I finally got fed up:
OK, so I'm getting really, really tired of listening to the abject ignorance and obtuseness from @JesseBWatters and @greggutfeld, at @TheFive who are normally smart people, about astronauts, the ISS, and NASA. No, Elon didn't "rescue" them yesterday. If he "rescued" them at all,…
— Not-So-OK Boomer (@Rand_Simberg) March 20, 2025
Thank you for posting this. It has gotten tiresome to see people who I thought were smart to keep uncritically spewing this crap. And it came not just from the MAGA-heads, as I’ve seen a UPI report, for example, with the same wrong information.
So where were the so-called “fact checkers” when Trump made the original rescue comments? Why didn’t they leap onto a perfect opportunity to point out how he was getting it wrong, and do what you just did by setting out the facts of the situation? (In other words, why didn’t they do their self-appointed job? Lack of knowledge about the subject?)
(Note also that for a few weeks between the return of the Boeing craft and the launch of the SpaceX craft, we had two astronauts on the station with no way to return. Given how risk adverse NASA is, I was surprised they let that happen.)
Pity NASA decided Dragon only need 4 seats. It was originally designed for seven.
My guess is NASA decided four crew plus some cargo was better than being able to carry seven. Had they sent seven astronauts to the ISS as part of normal crew rotation, that would have increased training costs for the extra astronauts plus significantly increased the consumables needed to support ten crew instead of seven.
The pity is that transportation is so expensive that these decisions had to be made in the first place. If a crew taxi could have been launched and recovered for ~$5M or so. they could have come home whenever. It would have been a blip on the screen and barely noticed in the larger scheme of things.
Sometime in the next couple of decades single digit millions (or less) will become the norm for this size mission.
I agree. Do I think NASA delayed the return? Yes. But what is/was the political capital to be gained by the White House for the delay? I can’t think of any. It was a budget issue. Could SpaceX recovered them earlier with a Dragon and for a low price? Yes. Is there political capital to gain for making that public? Yes.
I always thought NASA had procedures for bringing home astronauts in a litter/prone type situation. I guess that’s not true.