Off-world problems
Mission duration Planned: 8 days Actual: 93 days, 13 hours and 9 minutes
lol
More like 208 days and counting.
Butch cracked the top 50 most time in space!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Most_time_in_space
And Sunni is flying up the list. She’s up to #24 and will hopedully max out at #12 in February.
Context?
Boeing, a corporation known for suiciding whistleblowers who’ve spoken out against the poor workmanship of their airplanes, sent a crew to the ISS in an equally poorly made space vehicle.
It, named the Starliner, encountered significant technical problems on the way up, and now the crew is stuck waiting for a return flight.
the crew is stuck waiting for a return flight
Minor correction: Their return flight (the Crew-9 Dragon) arrived on September 29th, it just isn’t scheduled to leave until March. They aren’t “stuck”, and could safely evacuate the ISS in the event of an emergency.
I think this is an important distinction, but having an emergency escape vehicle available isn’t exactly the same as being able to just leave.
I think the takeaway from this is that a backup return vehicle maybe should have been prepared before Boeing got the go-ahead for this launch.
having an emergency escape vehicle available isn’t exactly the same as being able to just leave
Maybe, but I bet they are secretly a bit happy that their stay got extended. They are both experienced astronauts, and this could be their last spaceflight. Suni gets to be ISS commander too.
I think the takeaway from this is that a backup return vehicle maybe should have been prepared before Boeing got the go-ahead for this launch.
What vehicle would it be? For political reasons, Soyuz is probably out. That just leaves Dragon. It seems like a bit of a waste to launch a 4-seater capsule empty, and if you fill the remaining two seats with astronauts, you might as well have them stay for a while, which is exactly where we are today.
The other comment got the gist of it, but didn’t drill down into a few important details:
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Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams left earth on June 5th, 2024, for a flight to the ISS.
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They were scheduled to return between June 13th and June 15th, 8-10 days after launch.
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They are still there.
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Their damaged capsule was returned to earth without them back in September.
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The earliest they can return will be late March, 2025
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