The starliner is to return unmanned, according to this article. Can you imagine being on the ISS, and watching the ship you should have taken shred apart into burning rain as it attempts to pierce the veil of our atmosphere.
Could you imagine being one of the remaining astronauts watching it from the ISS if it had returned with astronauts on board?
Can you imagine travelling in a toaster oven
Depends, who made it
Me and my boys. We keep getting these requests from blind old uncle sam up the road to build shiny new things, but eh, we have other things to do, so we just take our old shit and move it around slightly and baddabing baddaboom
Ah okay, then yes. I was just afraid it’d be a Boeing
On the flip side, can you imagine being stranded on the ISS, and watching the ship that could have taken you home gone down safely?
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. They’re holding up amazingly well, I don’t envy the astronauts right now.
They’re holding up amazingly well, I don’t envy the astronauts right now.
strongly suspect they’re coping well lol. You gotta understand that people fight for any chance into space, and an opportunity to turn a 2 day trip into 6+ months? yeah, it’ll require last moment changes to their lives but I imagine they’re happy as hell. They’ve been training for decades for this.
I would be very unhappy if I saw this spacecraft, that still has probably more than 95% chance of bringing me home safely if something happened, leave with no alternative in sight.
leave with no alternative in sight.
?? spacex is gonna get them home, this is hyperbole.
now, if they, like me, despise musk, that part might sting, but I strongly doubt these professionals are overly concerned with that end. I’d prefer my managers ERRING ON THE SIDE OF SURVIVAL, and considering the noises the craft suddenly started making, yeah, prudent decision after all.
Boeing doesn’t like it, but… tsk, thrusters aren’t new technology, this shit shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place, and certainly never made it to ORBIT without being 99.999% reliable. Boeing fucked up. Boeing’s thruster contractor - Rocketdyne - has been in the business since the 50s. This should be locked down, proven tech. Yet somehow startup spacex that doesn’t have 50+ years in space is whipping the shit out of Boeing + Rocketdyne, EVEN THOUGH BOEING WAS PAID MORE THAN SPACEX, only for it to end in this shit show.
NASA errs on the side of caution and it’s the right decision.
In space exploration, 95% are terrible odds.
Wherever a life depends on it, 95% are terrible odds.
There is an alternative, in the event of disaster there’s room on board the Dragon capsule currently docked at the station for them to come back down. They’d be strapped into the cargo hold rather than a seat, but that’s acceptable in a disaster situation.
Don’t they need different space suits to board the Dragon capsule though? I thought I read something the other day saying they’d need to wait for Dragon-compatible suits to be brought up to them for that to be an option.
The suits aren’t technically needed for reentry, since the capsule isn’t supposed to be depressurized at any point during the trip. It’s just another layer of “if something goes wrong.” So if it’s a choice of taking that risk or staying on an exploding ISS you go with the risk. I expect that even if the suit can’t be connected to Dragon’s umbilicals it could still be sealed for at least a few minutes of air during the riskiest bits of the trip.
I mean, it is incredibly disconcerting.
But it isn’t a mechanical noise. It is a noise coming through the speakers themselves. As many have pointed out, it is almost definitely feedback of some form.
Definitely something to get sorted before you do anything TOO critical (feedback can potentially be a precursor to electrical or systems failure) but not a sign that doors are going to fall off imminently.
I’m wondering if it’s not some kind of assistive thing that got turned on randomly because it was up there too long.
For example, for docking, playing a sound that changed pitched as you got closer, etc.
That or an Easter egg engineers buried as a joke among themselves.
I’m wondering if it’s not some kind of assistive thing that got turned on randomly because it was up there too long.
Boeing levering the high technology of my refrigerator automatically alerting when I leave the door open.
To be fair, if you leave an airlock door open….
It’s quite a bit worse than a fridge.
I know we’re joking here, but if you leave an airlock open exposed to hard vacuum you’re not going to hear any kind of audio alerts because there’s no air to transmit the sound.
sound will also transmit through the physical structure, so you can feel the vibrations if your touching walls.
But if you really want to get pedantic… you’ll probably notice the whole choking-on-vacuum-thing first.
But if you really want to get pedantic… you’ll probably notice the whole choking-on-vacuum-thing first.
We agree completely!
