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| Why can't you upvote comments on HN?
| nick3443 wrote:
| >>The spacecraft type they flew up will almost certainly
| never fly again because of how badly the shakedown went.
|
| I haven't seen this in the reporting. Can you share any
| context for it?
| addaon wrote:
| There's been a bit of reporting on Boeing "considering"
| whether to cancel the remains of this program. There's
| been no reporting on any decision -- likely because
| Boeing hasn't made one. But there's zero financial upside
| to continuing, and zero PR upside to continuing... and I
| just don't see any world in which Boeing, in its current
| state, continues to spend billions of dollars of its own
| money to set up more and more elaborate shows of its own
| (well understood, internally) incompetence. So, complete
| speculation on my side, but I'm comfortable enough making
| that speculation without a throwaway account.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| There were issues with Boeing's Starliner that made it
| difficult for NASA to quantify the risk of bringing the test
| crew back on it. NASA still believed that the risk was likely
| to be negligible, but since they had the option of taking a
| fully proven spacecraft back home, they opted to send
| Starliner home empty.
|
| The astronauts were/are comfortable on the ISS. There are
| plenty of supplies, and more have gone up as part of regular
| resupplies. IIRC the only discomfort for them was having to
| use makeshift sleeping places until the previous crew
| departed. As astronauts, they pretty much live to go into
| space, so they were happy, of course with the minor caveat of
| the disappointment regarding their primary mission not
| panning out and of having to be away from family for a few
| months. Especially considering that they are unlikely to get
| to be in space again as the ISS is due for retirement by the
| end of the decade and NASA wants to give space travel
| experience to the astronauts intended for the Moon.
|
| Putting it differently, the biggest issue/inconvenience with
| this situation was that Starliner was taking up a docking
| port and causing things to have to be rescheduled. Prior to
| launch, crew are trained to operate certain experiments, or
| to do servicing space walks. Since the crew being launched
| had to be reordered, these plans had to be reworked.
|
| There are a lot of people focusing in on the fact that they
| will be returning in February, but they're completely
| ignoring the fact that they're perfectly capable of coming
| back early, that option is actively not being chosen as
| having them stay till then would be more optimal for station
| operational planning.
| floating-io wrote:
| It's worth noting that the astronauts in question have
| little to no control over the schedule, so "perfectly
| capable of coming back early" isn't a fair assessment in
| this context.
|
| Coming back "early" would also occur at a cost of either
| tens of millions of dollars for an extra launch, or at a
| cost of valuable experiments not getting run because the
| space station was empty of personnel. NASA policy would
| prohibit the remaining astronauts from... well, remaining,
| because they have to have a lifeboat, which the two
| "rescuees" would have just used to go home. Thus, all of
| them would have to go home.
|
| IOW, painting this as "normal operations" in any sense is
| disingenuous. The danger levels may not be overly
| exacerbated, but it was a very costly failure, and it may
| well be a drastic inconvenience to the astronauts. We
| likely won't know the truth of the latter until they write
| their memoirs.
|
| It's easy to manage spin when the opinions being spun are
| in orbit on a restricted communication system.
| peeters wrote:
| > I guess I'm a victim of this reporting to some extent,
| because I remember this situation going on for months, and I
| keep thinking every time it's mentioned (often) how terrible
| it must be for these astronauts and why something isn't done
| about it.
|
| I'm not Butch or Suni, but I think the astronauts most
| negatively affected by this would be the two that got bumped
| from Crew 9. Astronauts define their careers by the amount
| and quality of the time they are blessed to spend in space.
| Chris Hadfield, e.g., has taken it for granted that the pair
| would feel lucky to be "stranded" for a few months, and would
| have plenty of meaningful work to occupy their time.
| neverrroot wrote:
| "Ultimately, NASA felt it was not able to understand why the
| thrusters malfunctioned and decided that it was too risky to
| return its astronauts to Earth aboard Starliner, which will
| attempt to return uncrewed."
|
| Too risky? Stranded? Rescued (hopefully)?
| huijzer wrote:
| I read somewhere someone who compared news to the presenters at
| a horse race. If you just look, it might be a boring uneventful
| race. But if you listen to the presenters, it's very exciting.
| "Now horse A is in front!!! Oh wait. Horse B takes the lead!!
| Wait. Horse A is coming back." For example, EV taxes in Europe
| "There are rumors on EV taxes!! Wait some guy says there will
| be no extra taxes!! Oh wait. Rumors for 40%!! No 30%!! Breaking
| news!! It's 40%!"
| aidenn0 wrote:
| See also Jelle's Marble Runs
|
| e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHu99vdz-A
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Unfortunately, they've taken to doing things like saying
| Horse C is in the lead when it's actually Horse B and telling
| everyone Horse A has gone lame when it's clearly neck in neck
| with Horse B while pretending that Horse D doesn't exist
| because they don't like the jockey.
| walterbell wrote:
| Community Notes template for multiple contexts.
| Loughla wrote:
| I am absolutely convinced that the 24 hour news cycle is the
| problem in society at large, at least in the US. Everything
| else draws from that.
|
| Social media, full of bullshit to drive eyes to constant news
| feed. Political divide literally caused by the 24 hour cycle.
|
| It needs to end.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| "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 that argument against the media?
|
| Edit: "regular crew rotation" implies normal and expected but
| the point is, even if the crew is in no danger, this wasn't
| regular or expected.
| gpm wrote:
| This launch was normal and expected crew rotation, they just
| kicked a few people off the mission so that there would be
| open seats on the way back.
| bmitc wrote:
| Yes, to rescue two other people stranded on the ISS who
| were supposed to return home weeks ago.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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 lighten its load to make
| room for the stranded.
|
| This is a rescue! It's an easy rescue. But so was, like,
| pulling my puppy out of the neighbor's pool when it went
| under the cover.
| ghodith wrote:
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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?
| tedunangst wrote:
| I think rescue implies a higher degree of imminent peril.
| nick3443 wrote:
| I agree. The dictionary definitions mostly involve
| urgency or distress in the situation. This would be more
| like a retrieval I think.
|
| "SpaceX capsule used to retrieve astronauts stranded on
| ISS by malfunctioning starliner."
| gpm wrote:
| Is it a rescue? Maybe. Is it a rescue _mission_? No. It
| 's a normal crew rotation mission that has happened to
| (arguably) rescue a few people on the way. The mission
| itself is ordinary, expected, and planned prior to any
| crisis.
|
| Arguable because everyone has a way back already, the
| modification to the crew rotation mission just provides a
| somewhat safer way back.
|
| Edit: And the distinction here matters. A rescue mission
| would be an expensive unexpected endeavour. The regular
| crew rotation is an expected operating cost. The
| modification to the details of the plan for the crew
| rotation haven't significantly impacted the mission goals
| - i.e. for the same cost there are still the same number
| of fresh qualified crew members up there for the same
| duration, just a slightly different set of people.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is it a rescue mission? No. It 's a normal crew
| rotation mission that has happened to (arguably) rescue a
| few people on the way_
|
| I like this.
|
| Nit: it's _not_ a normal mission. Normal missions don't
| leave two seats for folks trained on a different
| spacecraft. It's a _scheduled_ mission.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _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._
|
| I don't think being in a leaky space station for eight
| months, where you suffer the effects of accelerated aging
| due to zero gravity, is equivalent to a being in a fully
| loaded villa for a month.
|
| I'm using the "distress" part of "danger or distress". The
| average person would view the situation as distressing for
| the astronauts, for the average person "rescue" is
| appropriate term. Jeesh.
| moralestapia wrote:
| You mixed the numbers there.
|
| "day 30 of my 2 day vacation" is more accurate.
| raspasov wrote:
| Your villa is totally incomparable to space or a space
| station.
|
| Hypothetically:
|
| - you can walk outside, hitch a ride home
|
| - fully loaded means there's electricity and phones? Call a
| Taxi?
|
| - walk to a near town shop, buy car parts and fix the car
| if you have the skills
|
| None of those hypotheticals are even remotely possible in
| space. It's a bad comparison.
| raspasov wrote:
| 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.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _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._
|
| If you chose to say it was, nobody would be doing the _"
| Well ACKSHULLY..."_ routine with you because that is in
| fact totally in line with common use of the word rescue and
| not worth making a stink about even if you think it sounds
| a little melodramatic.
|
| The ISS situation is more extreme than your example in
| every way, but you're pulling the _ackshully_ bullshit
| because you don 't like the company that has done it.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >but you're pulling the ackshully bullshit because you
| don't like the company that has done it.
|
| I wonder if you, like me, have taken a vacation to travel
| half-way across the United States to watch a SpaceX
| launch, or had discussions with former heads of NASA as
| far back as 2011 about what the company meant/means for
| manned spaceflight. I wonder if you grew up around
| astronauts or knew people who died on Columbia.
|
| This isn't an appeal to authority, it's a statement of
| experience. I'm in a pedantic HN subthread and threw in
| my subjective opinion regarding the use of the term
| "rescue" - please don't jump to assuming I'm some evil
| troll.
| Natsu wrote:
| I can sorta see why some would quibble over "rescue", because
| it's not like they're in immediate danger, but at the same
| time they're stranded because their ride malfunctioned and
| left them somewhere rather inhospitable. And I think "normal
| and expected crew rotation" as someone put it undersells the
| fact that while there isn't a special trip for them only,
| they had to bump other people off the flight just to get
| them, specifically.
|
| Would people really be that much happier if it was said
| instead that they were making room for crew marooned by an
| unsafe spacecraft? I think I'd normally use the word "rescue"
| there if it was a ship.
|
| But yet it is true that they plan for this kind of thing and
| that's why they're not in any particularly significant danger
| due to being marooned.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _I can sorta see why some would quibble over "rescue",
| because it's not like they're in immediate danger, but at
| the same time they're stranded because their ride
| malfunctioned and left them somewhere rather inhospitable_
|
| In any other context this wouldn't be quibbled. If my car
| broke down a mile outside town and my friend gave me a lift
| the rest of the way, I would say he rescued me _and nobody
| would quibble it._
|
| The only reason it's being quibbled is because people have
| a stick up their ass about Elon Musk personally and that
| stick extends to the way they feel about SpaceX.
| justin66 wrote:
| So "regular" they had to bump two astronauts who had trained
| for a mission on ISS.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, something people forget is routine things happen. But
| people like to think of events as singular unexpected grand
| things even if they're just part of an older expected thing.
| Take D-day for instance. We make movies about the landings and
| how dramatic it was, but the truth: a regular troop rotation
| into territory, something routine for the armed forces.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I can't tell if you're joking? D-Day being 'a regular troop
| rotation' is an amazing description.
| nick3443 wrote:
| No
| jmyeet wrote:
| I see this claim a lot and I honestly don't understand why
| people refuse to see this for the disaster it is (for Boeing).
|
| An 8 day mission turned into a months-long mission unexepctedly
| and SpaceX ultimately had to bump 2 trained astronauts to
| return them to Earth. That's the very definition of a rescue
| and just a wildly massive PR disaster to boot.
|
| Beyond this, we still have no idea of what it will take to
| return Starliner to flightworthiness and give NASA the
| confidence that it can carry out an entire mission. It may be
| completely or just practically doomed at this point.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| 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 disruptive
| way to bring them back. There has always been the option of
| sending a dedicated Dragon for them, but that would require
| NASA to pay for an entire additional Dragon mission just to
| bring two people back who are in no urgent need of bringing
| back.
|
| You go to an island for your employer, and the ferry breaks
| down once you get there. While your employer can send another
| ferry soon to bring you back, they ask if you'd be okay
| staying for a rotation because that'd be more convenient for
| them. They also arrange a means for you to leave in case of
| an emergency. You're enjoying the island, so you agree. The
| replacement ferry is not a rescue.
|
| Starliner made the uncrewed return just fine, which means
| that on NASA's side, the return to flight should not be too
| complicated (well, besides showing that the doghouse
| deformation issues have been resolved) and should not involve
| a redo of this flight. What remains to be seen is what
| position Boeing takes on it, as they have been very quiet
| over if they're going to continue in Commercial Crew.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| mannyv wrote:
| Well hmm. NASA decided Starliner wasn't safe enough to use for
| the return journey, so the astronauts stayed on the ISS until
| the next ride became available.
|
| Originally the astronauts were supposed to go back on
| Starliner. Now they're taking another ride back. Is that
| considered a rescue? Well, it depends.
|
| If you get left behind on an island because your ride wasn't
| safe and another boat picks you up, is that a rescue? Now what
| if you're 420 kilometers up and another boat has to come get
| you. Is that a rescue?
|
| If there wasn't another ride from the ISS available, would the
| astronauts be stranded? Yes.
|
| In that case, if a ride suddenly became available would it be
| considered a rescue? Probably, yes.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Is that a rescue?
|
| Well, was there an accident? It seems like the astronauts
| staying extra long is to avoid an accident. Does their need
| to be an accident to call it a rescue?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| There was not, considering Starliner landed safely about a
| month ago.
|
| NASA was uncomfortable with the amount of risk in a new
| vehicle exhibiting anomalous behavior, for its first crewed
| re-entry.
|
| The headline here should be: "US glad to have two separate
| suppliers for crewed transport"
| nick3443 wrote:
| Three, if you are willing to count Soyuz. Are we still
| using Soyuz?
| philwelch wrote:
| Yeah, we have an active seat-trading arrangement with the
| Russians where they send cosmonauts to ride Dragon and we
| send astronauts to ride Soyuz.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Soyuz could not be used to take Jeb and Val back down.
| Riding a Soyuz requires a custom fitted suit, and though
| these astronauts had both riden Soyuz in the past, those
| old measurements are not good enough for a current
| flight.
| iterance wrote:
| Following the analogy... you're on an island. A ferry has
| showed up at the island every six months or so for the last
| 40 years. The last ferry that showed up broke before it could
| leave the harbor. No need to worry, though. Another ferry's
| coming in six months and there are plenty of supplies on the
| island.
|
| Is it rescue? Maybe in the sense that you can't leave when
| you wanted to and now you have to wait. But not in the sense
| that you were ever in any real danger.
|
| (Admittedly, maybe there is a bit more danger for these
| astronauts because a malfunctioning spacecraft is inherently
| a bit of a safety hazard. And the SpaceX operation is
| certainly not as routine as a ferry showing up at a dock,
| though it's still safe.)
|
| It seems that it is both a bit subjective whether one calls
| it "rescue," and also a bit sensationalized to put in a
| headline too.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not in the sense that you were ever in any real danger_
|
| The analogy breaks down because an island isn't space. Your
| default state on an island tends towards remaining alive.
| Your default state in space is dead.
|
| A closer analogy is a plane in flight. It takes energy and
| effort to keep everyone alive. Externally-assisted recovery
| from peril, in that situation, is a rescue. Even if it's
| convenient.
| panick21_ wrote:
| No astronaut has died on ISS in 30 years. Claiming they
| are in significant danger simply isn't accurate. Saying
| 'the default state in space is dead' when historically
| basically nobody has died in space.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _No astronaut has died on ISS in 30 years. Claiming
| they are in significant danger simply isn 't accurate_
|
| Nobody claimed as much. A jet liner is safer than the
| ISS. The analogy is conservative.
|
| > _Saying 'the default state in space is dead' when
| historically basically nobody has died in space_
|
| Our default state at cruising altitude is dead.
|
| Note: I'm not suggesting anyone would have died. Just
| that they were in a perilous place where things were
| going wrong. Being relieved from that position is a
| rescue.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| > A jet liner is safer than the ISS.
|
| Maybe not if the jet is a Boeing though?
| dotancohen wrote:
| To be fair, I'd rather be in a 737 Max at 30,000 ft than
| without the 737 Max at 30,000 ft.
|
| And I'd rather be with the Starliner at 400 km up than
| without the Starliner at 400 km up.
|
| But neither seem to be of comparable safety to the other
| options available.
| elif wrote:
| No speeder has ever died on the highway either. It's only
| the crashing drivers who died.
|
| It is likewise as foolish to try decoupling the peril of
| space and the peril of orbit and deorbit.
| closewith wrote:
| > Your default state on an island tends towards remaining
| alive.
|
| I'm guessing you spend most of your life indoors?
|
| On Earth, outside of the carefully regulated homes we've
| built as a society, the default state is dead and it
| takes tremendous work and constant vigilence to avoid
| that fate, only ever temporarily.
| dotancohen wrote:
| And that is why if somebody finds a child wandering in
| the park alone, we say that the man rescued the child.
| Exactly as SpaceX is doing in this situation.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Yes and we also say you rescued me if I am bang out of
| cash and you lend me a fiver at checkout...
|
| If you see _a news headline_ "man rescues child" you
| expect a direct threat like something like from a burning
| house.
|
| > if somebody finds a child wandering in the park alone,
| we say that the man rescued the child. Exactly as SpaceX
| is doing in this situation.
|
| Plus, saying astronauts, professionals who signed up for
| the job knowing what it entails and went through years of
| training are like children wandering in the park, to
| paint SpaceX as their savior, is... wow.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Humans in space are less than children in the park. We've
| barely ventured out of our own atmosphere. Less than a
| 1000 people have been to orbit, and only 24 have gone to
| the moon. Out of those, only a dozen have landed on the
| moon.
|
| And the moon is still the Earth system - we've never
| really left our own yard.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you took a different boat separate from the normal
| ferry, intending to leave right away but now stuck unable
| to use it, I would say the next ferry is rescuing you.
| karlgkk wrote:
| No? Because if you're not in danger, you're not being
| rescued. You're just being transported.
|
| If I miss the last train across the bay, my uber isn't
| rescuing me. I can always stay up to 5am by making a
| shady deal at the endup.
|
| But yeah, this is a black eye on boeing and definitely
| something that nobody wants to have to deal with.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you're not in danger, you're not being rescued.
| You're just being transported_
|
| The ISS isn't Treasure Island. There is always an
| elevated degree of peril. Particularly in an emergency
| condition.
| YeahThisIsMe wrote:
| But there's no emergency situation at the moment.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there's no emergency situation at the moment_
|
| It's space. The ground state is emergency. I am training
| to be a pilot. Anything going off flight plan is an
| emergency. If ground control gives me corrective
| instructions, in the course of a mistake, I hope I will
| have the humility to not refuse its designation as a
| rescue.
|
| Like, if you want an Exhibit A for why Boeing doesn't
| deserve forward trust, it's this response.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| When the ground state is emergency the definition of
| emergency changes because emergency cannot be the same as
| ground state...
|
| If we go by technical definition of "emergency" then
| anything not by the plan is an emergency, but it's not
| used that way normally and it's not a technical
| publication.
|
| If you are stuck in space with no lifeboat back then I
| agree it is an emergency, but they apparently have
| Starliner and it works. If they or Nasa are more
| comfortable with another option maybe that makes it an
| emergency or maybe not.
|
| If it turns out Starliner doesn't work, that's an
| emergency. If there is radiation event coming then it's
| an emergency, but it is always an emergency in space
| regardless.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they apparently have Starliner and it works_
|
| One, had. Starliner went home. Two, they didn't.
| Starliner was broken. Its manoeuvring thrusters, a
| critical reentry system, were misbehaving. If you're on a
| plane and the oxygen system fails, that's an emergency.
| You don't have to wait for cabin pressure to fail for it
| to qualify, and oxygen systems aren't a critical system;
| this is closer to the flaps or landing gear behaving
| erratically.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Actually, NASA protocol requires more than a single layer
| of safety. The astronauts currently do not have a
| lifeboat home - that is extraordinarily irregular and I
| believe that it constitutes a danger to the astronauts.
| The spacecraft are not only for down transport, they are
| also shelters for radiation and particle events - which
| could be declared with days or hours notice. For a month
| these astronauts have had no viable shelter nor transport
| in case of emergency.
|
| Danger is not when the last later of safety fails. Danger
| is when the level of risk exceeds a set threshold - and
| that level has been exceeded as per NASA protocol.
| kedv wrote:
| These individuals are professionals who signed up for
| this and are paid to do the job. This isn't a rescue; the
| media is simply sensationalizing the entire story.
| aylmao wrote:
| Looked up two definitions of rescue. First, is the
| default that shows on Google (via Oxford Languages) [1]:
|
| > verb. 1. save (someone) from a dangerous or distressing
| situation. 2. informal, keep from being lost or
| abandoned; retrieve.
|
| Per this one, if you miss the last train across the bay
| the the Uber _would_ indeed be "rescuing" you if you felt
| distressed. If we consider the informal definition, I'd
| say you're also being rescued since one could say you
| were abandoned by the train and thus being retrieved by
| the Uber. Next, Merriam Webster [2]:
|
| > transitive verb. to free from confinement, danger, or
| evil
|
| Similarly, if you understand "rescue" as freeing someone
| from danger, this isn't a rescue. The astronauts aren't
| in danger really-- they have all the supplies and support
| they need. Nonetheless, they certainly are in
| confinement, so this could still be called a rescue.
|
| I personally do see how the fact this mission was already
| scheduled, and the little danger around all this, can
| make "rescue" feel like a little much. It's the same word
| used in The Martian, after all. But nonetheless I would
| still call it a rescue mission. These two astronauts are
| confined up there not by will but by circumstance, and
| the taxi flight was modified to sending only two people
| instead of the usual four, specifically to make space for
| these two astronauts to come back [3].
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=rescue%20meaning
|
| [2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rescue
|
| [3] https://apnews.com/article/boeing-spacex-nasa-
| astronauts-sta...
| nick3443 wrote:
| If you stay until 5am at the endup, you'll probably have
| to get rescued anyway.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| How is being stranded in space "not in danger"?
| colordrops wrote:
| It sounds like everyone in this thread is in complete
| agreement about the complex parameters and details and yet
| we are arguing on the scope of the label.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _yet we are arguing on the scope of the label_
|
| It's Saturday, can't we have a semantic punt?
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I'm on the other side of the international date line, you
| insensitive clod.
| 14 wrote:
| That is what is great about HN. We discuss a broad range
| of topics which sometimes brings us discussing off
| subject matter but that are still relevant to the heart
| of HN. Media reporting and how they influence people is
| definitely a topic appropriate for HN so I can see how it
| was brought up.
| msravi wrote:
| The real problem is that the company doing the rescue is
| SpaceX, and that's owned by Elon. And HN does not like
| Elon.
| transcriptase wrote:
| reddit and tv says mars man BAD
|
| ergo mars man BAD
| sunshinerag wrote:
| Yes, the comments are a reflection of that. What a level
| of moral twisting
| bofadeez wrote:
| It's become the normal way of thinking here on HN.
| Everyone is so deep inside a box that they can't even see
| the edges. They're brainwashed with cult behavior.
| dotancohen wrote:
| If I can't bikeshed at the office on Saturday, I'll
| bikeshed on HN on Saturday.
| sph wrote:
| There's plenty of middle managers on HN on the weekends.
| wh-uws wrote:
| Your analogy might (and even that's a stretch ) work for 6
| hours not for 6 months!
| bnralt wrote:
| Maybe this is better:
|
| Cruise line A and cruise line B drop their passengers off
| at a remote island for 5 days, and then come to pick them
| up and take them home. After cruise line B drops theirs
| off, the cruise ships breaks down, and the passengers can't
| be picked up after 5 days, so they're stuck on the island
| with no immediate way to get off. Cruise line A says "OK,
| the next cruise ship we send will be at half capacity, so
| we can get the passengers from cruise line B off the island
| and get them home."
|
| Is cruise line A rescuing the passengers from cruise line
| B? I'd say yes.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Is cruise line A rescuing the passengers from cruise
| line B? I 'd say yes._
|
| IMO that's only true in line A's PR campaign, assuming
| they're adversarial enough to run with it.
|
| In your analogy, the passengers are _always_ "stuck on
| the island with no immediate way to get off" for at least
| 5 days, as they have no alternative way to get back
| during their planned stay. If B's cruise ship breaks down
| - and AFAIK in this case, "breaks down" doesn't mean the
| ship can't move, just that the risk of catastrophic
| failure during the trip crossed a preset threshold -
| that's more of an _operational disruption_. The stranded
| passengers are still safe and sound, they just need to
| wait for the next scheduled cruise to take them home.
|
| The schedule bit matters IMO. It would be a rescue if the
| next scheduled ride would be way too late to help them
| and thus it had to be moved up to save their lives.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Cruise passengers stuck on an island without other
| transport would be rescued because personally for them it
| is completely out of ordinary.
|
| Workers who signed up to get paid to be on the island and
| do some work? Knowing that there is only one line of
| transport and it can be irregular? Going through months
| or years of training beforehand? Maybe "rescue" is a
| sensationalization when used in a news headline.
| mc32 wrote:
| The main reason people don't want to call it a rescue is
| because they dislike Musk. If there were no politics
| involved people wouldn't be handwringing themselves so
| much over the word rescue.
|
| If the spaceship that took you somewhere wasn't able to
| get you back as planned and cannot get you back as
| planned and someone else has to go get those people,
| that's a rescue.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > If the spaceship that took you somewhere wasn't able to
| get you back as planned and cannot get you back as
| planned and someone else has to go get those people,
| that's a rescue.
|
| If you were on cruise then yes, if you are a professional
| team who trained for years to stay in dangerous
| conditions and the only thing out of ordinary is delayed
| transport back then not. If politics were not involved no
| one would call it a rescue.
| mc32 wrote:
| Seems like similar things in the past were called
| rescues: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/russia-
| launches-res...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Good point. If this situation is equivalent then why not
| I guess. But note the PBS one says "urgent need for the
| capsule". Unclear why. Is it urgent in this case?
|
| In case of Russians there was a coolant leak
|
| If you are working in Antarctica and need to wait for
| another transport home it sounds okay. If you urgently
| need treatment and must perform a surgery on yourself
| then that's an emergency
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _In case of Russians there was a coolant leak_
|
| Starliner's manoeuvring thrusters weren't working!
| mgfist wrote:
| It's slightly more nuanced than that, in that starliner
| didn't actually break down. It had some issues which
| presented increased risk for the astronauts, but it was
| still operational. If there was a true emergency on ISS,
| they would've gone on starliner. But because there was no
| danger of them staying longer till the next ride, they
| opted out of using starliner given the increased risk.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It had some issues which presented increased risk for
| the astronauts, but it was still operational_
|
| We didn't know that!
|
| > _because there was no danger of them staying longer
| till the next ride_
|
| I suppose it's a step forward that we've normalised the
| baseline dangers (and costs, personal and financial) of
| being in space.
| starfezzy wrote:
| You're not just "on an island." You're LITERALLY STUCK on
| the island FAR past when you were supposed to leave. So the
| boat coming to get you off the island is literally rescuing
| you.
|
| I know you hate Elon musk--I don't care for him much nor do
| I harbor animosity towards him--but a rescue is a rescue
| lmao. You guys would never be this ridiculous if the
| situation wasn't politically charged, or if the
| circumstances favored your political leaning (almost
| certainly progressive left).
| paul7986 wrote:
| Yeah not a fan of his cause all his big promises / lies
| like a used car salesman but him buying X and trying to
| put the brakes on the radical lefts real out there stuff
| I personally think did just that. He's in the middle / an
| independent with both conservative & liberal leanings.
| Gud wrote:
| Your analogy is flawed. Starliner has not been in service
| for 40 years, as in your example.
|
| It's a fairly new vehicle, newer than the Dragon capsule.
| elif wrote:
| On an island you can call for a boat or a helicopter. You
| can relax and eat all your food knowing those options
| exist.
|
| On a space station your options are considerably more
| limited.
| wongarsu wrote:
| With SpaceX's launch cadence they could easily shift some
| flights. Of course you'd need a Crew Dragon that has
| completed refurbishment, and need to integrate it with a
| rocket. A month sounds like a reasonable timeline to get
| an unexpected rescue mission to the ISS. Which isn't
| great if you need a medevac, but that's why they have
| enough space craft docked
| hindsightbias wrote:
| What if NASAs decision was largely influenced by social media
| hysteria and not objective engineering?
|
| Of course NASA would never give into outside pressures -
| cough, Challenger, cough. And what I read on the internets is
| so massively factual.
| anonylizard wrote:
| Well, that was probably Boeing's line for the MAX
| disasters, until the second one occurred.
|
| Boeing is clearly undergoing systemic collapse in
| engineering ability, so anything Boeing has to be treated
| with extreme suspicion. Its like hiring a 3-time-felon to
| babysit, like you can do it, but there will be 0 tolerance
| for any deviance.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| They build a plane with 15M parts every single day. Their
| worst engineer is better than 99% of those on HN.
| fastball wrote:
| Their worst engineers are the ones responsible for
| shipping planes + systems that have resulted in the
| deaths of hundreds of people.
|
| I don't think I'm a fantastic engineer, but I'm certainly
| doing better than those people when considering the
| metric of "how many people has my software killed".
| pferde wrote:
| You need to add a metric of "how many people can my
| software kill if it misbehaves", otherwise your point is
| moot.
| uaas wrote:
| These are big words.
| hinkley wrote:
| Sells ads I guess.
|
| If your friend bails and you get someone else to give you a
| ride home, they're getting you or retrieving you. You only
| call it "rescue" if you're trying to add some drama to
| connect with the person who comes to get you. Like a
| relative, or someone you're trying to flirt with.
| beau_g wrote:
| Agreed, but only in the circumstance that the flirty
| someone else picks you up from the International Space
| Station after your other friend bails, otherwise seems like
| a poor analogy
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| From the Cambridge dictionary:
|
| > Rescue: to help someone or something out of a dangerous,
| harmful, or unpleasant situation.
|
| These are professional, paid astronaut. They both have
| decades of experience and both have experience being up in
| space.
|
| If I were to bet they're probably happy to spend more time on
| the ISS because I doubt they have many more missions left to
| do in their careers.
|
| They're in no danger. There's no harm done to them.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Of course there is danger. They're in space! Even when
| things are going to plan it's dangerous.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| If that is your reasoning then they might as well
| "rescue" all the other astronaut on board the ISS and
| shut the entire thing down.
|
| You're not rescuing someone from a danger that was
| already there and part of the mission. Them being "stuck"
| for a few more months doesn't make them "in danger"
|
| If they weren't up there now two different astronauts
| would be up instead of them. And it would be part of a
| regular mission. Those would not need to be "rescued"
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They were in danger because the Crew-8 escape plan
| exposed them to elevated risk on descent without proper
| seating or suits that could be connected to the capsule.
| A loss of pressure would kill them.
| brianshaler wrote:
| > If there wasn't another ride from the ISS available, would
| the astronauts be stranded? Yes.
|
| Seems like the answer to this would be no. Starliner's risk
| was elevated, not guaranteed to fail. The presence of a
| flight-proven option was the limiting factor.
| eru wrote:
| > Starliner's risk was elevated, not guaranteed to fail.
|
| That's a pretty weird bar to set?
| maxerickson wrote:
| The thing is that rescue implies they were imperiled by not
| using Starliner to return. That isn't the case, there has
| been a way to get them back without Starliner since they got
| there.
|
| Sending this SpaceX capsule up with seats reserved for their
| return fixes the overall operating tempo, but it doesn't make
| the 2 astronauts any more or less safe.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > That isn't the case, there has been a way to get them
| back without Starliner since they got there.
|
| That is pushing it until Crew 9 arrives. It's a set of
| straps attached to cargo pallets in the luggage compartment
| of the Crew 8 capsule. It's like jamming a kid in your
| trunk when you're out of seats.
|
| They've never had to use this reserve plan and it was only
| first dreamt of when Soyuz had issues recently.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Lol, people still shilling for Boeing at this point.
|
| Unbelievable.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Pointing out overly sensational and misleading reporting is
| not shilling for Boeing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's a regular crew rotation mission with modifications_
|
| Standard but modified is an oxymoron. This is an irregular
| mission.
|
| NASA plans with tonnes of redundancy. That's paying off here.
| Being prepared doesn't poof away a fuck-up, it just means you
| can take it in stride. Starliner stranded two astronauts in
| space. Dragon is fixing that. Being saved from being stranded
| sure as hell sounds like being rescued, even if it's close to
| routine.
|
| > _Starliner was still deemed to be safe enough to be the
| emergency escape option while it was docked_
|
| This is a threshold met by a torn parachute on a jet.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| >This is a threshold met by a torn parachute on a jet.
|
| Not when it was the preferred option over sticking seats in
| Crew-8, right up until Starliner's software changes for
| uncrewed return started.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _when it was the preferred option over sticking seats in
| Crew-8_
|
| It was the preferred option before it failed. Between first
| failure and return it was not the preferred option as it
| was. It was preferred assuming it worked. But the
| assumption couldn't be proven, in part due to Boeing's
| shoddy ground sims.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Starliner stranded two astronauts in space._
|
| It didn't, because it wasn't simply broken -- it had
| unexpected behavior. It ended up landing fine.
|
| I'm uncomfortable heaping pejoratives on what we should
| expect NASA to do: make engineering decisions to minimize
| risk and maximize chance of mission success.
|
| Increasing the reputational or financial penalties to
| suppliers incentivizes exactly the sort of decisions that
| blew up Challenger and Columbia.
| thfuran wrote:
| >It ended up landing fine.
|
| Were the astronauts in it when it landed?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41684804
| rdtsc wrote:
| > it wasn't simply broken -- it had unexpected behavior.
|
| Unexpected behavior for NASA was broken enough to send it
| back empty. That was not the plan to start with. The
| mission was supposed to be a few days only not this long.
|
| > what we should expect NASA to do: make engineering
| decisions to minimize risk and maximize chance of mission
| success.
|
| The criticism is of both NASA and Boeing on what they
| should have done prior to the trip. How the money was spent
| and such. I don't think anyone criticizes NASA for opting
| to keep the astronauts safe by delaying their return. It's
| about what happened before that point.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Unexpected behavior for NASA was broken enough to send
| it back empty._
|
| It's not a question of broken / not-broken. It's a
| question of known-risk / unknown-risk. The return mission
| had too much of the latter.
|
| I'm as much of a Boeing skeptic as anyone here, but the
| knee-jerk-ism to vilify them over this is unreasonable.
|
| NASA manages risk.
|
| SpaceX blows up rockets, so they can move fast, until
| they get it right.
|
| Boeing is trying to operate as a legacy space company
| (read: endlessly trying to reduce risk) while also
| competing with SpaceX.
|
| I'm glad they launched Starliner for a crewed mission!
|
| No one died, because it was safe enough.
|
| No one would have died, had they returned on it, because
| it was safe enough.
|
| And why should NASA have delayed a manned test flight
| further when there was an acceptable Plan B?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it had unexpected behavior. It ended up landing fine_
|
| By this measure the door blowing off the Alaska Airlines
| flight wasn't an emergency.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If it had been a test flight using test pilots: yes, it
| wouldn't have been.
|
| There's a reason astronauts for higher risk missions tend
| to be selected from operational and test naval aviation
| backgrounds, like both of the Starliner CFT astronauts
| were.
| nimbius wrote:
| 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. The
| comac airliner also directly competes with Boeing's beleaguered
| 737
|
| - loss of confidence in the us space program at the vehicle
| level jeopardizes trust from consumers and insurance companies
| in the us space products market like satellite launches.
| anonylizard wrote:
| Well no one is losing confidence in US space program. Since
| SpaceX has the overwhelming global lead in space engineering.
|
| The main issue is, NASA for political reasons, has to keep
| the delusion of the 'have 2 suppliers'. Boeing is clearly
| nonviable anymore, but as you said, it has tremendous
| influence in US congress, so NASA pays them billions.
|
| NASA's programs would be simpler if they simply just dumped
| all the money to SpaceX, but that could cause longer term
| issues. The other solution would be partnering with Airbus as
| the backup supplier, but that would cause political
| earthquake.
| tjpnz wrote:
| >The comac airliner also directly competes with Boeing's
| beleaguered 737
|
| Not in any remotely meaningful way. Some estimates suggest it
| will be more than a decade before Comac will have the
| manufacturing capacity to fill existing domestic orders (as
| of now they've built 9). Then there's the fact that their
| planes aren't nearly as fuel efficient as those from Boeing
| and Airbus - the engines may be imports but are neutered due
| to export restrictions. China's own airlines aren't even
| interested.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > it will be more than a decade before Comac will have the
| manufacturing capacity to fill even domestic orders
|
| If you think that a decade is enough time for Boeing (or
| Airbus) to react to losing one large market and having a
| new competitor encroach on existing markets, then I suggest
| looking at past airliner development programs.
|
| A decade is nothing in this industry. And China,
| specifically, is known for being able to scale
| manufacturing - so they may not have a decade like us
| Westerners think.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| > The comac airliner also directly competes with Boeing's
| beleaguered 737
|
| Thanks but I'll take my chances on a MAX.
|
| Do you know what happens when a Chinese-built plane crashes
| in China? There is no fancy congressional inquiry, no
| lawsuits, no crying families on TV. No, they hose off the
| crash site and put them in unmarked graves and build a
| shoddily-constructed apartment building over top of it. Maybe
| the pilot's family is jailed and never heard from again.
| Pretend it never happened and life over there continues as
| usual.
| charles_f wrote:
| Calling it rescue or not doesn't matter. The primary objective
| was test flight for Starliner. Mission is a success, in that it
| proved Starliner is not safe. Now they're coming down using
| Dragon, which is the _very expensive_ backup plan, and which is
| absolutely not what was planned.
|
| Whether you want to call it a rescue or not and play semantics
| or metaphors all night is your absolute right, but it doesn't
| change the failure of Starliner in this case.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| >> _" If we'd have had a crew on board the spacecraft, we
| would have followed the same back away sequence from the
| space station, the same deorbit burn and executed the same
| entry. And so it would have been a safe, successful landing
| with the crew on board," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's
| Commercial Crew Program..._
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/astronauts-
| would-h...
| nick3443 wrote:
| Russian roulette is safe! I played once and didn't die!
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The point that half this comment section is missing is
| this is the sort of thing we want to encourage.
|
| The US spent extra money funding two separate vendors.
|
| One vendor exhibited a high level of risk in their first
| return.
|
| The astronauts were able to be returned on the second,
| already proven vendor.
|
| That's a great place to be in!
|
| The alternative, having to return astronauts on a high
| risk vehicle _because it 's the only option_, is not a
| place we ever want to be in.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| What is not great is the fact that vendor 1 exhibited a
| _string_ of concerning anomalies and accidents. Vendor 1
| may be institutionally unfit to be a leg on which the US
| space program stands.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > One vendor exhibited a high level of risk in their
| first return. > The astronauts were able to be
| returned on the second, already proven vendor.
|
| Anyone reading this five years ago would be absolutely
| shocked to discover which vendor is which.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The most underrated and impressive achievement of SpaceX,
| IMHO, has been their designing missions for higher
| technical risk while managing safety impacts.
|
| It's easy(ish) to go fast and break things.
|
| It's much harder to go fast and break things, except also
| never break things when it really matters.
| charles_f wrote:
| They didn't come back, though. It's still a success in the
| sense that it was a test mission and determining there was
| a problem is valuable, but Starliner is not ready
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Considering both recent US vehicle losses have been on
| re-entry, I feel NASA is vindicated on being ultra-
| conservative around that stage.
|
| So anomalies that might be acceptable during ascent would
| be unacceptable during decent.
|
| Personally? I'm glad Boeing launched.
|
| I wish they were perfect technically, but I also realize
| that an infinite amount of time and money doesn't protect
| against unknown-unknowns.
|
| IMHO, they should be operating more like SpaceX (and the
| earlier days of the US space program) -- using calculated
| risk and engineering to decide when it's reasonable to do
| an inherently risky thing, when doing so is needed to
| move the entire program forward.
| hcks wrote:
| This is actually an incredibly stupid thing to say which
| reflects poorly on NASA management
| AdamN wrote:
| When I was a kid a lifeguard helped me out in rough waves in
| the Atlantic. I was doing ok but not great and probably
| should have gone in earlier. I asked if he had rescued me
| because I wasn't really sure what was going on ... he said he
| had given me an 'assist'. It probably is the right word here
| too.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The lifeguard spared you the word rescue because he didn't
| want to hurt the feelings of a child. Are we now extending
| the same courtesy to corporations? Corporations like Boeing
| no less, with hundreds of negligent homicides under their
| belt?
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| > very expensive
|
| Is it though?
|
| > the face value of each seat has been estimated by NASA's
| Office of Inspector General (OIG) to be around US$55 million.
| This contrasts with the 2014 Soyuz launch price of US$76
| million per seat for NASA astronauts
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If your car dies at night in the middle of a desert. Is the tow
| truck rescuing you?
| ascorbic wrote:
| Calling it a rescue may or may not be accurate, but the replies
| to your comment show that it is at least open to discussion by
| people who presumably don't have a vested interest in the
| number of clicks on the article. That would mean that it's not
| really clickbait to call it this.
| rig666 wrote:
| Let's be honest. The mental gymnastics to avoid calling it a
| rescue is just a political knee jerk reaction to Elon Musk's
| ownership in SpaceX.
|
| If you lose your ability to become objective based on your view
| no amount of philosophical discourse is going to be meaningful.
| It's comments like this why "cope & seeth" has flourished in
| the modern lexicon
| Teever wrote:
| The government would be doing the exact same thing to avoid
| bad PR if this didn't involve him.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Accusing me of taking issue with Elon's ownership is funny,
| considering that usually I'm accused of being an Elon shill
| :)
| gertop wrote:
| Then maybe you're just a contrarian?
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Personally, that's a part of it. I might it find more
| tasteful if Shotwell and her team (the actual heroes) were
| ones getting the credit here, but Musk will get the
| headlines.
|
| But it's not a political knee jerk reaction. It's an actual
| jerk reaction to him being such an actual jerk. The guy, and
| his current cohot, are distateful wankers. Excuse my English.
| hayd wrote:
| Politicians should not, indeed in the US it can be illegal
| for government branches to, make decisions based on the
| political views of a vendor's CEO.
|
| Clearly the current administration have been doing this
| willy nilly. Excuse my English.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| what gives you the idea that Shotwell is more responsible
| for SpaceX's success than Musk?
| sunshinerag wrote:
| It is a rescue mission
| marcosvm wrote:
| Easy to say while we're safe down on Earth.
| exe34 wrote:
| could I ask, under what conditions would you consider it a
| rescue?
| elif wrote:
| When you have extremely limited supplies, are as isolated from
| humanity as possible, and there are only 2 vehicles capable of
| transporting you, and one of them is reigniting a cold war with
| you, you are considered imperiled. I'm sorry. If dragon did not
| exist, the rescue mission would still be embroiled in diplomacy
| and not in orbit already.
|
| You only get the luxury of your non-rescue position due to
| hindsight.
| ericpauley wrote:
| But dragon _does_ exist. This is like saying you're stranded
| when you're car camping in the woods.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Helicopters exist, but when one picks me up from my
| campsite in the woods, I'm probably being rescued.
| DLA wrote:
| It is a rescue mission. The original mission was supposed to be
| a couple weeks and that extended to nearly 8 months due to
| unrecoverable issues with Starliner. That's not a crew
| rotation, it's a major failure of Starliner. As for the escape
| option while docked, even a leaky boat is better than no boat
| if the ship is sinking, but the fact is NASA elected to not
| return the crew on Starliner for safety reasons.
| neverrroot wrote:
| Thank you Elon!
| electriclove wrote:
| SpaceX is pretty much America's space program at this point -
| absolutely incredible!
| neverrroot wrote:
| Kinda is, and it's all Elon's fault.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Kinda is, and it's all Elon's fault.
|
| Not sure what you mean by that. Are you suggesting that
| Elon/SpaceX sabotaged Boeing Starliner program? Because it
| seems pretty obvious that Boeing did that all on their own.
| neverrroot wrote:
| I mean to give Elon credit for being able to deliver a
| viable program where nobody else can.
| yarg wrote:
| Or perhaps blame Boeing and NASA, rather than the single
| competent organisation that's managing to hold the whole
| damned thing together.
| freedomben wrote:
| Why not both?
|
| I think it's both the incompetence of the incumbents, and
| the impressive work of SpaceX that got us to where we
| are. With the vast majority of companies, especially tech
| companies, I think the leadership gets far too much
| credit. In most organizations I have been a part of, they
| succeed in spite of the leadership, not because of it.
|
| In the case of SpaceX though, I am less sure. Reading the
| Walter Isaacson biography on Elon Musk was quite
| fascinating and illuminating about his leadership style.
| I would never work for him myself, but he does have some
| really fascinating philosophies.
| neverrroot wrote:
| I meant to give Elon credit for being able to deliver a
| viable program where nobody else can.
| justin66 wrote:
| Weird way of looking at it. Was Roscosmos "America's space
| program" when they were selling the rides?
| ls612 wrote:
| Currently SpaceX makes up 90% of _global_ launch mass in
| the past year. It may as well be the western world's space
| program pretty soon, with China and Russia only launching
| their own military payloads.
| justin66 wrote:
| What I was really driving at was that some are using the
| wrong definition of "space program." It's a good thing
| that space transportation is becoming a reliable service
| or utility, but that's something quite different than
| being the space program. If we came to think of launch as
| a very large part of what constitutes a space program,
| that's only because we allowed the costs of launch to
| become entirely too high, such that it dominated budgets.
| dylan604 wrote:
| No. They were just the rescue (to stay on theme) for
| America's space program.
| sneak wrote:
| 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 "boring" stuff at SpaceX
| happens despite Musk, not because of him. Ms. Shotwell's (the
| SpaceX COO) name doesn't come up nearly as often as his does,
| and I suspect she does at least an order of magnitude more work
| there.
|
| Indeed, several SpaceX staff wrote an open letter complaining
| about him and his antics being a distraction that hinders them.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/spacex-illegally...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Musk is pretty clear about the fact that Shotwell handles the
| 'boring' operational stuff, so, F9, FH, and very likely
| includes Starlink now. These have customer-related
| constraints, which Gwynne is much better at handling.
|
| Elon does decision making for the R&D programs, i.e.
| Starship, where his style works better.
| panick21_ wrote:
| In literally every thread about SpaceX people who don't like
| Musk (and sometimes others), people bring up Shotwell. Of
| course her name doesn't come up as often as Musk, Musk is
| literally one of the most famous people on earth, a highly
| controversial public figure and one of the richest people on
| the plant, who also owns and leads the company.
|
| For most other tech companies people done even know the Nr.2
| person in the company, and that includes companies much
| bigger then SpaceX. So if anything Shotwell comes up more
| often then literally any other Nr.2 person in a major tech
| company. I couldn't tell you the relevant people at Nvidia,
| or Google, or Microsoft.
|
| Also the letter was more about the external image, that Musk
| reflected on them. There was no actual argument in the later
| work inside SpaceX was slowed down because of it. And from
| the continued progress SpaceX has made before and after that,
| there is no evidence of that it actually did.
|
| But of course its also self evident that the CEO isn't doing
| 'boring day to day stuff', but neither is Shotwell.
| sneak wrote:
| The numbers 2-4 at Apple come up quite often, but "how
| annoying it is to work with Tim Cook" isn't a recurring
| thread, despite his also being one of the most famous,
| wealthy, and powerful people on Earth as well.
|
| Joel Spoksky's meeting with Bill Gates about Excel is
| famous lore in our circles as well, although I doubt
| Spolsky was ever even top 10 at Microsoft.
|
| Werner Vogels comes up fairly often, too.
| barfingclouds wrote:
| I've never heard of those people
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Imagine being so petty and filled with Elon derangement
| syndrome that you have to not only comment on his family but
| cast dispersions on his relationship with his children.
| Pathetic and speaks volumes on the person making the
| statement.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| > By the time they return, the pair will have logged more than
| eight months in space. They expected to be gone just a week when
| they signed up for Boeing's first astronaut flight that launched
| in June.
|
| What kind of overtime do you think they are clocking?
| chasd00 wrote:
| Heh I'd hate to be their families too. Sometimes I travel for
| work, if a week turned into 8 months it would be mayhem.
| aylmao wrote:
| The return flight will be in February too-- they'll be
| missing thanksgiving, and all the winter holidays oof
| dmix wrote:
| I'm sure they'll just be happy to have them back alive
| mp05 wrote:
| It's almost laughable how the general public tries to apply
| their own soft feelings to these people built for high-stakes
| work. None of these people are bothered by this and their
| families have become accustomed to this sort of thing and too
| obscenely full of pride to let their own emotions get in the
| way.
| zamadatix wrote:
| While I'm sure it can't be measured as a convenience from the
| family in any way you slice it I'm not sure one can compare
| the way they plan their and timing expectations around an
| orbital test flight to that of a standard work trip.
| fracus wrote:
| And wasn't the mission already on the schedule? The title says
| "launches mission for 2 astronauts.."
| largbae wrote:
| The original mission was to bring 4. Two astronauts got
| bumped to make room for the Starliner crew.
| dools wrote:
| And will that overtime take into account the effect of time
| dilation?!
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| They are probably salary, not hourly.
|
| I wonder if they astronauts are like the military where they
| get extra on deployment.
| lanewinfield wrote:
| Salary is set by the year, and with the calculated 6.7
| milliseconds of time dilation in the reverse direction
| (i.e. they will be 6.7ms younger when they arrive), sounds
| like they should be docked a cent or so.
| jamesjyu wrote:
| This brings up an interesting question of salary for
| near-lightspeed travel. Is it Earth's frame of reference,
| or the astronauts?
| dools wrote:
| You'll have to take that up with HR: Human Relativity.
| sobellian wrote:
| Naturally, a firm located in the local frame of reference
| has a comparative advantage when it comes to employment.
| Remote work just isn't viable when you can't even agree
| on simultaneity.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Dear sir
|
| Your packets are too blueshifted for my receiver to
| decode, please slow down.
| jamesjyu wrote:
| Time to deploy trusted AI managers to all reference
| frames.
| Majromax wrote:
| For an extensive discussion of similar issues, see Paul
| Krugman 1978, "The Theory of Interstellar Trade:"
| https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Maybe they could pay them in advance, and then put it in
| a safe growth account of some sort and by the time they
| get back they'll never have to work again? Win-win
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/boeing-starliner-saga-
| do-n... claims "[There's] no hazard pay, there's no
| overtime, there's no comp time". The top two threads on htt
| ps://www.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/1f0hi3o/how_do_astron..
| . a) suggest a government pay scale with hazard pay for
| NASA astronauts, b) point out that they are likely paid as
| active duty Navy members instead.
|
| On https://www.facebook.com/AstroClay/posts/do-astronauts-
| get-p... an astronaut (verified account of a NASA
| astronaut) mentions only a small per-diem.
|
| https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2264/do-
| astronauts... has a lengthy, but inconclusive discussion.
|
| ChatGPT 4o-mini generates a vague "it depends" answer with
| no useful sources or statements that could be used to
| follow up with actual sources.
|
| This is a question where I would have expected an
| authoritative answer to be easier to find. At least
| regarding your "like the military" statement, it seems like
| _some_ astronauts _are_ military, but what kind of extra
| pay they get seems to be hard to find.
| jajko wrote:
| There is some irreversible degradation happening in space to
| human body, discussed recently on similar topic here. If they
| have ie measurably messed up heart or eye sight they could
| potentially sue Boeing, maybe.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| How much do astronauts get paid anyways? According to chatGPT
| they don't get overtime pay though might receive bonuses for
| situations like this.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I think "rescue" is a little dramatic.
| Animats wrote:
| Do those guys get paid overtime?
| wildzzz wrote:
| They do get a per diem for incidentals but no overtime or any
| extra duty pay for being in space. This astronaut said it was
| only an extra $1.20/day. Meals and lodging are provided for so
| maybe that's deducted from the standard govt per diem.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=53939670306845...
| unit149 wrote:
| Starbase, TX is rapidly overtaking Cape Canaveral, FL. This
| "extended work opportunity" of sorts is being milked for maximum
| instrumental utility.
| antitoi wrote:
| what do you mean? crew-9 launched from the cape, like all
| crewed missions. in fact, it was the first crewed mission to
| launch from SCL-40 instead of the usual 39a.
| panick21_ wrote:
| This is facutally false. Starbase has no license to launch even
| 1/10 of the flights that are legal from the Cape. SpaceX just
| majorly invested into a second crew launch facility at the
| LC40. And SpaceX is building a Starship launch site at 39A.
| They have publicly stated that Starbase is for production and
| experimental development mostly. Please actually inform
| yourself before posting.
| emsign wrote:
| I thought Starbase was more for experimental launches. I don't
| follow every launch of SpaceX but the one's I saw where mostly
| of test vehicles.
| servbot wrote:
| So is this a reflection on Boeing engineering culture? Seems it
| would be, I remember comments from previous articles saying it
| is.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Bigger than that, legacy US defense contractors ARE the US
| Military / Space Force / etc.
|
| So IMO the golem whose values are being reflected in this
| failure / recovery from it is a US Government <> Commercial
| organism. And indirectly the United State's civilian population
| since the Government is formed (over centuries) to be a care-
| taker reflection of the civilian pop.
| dmix wrote:
| Yes mostly the idea that risk should be averted at all times
| by using the same few companies has fully captured US gov
| culture. And it's only gotten much worse since they seem to
| think China should be the model to copy because they dump
| money into pet megacorps there, even though it's still a very
| new concept that is far from proven sustainable in China
| itself. Not to mention they mostly coast off copying US
| innovation and preventing competition.
|
| But mostly the issue is employing it as a long term strategy,
| because it worked a few times in the last as a short term
| boost to newly ascendant orgs (ala NASA+space industry in the
| 1960s) before the Iron Rule of bureaucracy kicks in at all
| organizations involved, be they private or public.
| LeroyRaz wrote:
| 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 big deal. It comes with lots of health
| risks, and they are isolated from their loved ones. For example,
| they might be missing funerals for friends or family members,
| they might be missing milestones of their children, etc... etc...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| tw04 wrote:
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| tw04 wrote:
| Ignoring the fact that, again, the astronauts in question
| weren't in space for any appreciably longer time than
| anyone else on the ISS.
|
| They'll be too old to participate in the mars mission a
| minimum of a decade from now.
|
| You have literally no idea what the radiation exposure
| allowances will be for a manned mission to mars when it
| happens, or what advancements we'll make to radiation
| shielding should we ever actually send a manned mission
| to mars.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _You have literally no idea what the radiation exposure
| allowances will be for a manned mission to mars when it
| happens_
|
| These are well known and documented, to the degree we
| know things about human deep spaceflight.
|
| > _what advancements we'll make to radiation shielding
| should we ever actually send a manned mission to mars_
|
| These are unknown. But they will, barring new technology,
| require mass. Which means more shielding comes at a cost.
| Which incentivises low-rad experienced astronauts.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Neither Sunita, nor Butch are candidates for Artemis
| missions. They are both very experienced senior astronauts in
| their early 60s (kind of why they were chosen to be test
| pilots). This was likely to be one of their last trips to
| space as NASA astronauts regardless.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Fair enough. Didn't look at their profiles. Was generally
| pushing back on the notion that the ISS is an orbiting
| beach.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| aylmao wrote:
| > You can have more kids, but most people probably only get
| maximum one chance in their life to spend half a year in
| space
|
| That's not generally how having kids works haha. As you
| mentioned Sunita Williams has been to space five times. She's
| also 59 and the only information I found on kids is that she
| was looking to adopt a kid in 2012. It doesn't sound like
| she'll be having any more kids.
|
| > Sunita Williams (one of the two stranded) is up there for
| her fifth(!) trip to the ISS [...] I don't think she minds
| being in space, even if it's unplanned.
|
| Personally, I've been many times to New York. It's a very fun
| city. But if I booked a weeklong trip that against my will it
| became a yearlong one, I'd mind it.
|
| I also can't speak for Sunita Williams, just for me in this
| hypothetical NYC stranding. It could be a very fun year, for
| sure. I'd certainly try to make the most of it. But I'd mind
| it.
|
| [1] https://archive.ph/20130126165056/http://articles.timesof
| ind...
| philwelch wrote:
| > Personally, I've been many times to New York. It's a very
| fun city. But if I booked a weeklong trip that against my
| will it became a yearlong one, I'd mind it.
|
| You didn't spend years of your life and beat out 1,000
| other candidates just to earn the opportunity to visit New
| York. Your full time job does not primarily consist of
| preparing and training to go to New York. You don't get up
| every day and go to a job that earns a federal government
| salary when you could earn twice as much in the private
| sector because that's the only way you can achieve your
| childhood dream of occasionally visiting New York. You
| certainly didn't volunteer to take a test flight on a
| vehicle that could very plausibly catastrophically fail and
| kill you because that was the only way you'd ever be able
| to go to New York again. And if you did get stuck in New
| York, you probably wouldn't become mayor.
| philwelch wrote:
| Millions of people have "become an astronaut" as their
| childhood dream. Less than one in a thousand people who apply
| to astronaut selection actually become astronauts. And then
| they have to wait years to actually go to space. I don't know
| why anybody would go through all of that if they didn't really
| want to go to space. And while everyone else is either getting
| full ISS rotations or planned to fly to the moon, Butch and
| Suni have been assigned to an eight day test flight that's been
| repeatedly delayed for years. It's arguably the worst
| assignment you can get these days other than no assignment at
| all (and to be fair, it's also not the first assignment for
| either of them). I'm sure they would have preferred if their
| six month stay on the ISS was planned as such ahead of time,
| but spending six months on the ISS is the normal mission that
| everyone else gets anyway--and it's not like a normal ISS
| flight is scheduled for the personal convenience of the
| astronauts assigned to it, either.
|
| Yeah, they don't have a choice now that they're in space, but
| if you're an astronaut you can also just retire and make a lot
| more money in the private sector if you don't really want to go
| to space again, and I think that it's a pretty slim chance that
| a veteran astronaut would stick around and devote years of
| their career to an eight day flight test but would be really
| unhappy about being "stuck" on ISS for an otherwise normal
| rotation period.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Is there a good link for the unexpected science these two have
| been doing and will do?
| freedomben wrote:
| A fellow Star Trek fan?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I am, but I'm missing the reference?
| freedomben wrote:
| Typically anytime someone gets lost or diverted or
| something else, they are eager to gather information and do
| as much science as possible. Some large themes (like most
| of Voyager) and some smaller ones like when individuals are
| stranded on planets, end up being much about the scientific
| opportunities. Mainly the attitude of looking at a
| situation like this as an opportunity for science both
| resonates with me and reminds me of the optimism of Star
| Trek :-)
| jessriedel wrote:
| Yea NASA does not do a great job explaining what science is
| happening on the ISS You could maybe start here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Crew_Flight_Test#ISS_st...
|
| > On 10 June, with all their initial Starliner testing
| completed, the CFT crew started working on general ISS
| maintenance and research activities. They started their day by
| measuring their temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and
| respiratory rate. Later, Wilmore worked on the maintenance of a
| computer connected to the Microgravity Science Glovebox, while
| Williams installed hardware to support a space fire
| investigation. On 11 June, the astronauts spent their time on
| biomedical activities, with Wilmore organizing the inventory of
| the Human Research Facility, and Williams working on procedures
| to collect microbe samples and sequence their genes. On 12
| June, Wilmore checked cargo in the Harmony module and worked on
| maintenance of the station's bathroom, while Williams continued
| her gene sequencing work from the day before.[65]
|
| > On 17 June, Williams worked on maintenance tasks and prepared
| the Advanced Plant Habitat for future experiments, and on 18
| June she continued working on the gene sequencing study from
| the prior week. Meanwhile, Wilmore spent the two days working
| on a study of the behavior of flowing liquids in space.[69][70]
|
| > NASA said that since their arrival on 6 June, Wilmore and
| Williams have been tasked with completing half of all hands-on
| research time conducted aboard the ISS, giving their crewmates
| more time to prepare for the departure of Northrop Grumman's
| Cygnus NG-20 spacecraft.[71]
|
| (As you probably know, it's a bit misleading to say that
| Astronauts are doing science on the ISS. For the most part they
| are brilliant, expensive, and highly trained lab technicians
| who prep and repair equipment and then hit the "go" button for
| experiments that were designed by, and will be analyzed by,
| scientists on Earth.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they are brilliant, expensive, and highly trained lab
| technicians who prep and repair equipment and then hit the
| "go" button for experiments that were designed by, and will
| be analyzed by, scientists on Earth_
|
| True. I was just curious if having two extra pairs of hands
| was letting new experiments be done, or existing ones be done
| more thoroughly.
| natch wrote:
| Was the title edited after the fact by mods?
|
| The original title has the word "rescue."
|
| The top comment is questioning the use of this word.
|
| It seems likely that when the story originally appeared on HN, it
| had the accurate title reflecting the title of the article. Thus
| the comment from dotnet00, which I'm neutral on. But then, it
| would appear, the title was altered, to dampen a controversy? Is
| this how things are done around here? Anyone know more?
| mlyle wrote:
| They regularly tamp down on sensationalist headlines.
| AdamN wrote:
| I'd prefer they just block articles that use sensationalist
| headlines (when possible without blocking the entire topic).
| make3 wrote:
| they changed it to match the title of the article itself
| from AP, not to tamp it down necessarily. This is what they
| actually usually do.
| mlyle wrote:
| > they changed it to match the title of the article
| itself from AP
|
| No-- AP: SpaceX launches rescue
| mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck in space
| until next year Original HN title: SpaceX
| launches rescue mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are
| stuck on the ISS Current HN title:
| SpaceX launches mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are
| stuck on the ISS
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i prefer the current approach especially when comments are
| already attached
| dang wrote:
| Many good and substantive articles have sensationalist
| headlines, so that wouldn't work.
|
| Particularly at large publications, headlines are written
| by specialists in sensationalism (https://hn.algolia.com/?d
| ateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
| afh1 wrote:
| Is that even possible to do in an unbiased way?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I would think it's not. I've also never once seen dang
| claim that the moderation team do their job without bias.
| Indeed, I suspect he'd even go as far as to say that the
| primary purpose of moderation is to promote a certain bias.
|
| That said, it's also very easy to see what HN's intended
| bias is since the publish it; it's explained in the "on-
| topic" and "off-topic" paragraphs at the top of the
| guidelines page.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't think they've ever claimed to be unbiased. They
| want shorter headlines with less sensationalism. That's a
| bias.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| It was definitely changed.
| dang wrote:
| > Is this how things are done around here?
|
| Yes. Often I add a comment (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=a
| ll&page=0&prefix=true&que...), but this time I didn't.
|
| When a single word starts sucking most of the thread's
| attention and leading to acrimonious nitpickery, it's an easy
| call to take that word out of the title.
|
| Striving for accurate and neutral titles is one of the best
| established principles of HN moderation (https://hn.algolia.com
| /?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It has a huge
| influence on discussion quality.
|
| In the present case, for example, it behooves us all to learn
| about the real situation that is actually happening, rather
| than arguing about whether or not it deserves the term
| 'rescue', a semantic dispute which seems correlated with
| people's priors on the most divisive associations (e.g. the
| Elonian Dimension) and is therefore mostly a proxy for a
| repetitive and tedious argument.
| natch wrote:
| Thank you for explaining that! Seems a tough call doing that
| versus flagging the root comment of the acrimony, but maybe
| that alternate approach would have a bigger (too big) cost in
| disruption once there is such a small continent of comments
| built out under the top comment.
| dang wrote:
| We can do that too, or at least mark the low-quality
| subthreads offtopic (which downranks them). But if we don't
| take the provocation out of the title, it'll only generate
| more of the same.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I declined a job offer from Boeing recently because they can't
| execute anymore. Complete clown show run by accountants.
| ncr100 wrote:
| +1 (not me) opened job, interviewed, withdrew job, months
| later, re-opened job.
|
| Illustrated that the hiring people were just fine, but the
| larger Organization was, in this case, disorganized.
| blowsand wrote:
| I've nothing substantive to add, but I note that the logic
| gymnastics on display in comments from all perspectives is
| somehow telling. Of something. Not sure what.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's just more evidence of the corrosive effect that injecting
| politics into everywhere has had, especially intersectional
| politics where unrelated domains are pushed to influence each
| other for political or ideological reasons in unrelated
| domains.
| grecy wrote:
| Space man Elon bad.
| colechristensen wrote:
| In a mildly embarrassing note for Boeing, astronauts to return
| on spacex dragon.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's HN, arguing about semantics is what people _do_ :)
|
| If the half page of arguing by analogies to holidays about what
| is and isn't a rescue feels like an unwarranted response to a
| headline, the comments insisting the only reason people could
| consider labelling accommodating them on the next scheduled
| return flight a 'rescue mission' overly dramatic is deep love
| for Boeing or deep hatred for Elon's politics are _wild_.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Awkwardness could be a sign of conflicting values at play. And
| a desire to find an accepted homogeneous mindset.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| HN is leftie programmer sock space but loves tech and there is
| no denying the SpaceX and Starlink tech is good, but Elon is a
| trumpie so there is a dissonance where certain people cannot
| admit this or their whole world-view crashes so it is easier to
| say "Elon bad!!" or downplay that this is an emergency rescue
| mission as seen.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And Elon and his companies were lauded here before his
| politics became well known. Brandon Eich is another example
| of the phenomenon.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Elon's politics changed after he snapped when confronted
| with some life changing stuff.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Is the "life changing stuff" the fact that the US gov't
| was moderating Twitter and suppressing speech that was
| unfavorable to their narrative?
| wredue wrote:
| Pretending politics is the only reason people turned on Elon
| is kinda hilarious. The dude has been behaving utterly
| unhinged.
|
| All that aside, buying a social media platform for the
| express purpose of influencing elections is most likely not
| going to win you any favours.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| > buying a social media platform for the express purpose of
| influencing elections is most likely not going to win you
| any favours.
|
| The irony is that was going on before he bought Twitter.
| Stopping it may have been the reason he bought it.
|
| We know Twitter at the behest of the US gov't censored the
| Hunter Biden laptop story but allowed speech that wrongly
| claimed it was "Russian disinformation". That could be
| considered election interference because it was a major
| scandal for the Democrats.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Also, many people will always hate the richest man in the
| world.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Those people didn't seem to care before he bought Twitter.
| jbkkd wrote:
| What's the suit situation here? Did SpaceX make two new suits for
| them to use on the way back, or are they using their Boeing suits
| to fly back?
|
| I'd imagine the former, but genuinely curious this time.
| chainingsolid wrote:
| I believe new suits where made/available somehow. The SpaceX
| and Boeing suits are not compatible with the others space
| craft.
| jbkkd wrote:
| Found the answer:
|
| > Stich said there is a space suit already on the ISS that
| one of the astronauts can use for the return trip, and the
| Crew 9 mission will bring another suit.
|
| https://fortune.com/2024/08/24/boeing-starliner-
| astronauts-n...
| mab122 wrote:
| They should be! Have we not learned anything from Apollo? :D
| Or atleast provision an adapter or something.
| nycdotnet wrote:
| The goal of two commercial vehicles was dissimilar
| redundancy. But yeah this should be worked on in the not
| too distant future.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Not sure how soon if ever Boeing is going to be putting
| astronauts in space again. I see Blue Origin stepping up
| and taking their place. Agreed though, should be a set of
| compatible standards for space suits.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Normally I would disagree with you, but Boeing is facing
| death by a thousand cuts right now. I could see the US
| government not letting them fail however. So I'd give it
| 50/50, not 100% no-fly-again
| dmix wrote:
| Boeing and gov employed sunk cost fallacy. Even if they
| do cancel it they'll just restart the same project in
| 5yrs for twice the cost and a new name
| xenospn wrote:
| Makes for a fantastic story tho.
|
| "Did I ever tell you about that time I was stuck in space for
| eight whole months? No?"
| perihelions wrote:
| There was an anomaly in the second stage deorbit burn (which did
| not impact the payload). Falcon is apparently grounded.
|
| https://www.space.com/spacex-pause-launches-crew-9-falcon-9-... (
| _" SpaceX pausing launches to study Falcon 9 issue on Crew-9
| astronaut mission"_)
|
| - _" After today's successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9's second
| stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an
| off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely
| landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will
| resume launching after we better understand root cause"_
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| FAA pedantry will tell you they are not ground, they merely may
| not have a license to fly more missions.
|
| Also, it's unclear yet whether the FAA has pulled the license -
| SpaceX has potentially paused voluntarily.
| schiffern wrote:
| For anyone out of the loop, the aforementioned FAA pedantry:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TobeGL4Ma8&t=80
| rvnx wrote:
| "the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of
| the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better
| understand root cause"
|
| reality: "It crashed somewhere in the ocean, we don't know why
| but we pretend it was safe, though we just got lucky"
| schiffern wrote:
| Is it "luck" if you intentionally chose a place smack in the
| middle of nowhere, such that even an off-nominal reentry will
| overwhelmingly occur in an extremely sparsely populated area
| (ie the middle of the ocean)?
|
| Sounds like planning, not luck.
| deepsun wrote:
| Landing area is one thing, but more important and dangerous
| is reentry profile. Too steep, and the capsule melts down
| or crew inside becomes very flat from the deceleration.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are no humans on the second stage reentry. It burns
| up.
| HPsquared wrote:
| This isn't the capsule; it's the second stage.
| perihelions wrote:
| Uncontrolled reentry has been the norm for most of the space
| age (and is still standard practice for the Chinese, and
| their boosters). The far more important issue is that this a
| human-rated booster, and an unidentified defect impacts the
| safety of crew launches. This issue showed up on a de-orbit
| burn, but it's unlikely to be limited in scope to de-orbits
| only.
|
| edit: Turns out this isn't accurate; it's still actually
| normal for US rocket *upper stages* to do uncontrolled
| reentries [0]. This is a subject of ongoing FAA rulemaking
| [1]. The Chinese examples are still exceptional because they
| involve far larger first-stage/core-stage boosters (>50
| meters in length).
|
| edit 2: If anyone was curious about the Europeans, the answer
| is that Ariane 5/ECA has actually *never* done a controlled
| upper-stage deorbit, because its LH2/LOX engine isn't
| designed to be able to ignite twice (deorbit burns are
| excluded)[2].
|
| [0] https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/osisite/wp-
| content/uploads/OS... ( _" Uncontrolled reentries are
| currently used for 35% of U.S. missions (62% if we exclude
| SpaceX)"_) (as of 2023?)
|
| [1] https://spacenews.com/new-upper-stage-disposal-rules-
| help-no...
|
| [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00
| 945... ( _" it is not possible to perform a controlled
| reentry of the Upper Composite"_)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| with the scale of the planet, it would be more like really
| unlucky if it actually hit someone
| api wrote:
| All rockets before Falcon always crashed in the ocean.
| perihelions wrote:
| There's a nuance here: non-SpaceX rocket *first*-stages
| typically fall into the ocean, but they do that within
| controlled exclusion zones, which are notified and
| restricted for air- and marine- traffic. *Upper*-stages are
| a different beast. Most (see my sibling comment) deorbit
| uncontrollably and impact somewhere at random.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| If something happens to Dragon (non-zero chance) they are going
| to regret not coming back on Boeing's space-Yugo.
| luuurker wrote:
| They would also regret if something went wrong while
| returning on a Starliner that everyone knew wasn't working as
| it should. Returning on a Dragon was the safest choice
| available.
| foxyv wrote:
| For those not familiar with the launch profile of the Falcon 9,
| the second stage de-orbit burn occurs after the crew/service
| module separates from the second stage.
| DylanSp wrote:
| Separate from everything else, I'm glad the first crewed launch
| from SLC-40 went smoothly. Being able to use that pad for Crew
| Dragon launches provides some helpful flexibility for important
| Falcon Heavy launches at LC-39A.
| api wrote:
| Bill should be sent to Boeing.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Over 50 years ago we got people to the moon and back, now we
| can't even easily get 2 people out of orbit :/
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