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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • This comes up on every one of these articles. The astronauts are in no way stranded.

    There’s a common sense operating rule on the station: every person on board ISS must have a dedicated seat in a ride home that is ready to undock and leave within 30 minutes notice.

    Right now, the Starliner capsule is certified and ready for that role for the two test pilots. The crew dragon and soyuz are docked to handle the rest of the station crew.

    Earlier today there was an emergency shelter event on the station when some debris got unusually close. In this type of event all crew evacuate to the escape spacecraft and close hatches. So if something does hit the station, it’s less likely someone gets hurt during a depressurization.

    Starliner served as an emergency shelter for this exercise, because it is certified for emergency reentry, and the five identified helium leaks are not close to preventing it from returning safely.

    To get from ISS to a landing site requires no more than 5 hours of RCS operation. There is plenty of margin in the helium system to cover 5 hours.







  • Could be if the extras were not originally billed as speaking parts, the threat was too not upgrade them to the pay grade for speaking parts.

    I know in SAG-AFTRA productions there’s a limit to how many words you can speak on camera before you have to get a SAG card, that usually comes with an upgrade in pay and benefits.








  • To be clear: to get back to the ground safely, the spacecraft RCS has to operate for no more than about five hours.

    As far as I know, this spacecraft is still certified for emergency reentry, and if they needed to, the crew can get in and leave at any time. And they have good confidence that the spacecraft will get them to earth safely.

    These delays aimed at getting more data to justify certification as an operational vehicle instead of flight test. If it doesn’t work out, the worst case seems to be that a second test flight may be required.

    Delays don’t really cost NASA anything either. There’s plenty of consumables on the station for the crew, and when the capsule is docked the RCS can be shut down so it doesn’t leak.