- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Credits to: @[email protected]
EDIT: they’ve changed the article’s original title :(
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Jesus Christ, the astronauts aren’t stranded. The first manned flight of a new vehicle and there were some issues on the part that gets jettisoned and burned up, so they can’t inspect it afterwards. They’re trying to analyze it while they have it, and even with the leak they could be to there a month with no issue.
Boeing deserves the bad press they’re getting on the planes lately, but this is crap.
As Business Insider previously reported, helium supports Starlink’s reaction control system thrusters, which allows them to fire.
Can’t even get the spacecraft’s name straight
Ha! I didn’t even notice that.
Starlink, Starship, Starliner… who can keep them straight?
/s
This comes up on every one of these articles. The astronauts are in no way stranded.
There’s a common sense operating rule on the station: every person on board ISS must have a dedicated seat in a ride home that is ready to undock and leave within 30 minutes notice.
Right now, the Starliner capsule is certified and ready for that role for the two test pilots. The crew dragon and soyuz are docked to handle the rest of the station crew.
Earlier today there was an emergency shelter event on the station when some debris got unusually close. In this type of event all crew evacuate to the escape spacecraft and close hatches. So if something does hit the station, it’s less likely someone gets hurt during a depressurization.
Starliner served as an emergency shelter for this exercise, because it is certified for emergency reentry, and the five identified helium leaks are not close to preventing it from returning safely.
To get from ISS to a landing site requires no more than 5 hours of RCS operation. There is plenty of margin in the helium system to cover 5 hours.
No commentary on the fact that they launched them with a helium leak in the first place? Seriously? They found the problem and scrubbed a launch, only to go forward with it when they couldn’t figure it out. WTF man.
Now the helium leak is worse, and you’re just gonna give them a pass.
They scrubbed, investigated, found it was acceptable, launched, and discovered previously unknown issues. The original leak isn’t getting worse, they discovered more, smaller leaks, that still don’t pose a danger to the mission.
Discovering the cause of the 5 RCS thrusters shutting down with only 4 of them being able to restart is the current focus of things, because the spacecraft is no where near running out of helium.
It’s all still within the scope of this test flight’s objectives, so they technically aren’t wrong to say things are going well even when they’ve found issues.
Probably the reason why they changed that original headline, but it’s hilarious regardless
well, it’s, uh, still in space, so it’s doing well. Can you imagine if it stopped being, in, uh, space? that’d be problematic.
Emergancy Mars landing it is!
If I was a Boeing shareholder, I would be mad as a wet hen right about now. Amid a string of phenomenally bad business decisions that culminated in the flying [sorta] tin can that is the 737 MAX, Boeing is handed an aerospace companies PR wet dream: transporting astronauts to the International Space Station. They then proceeded to drop that softball so hard that the thud could probably be heard from Mars.
Its like a corpo version of Space Force. I’d watch it
I wish I could remember the film this reminds me of. I thought it was Jodie Foster, but after reviewing her movies, it isn’t.
Gravity (2013)?
Yes! It was a good movie, too. I need to rewatch that. Sandy doesn’t look like Jodie, I guess my brain just thought drama= Foster.
Thanks so much!
Well yeah. They were making look Boeing look bad. No longer a problem.
/s
I wonder how they will spin it if the crew gets fried at re-entry - whenever this may be…
