Totally not stranded, according to Boeing.
They aren’t stranded because there is the emergency capsule to get them back.
Classic corporate doublespeak and half truths.
They’re not stranded because the part of the capsule that isn’t working has multiple redundancy and is intended to burn up on reentry anyway.
Starliner is perfectly capable of leaving the ISS whenever they want, but they would be unable to continue collecting data on the thruster shutoff (again, because it would burn up in the atmosphere).
Completely untrue. There are currently only 3 human-rated spacecraft docked to the ISS and none of them are set aside as some sort of emergency capsule. There’s no trickery here. The number of astronauts on board is equal to the number of seats available for them to ride back home in. The only reason they aren’t stranded is because Starliner is still fully capable of undocking and taking them home whenever necessary. If it wasn’t, then they would actually be stranded with no alternative way back beyond straping them to the floor of Dragon.
Except the “emergency capsule” is all of them, including Starliner. Because Starliner is perfectly capable of returning to earth safely.
Because every thruster that has shut down has hot fired okay, and the known helium leaks still leave enough margin to cover several multiples of the 5 hours or so of RCS operation that you need to get to landing.
As long as they didn’t bring any whistles with them they’ll be fine!
I mean, Boeing hasn’t killed them in a fireball of death, hurtling at 18 thousand kph to the earth. The media has this totally wrong, for now. Everything is totally fine, at this time.
The people in every one of these Starliner threads seemingly hoping for the worst case scenario to occur just so they can dunk on Boeing for it are disturbing
The best case scenario is that boeing is put out of business and nobody else dies for some CEO’s paycheck.
People in prison aren’t locked up, they’re just taking their time to come out.
As it turns out, actually, WE are the ones who are stranded.
That is clearly a meaning of “not stranded” I was previously unfamiliar with.
They’re not. The ship has 1 bad thruster, but need like a dozen to fail to make re-entry impossible. They could leave right now and everything would be just fine.
The thing is the module that’s malfunctioning doesn’t survive re-entry, so the only time to investigate the problem is before they head back.
Maybe space stations should have lifeboats. Ocean liners must have them, why not the ISS?
They functionally do, at almost all points in time there are enough capsules docked to the station for all astronauts to be able to return to Earth. The starliner capsule is currently able to return if needed, they are having it stay up there a bit longer to check things out to better understand why the one thruster is bad.
I hope they sue…
Boeing: yes, they got no chance at all.
If I were thw astronauts I’d refuse to take the starliner back down.
