Is it rescue? Maybe in the sense that you can't leave when you wanted to and now you have to wait. But not in the sense that you were ever in any real danger.
(Admittedly, maybe there is a bit more danger for these astronauts because a malfunctioning spacecraft is inherently a bit of a safety hazard. And the SpaceX operation is certainly not as routine as a ferry showing up at a dock, though it's still safe.)
It seems that it is both a bit subjective whether one calls it "rescue," and also a bit sensationalized to put in a headline too.
If I miss the last train across the bay, my uber isn’t rescuing me. I can always stay up to 5am by making a shady deal at the endup.
But yeah, this is a black eye on boeing and definitely something that nobody wants to have to deal with.
> verb. 1. save (someone) from a dangerous or distressing situation. 2. informal, keep from being lost or abandoned; retrieve.
Per this one, if you miss the last train across the bay the the Uber _would_ indeed be "rescuing" you if you felt distressed. If we consider the informal definition, I'd say you're also being rescued since one could say you were abandoned by the train and thus being retrieved by the Uber. Next, Merriam Webster [2]:
> transitive verb. to free from confinement, danger, or evil
Similarly, if you understand "rescue" as freeing someone from danger, this isn't a rescue. The astronauts aren't in danger really— they have all the supplies and support they need. Nonetheless, they certainly are in confinement, so this could still be called a rescue.
I personally do see how the fact this mission was already scheduled, and the little danger around all this, can make "rescue" feel like a little much. It's the same word used in The Martian, after all. But nonetheless I would still call it a rescue mission. These two astronauts are confined up there not by will but by circumstance, and the taxi flight was modified to sending only two people instead of the usual four, specifically to make space for these two astronauts to come back [3].
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=rescue%20meaning
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rescue
[3] https://apnews.com/article/boeing-spacex-nasa-astronauts-sta...
The ISS isn’t Treasure Island. There is always an elevated degree of peril. Particularly in an emergency condition.
It’s space. The ground state is emergency. I am training to be a pilot. Anything going off flight plan is an emergency. If ground control gives me corrective instructions, in the course of a mistake, I hope I will have the humility to not refuse its designation as a rescue.
Like, if you want an Exhibit A for why Boeing doesn’t deserve forward trust, it’s this response.
If we go by technical definition of "emergency" then anything not by the plan is an emergency, but it's not used that way normally and it's not a technical publication.
If you are stuck in space with no lifeboat back then I agree it is an emergency, but they apparently have Starliner and it works. If they or Nasa are more comfortable with another option maybe that makes it an emergency or maybe not.
If it turns out Starliner doesn't work, that's an emergency. If there is radiation event coming then it's an emergency, but it is always an emergency in space regardless.
One, had. Starliner went home. Two, they didn’t. Starliner was broken. Its manoeuvring thrusters, a critical reëntry system, were misbehaving. If you’re on a plane and the oxygen system fails, that’s an emergency. You don’t have to wait for cabin pressure to fail for it to qualify, and oxygen systems aren’t even a critical system; this is closer to the flaps or landing gear behaving erratically.
If it fails then that's an emergency, but that regardless of the presence of the boat.
Noted the absence of Starliner, but not 100% convinced personally
Danger is not when the last later of safety fails. Danger is when the level of risk exceeds a set threshold - and that level has been exceeded as per NASA protocol.
Is the thesis only leisure travellers can be rescued? Astronauts do not sign up to fly on faulty ships. They accept the risk of it happening. But that acceptance doesn’t diminish the tragedy of a ship breaking up on reëntry nor, by extension, the emergency status of a reëntry vehicle with misbehaving manoeuvring thrusters.
This discussion reminds me of the reaction among some to the FAA grounding Falcon 9 “after the first stage used in the [August] launch crash-landed and toppled into the Atlantic Ocean while attempting to touch down on a SpaceX droneship” [1]. It doesn’t matter that everyone else tosses their spent stages into the sea. There was a plan and it went abnormally. That calls for a review. If that review can’t be concluded satisfactorily, as it wasn’t in the case of Starliner, you have an emergency. Relieving someone from an emergency is a rescue.
By some of the standards raised in this thread, a test pilot ejected from their plane and stranded in the tundra wouldn’t qualify for rescue because they were paid or weren’t in immediate and obvious mortal peril or because the ejection seat worked.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-grounded-faa-cr...
The analogy breaks down because an island isn’t space. Your default state on an island tends towards remaining alive. Your default state in space is dead.
A closer analogy is a plane in flight. It takes energy and effort to keep everyone alive. Externally-assisted recovery from peril, in that situation, is a rescue. Even if it’s convenient.
Nobody claimed as much. A jet liner is safer than the ISS. The analogy is conservative.
> Saying 'the default state in space is dead' when historically basically nobody has died in space
Our default state at cruising altitude is dead.
Note: I’m not suggesting anyone would have died. Just that they were in a perilous place where things were going wrong. Being relieved from that position is a rescue.
Maybe not if the jet is a Boeing though?
And I'd rather be with the Starliner at 400 km up than without the Starliner at 400 km up.
But neither seem to be of comparable safety to the other options available.
It is likewise as foolish to try decoupling the peril of space and the peril of orbit and deorbit.
I'm guessing you spend most of your life indoors?
On Earth, outside of the carefully regulated homes we've built as a society, the default state is dead and it takes tremendous work and constant vigilence to avoid that fate, only ever temporarily.
If you see a news headline "man rescues child" you expect a direct threat like something like from a burning house.
> if somebody finds a child wandering in the park alone, we say that the man rescued the child. Exactly as SpaceX is doing in this situation.
Plus, saying astronauts, professionals who signed up for the job knowing what it entails and went through years of training are like children wandering in the park, to paint SpaceX as their savior, is... wow.
And the moon is still the Earth system - we've never really left our own yard.
It’s Saturday, can’t we have a semantic punt?
ergo mars man BAD
Cruise line A and cruise line B drop their passengers off at a remote island for 5 days, and then come to pick them up and take them home. After cruise line B drops theirs off, the cruise ships breaks down, and the passengers can't be picked up after 5 days, so they're stuck on the island with no immediate way to get off. Cruise line A says "OK, the next cruise ship we send will be at half capacity, so we can get the passengers from cruise line B off the island and get them home."
Is cruise line A rescuing the passengers from cruise line B? I'd say yes.
IMO that's only true in line A's PR campaign, assuming they're adversarial enough to run with it.
In your analogy, the passengers are always "stuck on the island with no immediate way to get off" for at least 5 days, as they have no alternative way to get back during their planned stay. If B's cruise ship breaks down - and AFAIK in this case, "breaks down" doesn't mean the ship can't move, just that the risk of catastrophic failure during the trip crossed a preset threshold - that's more of an operational disruption. The stranded passengers are still safe and sound, they just need to wait for the next scheduled cruise to take them home.
The schedule bit matters IMO. It would be a rescue if the next scheduled ride would be way too late to help them and thus it had to be moved up to save their lives.
Workers who signed up to get paid to be on the island and do some work? Knowing that there is only one line of transport and it can be irregular? Going through months or years of training beforehand? Maybe "rescue" is a sensationalization when used in a news headline.
If the spaceship that took you somewhere wasn’t able to get you back as planned and cannot get you back as planned and someone else has to go get those people, that’s a rescue.
If you were on cruise then yes, if you are a professional team who trained for years to stay in dangerous conditions and the only thing out of ordinary is delayed transport back then not. If politics were not involved no one would call it a rescue.
In case of Russians there was a coolant leak
If you are working in Antarctica and need to wait for another transport home it sounds okay. If you urgently need treatment and must perform a surgery on yourself then that's an emergency
Starliner’s manoeuvring thrusters weren’t working!
We didn’t know that!
> because there was no danger of them staying longer till the next ride
I suppose it’s a step forward that we’ve normalised the baseline dangers (and costs, personal and financial) of being in space.
I know you hate Elon musk—I don’t care for him much nor do I harbor animosity towards him—but a rescue is a rescue lmao. You guys would never be this ridiculous if the situation wasn’t politically charged, or if the circumstances favored your political leaning (almost certainly progressive left).
It’s a fairly new vehicle, newer than the Dragon capsule.
On a space station your options are considerably more limited.
Boat, yes; helicopter, no, unless the island is pretty close to civilization. Helicopters have very limited range. No helicopter is going to rescue you from some remote island in the south Pacific, unless it was launched from a rescue ship (in which case it was really the ship that rescued you; the helicopter was merely more convenient for transportation between the ship and the island than a tender boat).
Of course NASA would never give into outside pressures - cough, Challenger, cough. And what I read on the internets is so massively factual.
Boeing is clearly undergoing systemic collapse in engineering ability, so anything Boeing has to be treated with extreme suspicion. Its like hiring a 3-time-felon to babysit, like you can do it, but there will be 0 tolerance for any deviance.
I don't think I'm a fantastic engineer, but I'm certainly doing better than those people when considering the metric of "how many people has my software killed".
Well, was there an accident? It seems like the astronauts staying extra long is to avoid an accident. Does their need to be an accident to call it a rescue?
NASA was uncomfortable with the amount of risk in a new vehicle exhibiting anomalous behavior, for its first crewed re-entry.
The headline here should be: "US glad to have two separate suppliers for crewed transport"
If your friend bails and you get someone else to give you a ride home, they’re getting you or retrieving you. You only call it “rescue” if you’re trying to add some drama to connect with the person who comes to get you. Like a relative, or someone you’re trying to flirt with.
> Rescue: to help someone or something out of a dangerous, harmful, or unpleasant situation.
These are professional, paid astronaut. They both have decades of experience and both have experience being up in space.
If I were to bet they’re probably happy to spend more time on the ISS because I doubt they have many more missions left to do in their careers.
They’re in no danger. There’s no harm done to them.
You’re not rescuing someone from a danger that was already there and part of the mission. Them being “stuck” for a few more months doesn’t make them “in danger”
If they weren’t up there now two different astronauts would be up instead of them. And it would be part of a regular mission. Those would not need to be “rescued”
Seems like the answer to this would be no. Starliner's risk was elevated, not guaranteed to fail. The presence of a flight-proven option was the limiting factor.
That's a pretty weird bar to set?
Sending this SpaceX capsule up with seats reserved for their return fixes the overall operating tempo, but it doesn't make the 2 astronauts any more or less safe.
That is pushing it until Crew 9 arrives. It's a set of straps attached to cargo pallets in the luggage compartment of the Crew 8 capsule. It's like jamming a kid in your trunk when you're out of seats.
They've never had to use this reserve plan and it was only first dreamt of when Soyuz had issues recently.
Originally the astronauts were supposed to go back on Starliner. Now they're taking another ride back. Is that considered a rescue? Well, it depends.
If you get left behind on an island because your ride wasn't safe and another boat picks you up, is that a rescue? Now what if you're 420 kilometers up and another boat has to come get you. Is that a rescue?
If there wasn't another ride from the ISS available, would the astronauts be stranded? Yes.
In that case, if a ride suddenly became available would it be considered a rescue? Probably, yes.