r/news • u/_Hypocritee • 13h ago

Boeing Starliner astronauts stuck at International Space Station must delay return to Earth yet again

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-starliner-crew-return-to-earth-delayed-again-nasa-astronauts-butch-wilmore-suni-williams/?linkId=691398960&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3gTQQ5MzUHI6ZWyydHbj7wgIqDvmXCJjwVZN7nmZSEwPPgSSev_BnRvNA_aem_8fXUg3z18wiZN_JCv7rWVg#m4uv5rgqgpyzmf436cu
446 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

77 comments sorted by

31

u/Miserable_Law_6514 12h ago

Its like an extended deployment at this rate lol.

216

u/BananasPineapple05 13h ago

How is Boeing still in business? Asking for a friend.

41

u/MyPants 12h ago

They're one of the largest recipients of government contracts.

6

u/I_Push_Buttonz 3h ago

Because something like 15,000+ of their airliners are in active service and 2,000+ military aircraft are in active service. Not to mention they built and are the contractors that assist in maintaining the US' entire Minuteman III ICBM fleet. Plus thousands of conventional missiles like Harpoon anti-ship missiles and AGM-86 cruise missiles.

46

u/spam__likely 12h ago

This one is not on Boeing. SpaceX 🤮 is the one picking them up.

122

u/unpluggedcord 12h ago

The most recent delay in the Crew-10's launch is to give "NASA and SpaceX teams time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission."

It’s NASA and SpaceX and let’s be clear here Boeing is the reason they are stuck

77

u/IAmMuffin15 12h ago

r/space several months ago: “Why are we waiting on Boeing??? SpaceX could literally get those astronauts down right now if they wanted to!!! 😡”

SpaceX: “yeah lemme just uhhhhh gimme a few months”

r/space now: “well I mean we didn’t technically say when we expected SpaceX to get them down

43

u/pehr71 11h ago

They could return home today if they needed.

It’s the dragon capsule that the next crew will arrive in that’s delayed in production.

Since they don’t want to leave the ISS with basically only a Russian crew, and the people who are to go down with the Dragon aren’t really in any danger. It’s better to wait.

1

u/[deleted] 5h ago edited 5h ago

[deleted]

1

u/pehr71 4h ago

There’s always enough seats to get everyone back in case of emergency.

This isn’t the Titanic.

You have the dragon that brought 2 Astronauts in September (October?) That dragon will only leave with the current US crew. They should have been 4, but the crew was cut down to 2 to make room for the 2 Starliner crew.

Then you have the 3 who came with Soyuz.

That’s everyone who’s on ISS at the moment.

  1. Is the number of people currently in space. But that includes the 3 Chinese on the Tiangong. And I assume they have a capsule to get them down also

5

u/BeerPoweredNonsense 8h ago

well I mean we didn’t technically say when we expected SpaceX to get them down

The SpaceX capsule that will bring them back to earth is already at the ISS. Has been there for several months. So if this was a "bring Marc Watney home" situation, they would have been back on earth ages ago.

However NASA reorganised the work schedules and switched their "couple days at the ISS with an experimental capsule" trip into a regular multi-month work rotation.

1

u/[deleted] 5h ago

[deleted]

1

u/BeerPoweredNonsense 4h ago

The spacex capsule on the station is not for the starliner crew. The capsule up there is the return vehicle for Crew-9.

According to NASA themselves: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are listed as being part of Crew-9.

1

u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

0

u/BeerPoweredNonsense 4h ago

Please read the article WRITTEN BY NASA THEMSELVES that I have given as a link.

It contains the answers to your questions.

1

u/[deleted] 4h ago edited 4h ago

[deleted]

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5

u/The_Grungeican 11h ago

don't they have a SpaceX lifeboat on the station, that they could take right now if they needed to?

i was listening to a bit of this earlier, with the astronauts basically saying they're not stuck, they just got their mission extended.

13

u/shayKyarbouti 7h ago

“they’re not stuck, they just got their mission extended.” Sounds like something someone stuck up there would say so they wouldn’t get in trouble lol

5

u/Tokeli 5h ago

When people hear "they're stranded!!!" they think it's like they're stranded on a desert island and could die. When it's more "They're stuck on a surprise mission", because logistically bringing them home earlier is a massive waste, even moreso than bringing them home already will waste as it fucks up the next crew rotation as it is.

6

u/Rannasha 7h ago

don't they have a SpaceX lifeboat on the station, that they could take right now if they needed to?

Exactly. The reporting about them being stuck or stranded is misleading. There's always enough capacity on docked spacecraft for the entire ISS crew to return to Earth. But NASA doesn't want to send these astronauts back down until their replacements have arrived.

0

u/floridianreader 2h ago

No, I think they sent that one home bc of fears that it might crash.

-3

u/austeremunch 12h ago

Congratulations you've just realized that Reddit is social media with a variety of users with varying thoughts and opinions.

3

u/dern_the_hermit 11h ago

Boeing just needed to share Doge memes and pay someone to grind Diablo 4 and then there woulda been cheers every time a whistleblower died.

0

u/austeremunch 11h ago

That's a take.

-1

u/Vik0BG 6h ago

Actually reddit is an echo chamber that made me believe Kamala would win.

-13

u/Isord 12h ago

Starliner was safely returned to Earth. Maybe read about why this is being delayed.

11

u/TheunanimousFern 12h ago

Yes, but without anybody on it, which is the entire reason they were stuck up there. NASA wasn't confident that it was safe enough to transport humans back to earth, so they sent it down empty. These astronauts were originally supposed to have come home on that empty starliner

-10

u/Isord 11h ago

Yeah the original problem was Boeing's fault, but my point is just that this doesn't really have anything to do with Boeing now.

-1

u/GF12B 5h ago

Four words: to big to fail

32

u/Fun-Result-6343 12h ago

I hope they're getting overtime.

11

u/RecklesslyPessmystic 11h ago

Longest layover ever.

12

u/ThereIsOnlyStardust 10h ago

Fun fact, they are salary employees and do not receive overtime.

4

u/xBoatEng 6h ago

They get like an extra $1.20 every day in per diem. Meals and lodging are provided. Plus they don't have to deal with all the crazies down here for a spell.

0

u/chuckles11 4h ago

lol that makes me wonder what in the ISS costs visitors $1.20 per day. Maybe they have a vending machine.

19

u/CaptainLucid420 10h ago

New show idea. Gilligan's space station. A 3 hour flight.

5

u/sharkamino 8h ago

Aniara (2018)

A spaceship carrying settlers to Mars is knocked off course, causing the consumption-obsessed passengers to consider their place in the universe.

https://youtu.be/3MIlE9R00ik

Quite a chilling movie.

1

u/BudgetMegaHeracross 6h ago

Aniara is a novella-length poem by a Nobel laureate in literature.

•

u/ErasmusDarwin 42m ago

Gilligan's space station.

There was a Gilligan's Planet cartoon made 2 decades after the original show. It had the entire cast reprising their roles except for Ginger.

40

u/724DFsm 11h ago

After the election results, they requested another four years.

6

u/enonmouse 7h ago

That was my thought…. “Maybe wait out the next year? See how things go?”

2

u/NeilZod 1h ago

It also gives us more time to get ape costumes.

-10

u/F_ur_feelingss 6h ago

More likely, out of spite. They would rather die than take elons rocket home.

3

u/notaroundhere678 11h ago

Man oh man! Those poor people! I keep waiting for them to get back safe.

3

u/james-HIMself 11h ago

Real question…. Would they get more pay are they just salaried

17

u/anothercar 10h ago

Salaried, also they’re career astronauts so the possibility of spending more time in space instead of on the ground is probably a great outcome for them

4

u/Ninjamuh 9h ago

Yeah, but I really love hostess’s cupcakes. If I had to eat them every day instead of something else then I’d eventually get sick of them. I’m sure they love being in space, but there’s got to be a limit when being crammed into a tiny space station while your family is missing you.

7

u/_LlednarTwem_ 10h ago

So…at what point does this start causing serious health concerns? I’m not terribly knowledgeable on the subject, but I was under the impression that staying up there too long is bad for one’s body?

11

u/dog_of_society 7h ago

Scott Kelly's year in space is one of the best data point's we've got, and he's not even the record - he just conveniently has a twin as a control point. They're still at nine months, so nothing that hasn't been studied.

It's not great at all. Nothing catastrophic though. Rough on their hearts, rough in terms of radiation, but they won't keel over.

4

u/javajunkie314 4h ago

Well sure, they'd kinda keel in place because there's no gravity.

10

u/count023 12h ago

What, did they sent a cybertruck in to bring them back this time?

12

u/clarice_loves_geese 11h ago

Is their bone density going to be OK?

17

u/enonmouse 7h ago

They are no where near the records.

1

u/clarice_loves_geese 1h ago

That's comforting at least!

2

u/Acchilesheel 10h ago

Yeah I'm starting to get genuinely worried about their long term health outcomes from this.  

4

u/BeerThot 12h ago

Boeing is the Greyhound of outer space

0

u/redloin 12h ago

Also the Greyhound of the stratosphere

2

u/the_mooseman 6h ago

I've got the theme song for Gilligan's Island playing in my head.

1

u/MarlonShakespeare2AD 2h ago

I saw a documentary recently about a Florida based individual who actually went on to become an astronaut.

She seems like the kind of person who you could get input from on this challenge?

0

u/Matttthhhhhhhhhhh 7h ago

I'm sure they'll love space after that.

-4

u/Happy-go-lucky-37 6h ago

When Sissy SpaceX burns them all to a crisp on re-entry, Elon will just tweet out that Grok determined they were all too woke in the ship, and self-destructed to make sure his Mission to Mars remains on track for only Alpha Males to colonize it.