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.
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.
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.
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.
Design for 7 seats, routinely fly with 4 with provision for adding extra seats if required.
NASA failure of planning.