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
[Saturday-morning update]
Jim Meigs has a similar take to mine.
[Bumped]
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.)
Yes. I confess I was too quick to believe the spin. A lesson for me.
They had an improvised way they could have come back in the Dragon that was there.
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.
Stephen Clark did an article on design changes to Dragon back in 2019 that clarified why Dragon went from 7 seats down to 4:
After SpaceX had already designed the interior layout of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, NASA decided to change the specification for the angle of the ship’s seats due to concerns about the g-forces crew members might experience during splashdown.
The change meant SpaceX had to do away with the company’s original seven-seat design for the Crew Dragon.
“With this change and the angle of the seats, we could not get seven anymore,” Shotwell said. “So now we only have four seats. That was kind of a big change for us.”
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/12/07/after-redesigns-the-finish-line-is-in-sight-for-spacexs-crew-dragon/
So they had a specific, safety-related reason for it. It is also true, though, that NASA had not been planning on using all 7 of the seats anyway, since the life support system on ISS could not support that large of a crew (that is, a total of 10 astronauts — 7 on the US segment, 3 on the Russian) on a permanent basis. So NASA presumably did not feel they were even giving anything up when they asked SpaceX to rework the seat configuration for lower g-loads.
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.
The political calculus at the time is that it would have made Musk look good at a time when all of the Democrat power structure from government, to courts, to activists were attacking him.
The budget part is rational but pretty hard to deny that there also couldn’t have been a political motive.
Just fyi, the prone landing config was for the Shuttle and ended with it.
Whenever it happend, it’s the first rescue from space that has been accomplished.
Yay, SAR!
I think that all you guys in the space biz may be right in the technical sense, but are completely out to lunch on the political optics. The way NASA handled the original fumble by Boeing on Starliner looked like amateur hour. Combine that with the obvious “ordering to volunteer” addition of Butch and Suni to Crew 9 and you have what looks to the public as a very smelly operation. With a little effort, not rising to Apollo 13 or The Martian heroics, SpaceX, NASA and the partners could have vastly improved their political position by expediting Butch and Suni’s return. The cost would have been tiny compared to the typical USAID grant and the Biden administration would have come out smelling like roses. Remember, no bucks, no Buck Rogers. Just look at the interest from the public in the “rescue” mission! How long has it been since people cared this much about the space program?
I agree. It was incredibly bad optics.
And the cost of the additional flight Musk offered was equivalent to what the Biden administration was willing to spend on any of its pet woke projects without a second of thought.
” unless NASA paid for an EXTRA (unbudgeted) flight of another Dragon (which is what Elon offered, because he LIKES selling flights to NASA, because it brings in revenue for SpaceX (and generally saves NASA and the taxpayers’ money because he’s always the lower bidder).”
For this to be true, Biden, NASA, and congress would have to be people who are concerned about money. It sounds rational but doesn’t match up to reality very well. For one reason, why did no one get Boeing to pay for the return trip? A true concern about cost and budgets would mean holding Boeing accountable.
Space aficionados think going to space would be awesome, how could anyone turn down the offer? But I’ve met former employees of NASA who didn’t care anything at all for space, it was just a job. I am sure the two astronauts liked being up there for more than a short visit but also not being up there so long and their families probably hated it. No birthdays, Christmases, getting yelled at for not mowing the lawn, whatever. It is important to imagine the POV of the people involved and not just project our dreams and aspirations onto the situation.
I think there were political considerations combined with thinking it was just too much effort. Doing something like this on short notice would tax the collective bandwidth. Doing nothing was the easiest course of action with the added benefit of not making Musk look good at a time when there was an all of society approach to damaging his companies and making him look bad.
It likely would’ve cost at least $200 million to fly a rescue mission. Elon could probably find that much under his sofa cushions, but I don’t know if that would be legal. Government acquisition regulations might not allow it. While Crew Dragon can perform the mission autonomously, I doubt NASA would allow a mission to carry people without a trained crewman member on board. They could launch a Crew Dragon with 1 or 2 trained astronauts.
Elon says he offered to make it financially neutral for NASA’s FY2024 budget, (presumably so that NASA HQ would not have to go to the Hill for a special appropriation). Not sure how that was supposed to work, short of him just not sending NASA a bill until the spring or whatever. Presumably that could be passable under procurement regulations in a way that a freebee would not be.
Sounds like a lot of work
Could have sent up a Crew Dragon packed with cargo along with the extra spacesuits to bring them down, in place of a regular Cargo Dragon run, so zero extra cost. Crew Dragon does not require a crew and has flown empty in the past.
All this overthinking gives me a headache. NASA integrated the stranded astronauts return into their schedule and didn’t bust the budget doing so. No big deal. Move on…
Trump & Elon make noise all the time I don’t pay attention to…
That perfectly explains the thinking of NASA and the White House, but it comes off as petty and heartless. That’s why they lose.
Probably a mistake not listening to Trump and Musk “noise.” Because are you sur it’s noise, not signal. Perhaps you’re competent to judge. I’m not.
Design for 7 seats, routinely fly with 4 with provision for adding extra seats if required.
NASA failure of planning.
There is no way to add additional seats. It’s a safety issue as noted above.
The launch coverage I saw was absolutely astounding; they said the Dragon was heading for the space station to rescue the stranded astronauts.
Considering that Dragon is still at ISS right now, I was in awe of the uselessness of the “reporters”.
Reminds me of the loss of Columbia. I’ll never forget the “reporting”, repeated, several times, that Columbia had been traveling at 17 times the speed of light.
When I had a press pass to STS 1, I was astounded at the ignorance on display.
They were there, now they’re back.
So much noise over nothing.
Truly distressed, they could have spaced themselves any time.
They could have just locked themselves in the Russian segment and been slowly out-gassed while they wrote their “Damn you, you f’n apes” missives.
Might be interesting to know if there have since been any considerations to be better prepared (if not the case already) to rapidly send an unscheduled crew capsule to ISS should the need arise for any reason.
In this case it wasn’t a big deal to simply shift schedules as they did (unless you are the bumped astros – really sucks for them).
But next time, maybe it won’t be so simple, and time pressure has the potential to be a real factor.
For instance, if hypothetically, Fram2’s heatshield takes serious damage on launch, presumably they can take their IVA suits out the front hatch to transfer to another capsule that launches to rescue them. But provisions are limited – how long do they have to get the rescue ship up, and would that be possible before the stranded crew runs out of O2?
Might be interesting to know if there have since been any considerations to be better prepared (if not the case already) to rapidly send an unscheduled crew capsule to ISS should the need arise for any reason.
I think it is pretty obvious, just from what we can see of the Crew Dragon fleet refurb and flight schedules, that NASA decided from the start not to pursue any kind of “stand-by” capability for ISS emergencies. Not least, I assume, because it would cost NASA something significant to pay SpaceX (or Boeing, when the time comes) to maintain that capability.
That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if there *were* arrangements between NASA and SpaceX for a more “medium-term” contingency option to divert a Dragon in the turn-around cycle to go to ISS, if say there were a problem with the Dragon on station to call its safety on EDL into question — say it got holed by MMD, or it suffered a critical thruster failure on-station like Skylab 3’s Apollo CSM did in 1973, for example. Something that would not put the crew in immediate jeopardy but would justify sending up another Dragon within a few weeks.
Of course, as we all know, NASA plans for *everything*. I have heard scuttlebutt that there is even a contingency to bring a crew back on a Cargo Dragon; it would not surprise me if it were true. How exactly that would work is beyond me, but I assume it would be in a situation where the alternative for the crew is imminent death.
Front hatch is not available to Fram2 due to presence of cupola window. But the heat shield is covered by a Whipple shield until just before reentry, so an event that would damage it would kill everyone anyway. And there are no extra supplies. There’s a 5-day limit with a crew of 4.
I’d call that a top-hatch.
Do you have a source for there being no contingency supplies?
Elon: Hey, NASA we can bring them down sooner if you want.
NASA: Really? How much will you charge for that?
Elon: The usual.
NASA: Thanks but nah, we didn’t budget for that.
Elon: Politics!
Just to clarify: Elon subsequently noted that the conversation he claimed to have was not with anyone at NASA, but rather, someone at the White House. (He has not said who, to my knowledge. One doubts it was Biden, for, well, obvious reasons.)
I think…it is not at all impossible that whoever it was he talked to at the WH actually *was* motivated at least in part by the politics of making Elon (who was at that point literally camped out in Pennsylvania campaigning for Trump) look like a hero down the campaign stretch in turning down his offer; but also that the original NASA decision back in August to keep Butch and Suni on board as part of the next expedition rather than bring them back ASAP on a special Dragon flight was, indeed, really motivated just by ISS schedule convenience and a rational calculus of all risks involved.
So Elon could be telling the truth. He also could be exaggerating the gravity of the situation to make himself and Trump look especially good and conversely to make Biden and his team look especially bad.
It sure would be nice, one day, if we could get a transcript of that conversation, just the same.
We are $36 trillion in debt. It is amusing that people say with a straight face it was too expensive. Schedule chaos and the complexity of the regulatory hoops they would have to jump through is a more rational take. $200 million might be the cost of the launch but the real cost how much bureaucratic effort it would take.
IMO, a symptom of the structural problems our system has and why we needed COTS and CCDEV in the first place. Oddly enough, this is a sign of progress.
I think rather than saying this was no big deal, it should be said it is a big deal. The astronauts and their families should be praised for their sacrifices, especially the families. It is like keeping troops in Afghanistan a year after their enlistment is up because a helicopter broke down. The failure of Boeing and NASA is also a big deal and should be called out. Why didn’t Boeing pay for their return? Politics did play a role, and while not the largest contributor, it shouldn’t have been a factor. It is also a big deal because the capabilities NASA has access to are better than before.
If a shuttle had issues, would NASA send a rescue mission and how long would it take? Likely longer than the normal launch cadence because they would have to fix issues. But if there was an issue on the ISS, NASA could have arranged a shuttle launch in about the same amount of time but for much more money. In this case, not sending a ride earlier was a choice, not a limitation, and the cost was less than the old way.
This was a big deal for a lot of reasons. We shouldn’t ignore the human aspect of it and we should note the progress in capabilities over the recent past.
It has been and will be a big deal for Boeing. It is unclear they will remain in the crewed spacecraft business.
What an odd company. An X 37b just returned from another successful mission and they just got the NGAD contract but they fumble their capsule, which should have been well within their capabilities.
We need them to be successful so I hope they do a good job on the F 47
One thing I found very interesting was that NASA had no issues in ordering Starliner’s return prior to the Dragon’s arrival in September. I know they had to do so due to the number of docking ports, but what made it interesting to me was the contingency plan to evac all six US astronauts on Dragon (the one then at the station) in case of an ISS emergency.
This plan was billed as safe. It involved (going from memory here) putting the two Starliner astronauts in the back, behind the seats, with padding and some straps.
It made me wonder why, if it was so safe, they didn’t just return them that way. Or, as was suggested at the time, have the arriving Dragon bring up a couple of inflatable or foam seats. That made me wonder if NASA was dodging the issue of Starliner and Dragon having incompatible suits (A major oops on NASA’s part) or Dragon not having the seven-seat capacity is was designed for (because NASA insisted it didn’t want the extra capability, even as a removable contingency).
There is “safe” and “safe but a high chance of injury on landing”. Putting them in the back with padding and straps was the equivalent of firing an ejection seat on a fighter. It will save your life but has a high probability of being injured.
It’s been demonstrated that an ad hoc adaptor can be made for Russian suits. There was already a suit aboard for Suni, and an available buddy-adaptor for it. Butch would have come down in his Starliner suit with an ad hoc adaptor (cardboard and duct tape). I think the big danger was dislocations from the landing force.
Thanks for the info!!
It does make me wonder if stowing a few inflatable seats aboard ISS might be a (very!) low cost means of making emergency use in such a case a bit safer.