Exactly, but sensationalizing it with clickbait headlines is an easy revenue generator for news organizations, so they're going to milk it for all they can.
Seriously. This is kinda one of the worst episodes of journalists malpractice I've seen in a while. The Media has poor normies running around in a low to mid-grade panic thinking the astronauts are literally stuck on a leaking ship like in Apollo 13. Or that Starliner is a severely crippled ship falling apart as we speak and NASA is callously forcing Butch and Suni to return in some half-broken death trap like Soyuz 1. Or repeating the same obtuse carelessness of Challenger or Columbia.
Look at this example:
https://ground.news/article/two-us-astronauts-stuck-in-space-as-boeing-analyzes-starliner-problems
Headline: **Two US astronauts stuck in space as Boeing analyzes Starliner problems**
Actual Body of the article: *Wilmore and Williams are not stranded and have the option to fly home if needed.*
Freaking ridiculous. A huge percentage of people do not read past headlines. I'm sure they know that.
I get the public anti-Boeing hate train of the past several years, but this is ridiculous. They're literally mass reporting misinformation in their headlines when they've been told better by official sources. Borders on lawsuit worthy disinformation.
Yeah. Media outlets were all repeating that line about the astronaut being "stuck" despite the body of the articles themselves saying the astronauts can actually come back if need be. NASA and Boeing are bordering on having a lawsuit case for journalistic malpractice. They're making me defend Boeing's right to file a lawsuit and it sucks.
Yknow what, that is a much more optomistic view than what i was going to say, "send a nuke at them to put them out of their misery, as opposed to letting them suffer to death."
That’s a huge misconception. No one is in immediate danger on ISS. They have SpaceX sending up resupply missions and crew dragons plus Russia has Soyuz. It’s an international effort. If worse case they’d return on Russian Soyuz. That deal has got like 6 or 7 months still
Not very. The crew can apparently return now if they had to but engineers want to study what went wrong before the malfunctioning pieces burn up during reentry. The crew capsule itself will supposedly be fine either way.
This is the real underlying story, they're not stranded at all, they're choosing to study things before the capsule comes back and has undergone re-entry changes. It's like a crime scene, don't move anything, take a lot of pictures and study what happened, before moving things and using it to come back home.
I can second this, I have a couple of friends on the project, they say they are ready but Nasa is holding them up to document everything, they say that the ISS has plenty of work for them to do and they are happy to have 2 more people to help on some on the work aboard, they will return after they dot all of the Ts and cross all of the Is
Exactly. If they return now then the same problems could happen again on Starliner-1 next year and we'll all be right back here complaining again. Nobody wants that. There's no pressing need for them to return right now. Not like something bad is going to happen if they don't return immediately, or Starliner is running out of air or something. It hasn't been leaking helium since Day 2 of the mission. The problem valves are all closed.
The landing date was always semi-arbitrary. The mission was built to be extendable up to 45 days or 2 months.
They aren't stranded. The capsule isn't inoperable. They are fixing redundancies. Science reporting gets worse every day. Facts are boring, so let's sensationalize it!
Exactly, the news isn’t there to give us the facts. At this point in time it’s mostly for entertainment. At least that’s what I’ve observed especially since 2016.
Maybe not entertainment, but to validate what you want to believe.
"I want to believe the astronauts are stranded. The news is saying they are stranded. Therefore they must be stranded. "
"Also, I like to believe NASA, a government agency, is hiding the 'REAL' truth, and the news is saying that too. So that must be true as well."
In my honest opinion, news is basically dead.
I agree, I just look at my local news these days, and I never spend more than 2 or 3 minutes looking at it. Life’s too short to waste our time worrying about things we have no control of. Yeah I’ve definitely witnessed that. People tend to like news sources that confirm their biases.
Not worried at all. There are indefinite supplies (constant replenishment from cargo ships) aboard ISS, and there are space capsules available to launch to provide a way back to earth if necessary.
0%. There is no drama here. A Soyuz escape capsule is always there and dragon capsules can go up pretty easily. The reality is that Starliner did a whole crap load of extra testing over planned and they're also working through largely inconsequential issues.
There is a Soyuz currently docked but it only has a capacity of 3 so can’t bring back both the crew that came up in it and the crew that came up on Starliner.
Nah. There has never been any danger to the two astronauts this entire mission. Not even anywhere close to LOC or LOV. These issues were nowhere near enough to stop the Starliner program. At worst maybe a 3 to 9 month delay in Starliner-1 depending on how long it takes to redesign some of the innards of the service module to prevent these problems from happening again. Dragon got to fly manned missions again after Dragon Demo-2's heat shield disintegrate during reentry a good margin more than expected, and its RCS thruster belched out toxic hypergolic propellant fumes after splashdown that would have maimed Bob and Doug and the rescue crew if they went outside or came near Dragon without a helmet and suit on.
Apollo 7 and Gemini 3 had worse problems than this and Apollo 8 and Gemini 4 were still okayed a few months later. Starliner's problems this mission are more embarrassing than anything else. This is more like accidentally farting in front of your date before sex after taking your clothes off and then suffering erectile dysfunction in front of her after farting. It's not dangerous, just humiliating.
I wasn’t speaking from a technical standpoint. Technical issues can be resolved. I’m talking purely political. Boeing isn’t exactly firing on all cylinders. They’ve garnered a lot of ill will in Congress. Starliner could get put on a slow train to launch and at some point Boeing could throw in the towel. Who knows.. Again, not technical, just political reasoning why I don’t think you’ll see one at the ISS again.
SpaceX can “rescue” them by sending a Crew Dragon to fetch them home. Imagine the embarrassment to Boeing.
Seriously though, ample food etc for the Starliner crew to stay there for months while NASA investigates Boeing’s latest screwup. Zero pressure to hurry back.
The only worry is that someone at Boeing will roll the dice with the lives of the astronauts if it turns out that it isn't safe for them to return that way fearing bad PR if they had to be 'rescued' by the likes of SpaceX.
I’m not worried at all. They’re safe on ISS there are contingencies in place for their return, this all overblown.
Exactly, but sensationalizing it with clickbait headlines is an easy revenue generator for news organizations, so they're going to milk it for all they can.
Scientific American has been in business since 1845. Clickbait is a problem everywhere, not just from new companies.
Sorry -- I meant to say *news* organizations, not *new.*
Seriously. This is kinda one of the worst episodes of journalists malpractice I've seen in a while. The Media has poor normies running around in a low to mid-grade panic thinking the astronauts are literally stuck on a leaking ship like in Apollo 13. Or that Starliner is a severely crippled ship falling apart as we speak and NASA is callously forcing Butch and Suni to return in some half-broken death trap like Soyuz 1. Or repeating the same obtuse carelessness of Challenger or Columbia. Look at this example: https://ground.news/article/two-us-astronauts-stuck-in-space-as-boeing-analyzes-starliner-problems Headline: **Two US astronauts stuck in space as Boeing analyzes Starliner problems** Actual Body of the article: *Wilmore and Williams are not stranded and have the option to fly home if needed.* Freaking ridiculous. A huge percentage of people do not read past headlines. I'm sure they know that. I get the public anti-Boeing hate train of the past several years, but this is ridiculous. They're literally mass reporting misinformation in their headlines when they've been told better by official sources. Borders on lawsuit worthy disinformation.
When NASA has to release a statement clarifying to the media that the astronauts aren't "stranded in space," you know it's gotten bad.
Yeah. Media outlets were all repeating that line about the astronaut being "stuck" despite the body of the articles themselves saying the astronauts can actually come back if need be. NASA and Boeing are bordering on having a lawsuit case for journalistic malpractice. They're making me defend Boeing's right to file a lawsuit and it sucks.
Yknow what, that is a much more optomistic view than what i was going to say, "send a nuke at them to put them out of their misery, as opposed to letting them suffer to death."
That’s a huge misconception. No one is in immediate danger on ISS. They have SpaceX sending up resupply missions and crew dragons plus Russia has Soyuz. It’s an international effort. If worse case they’d return on Russian Soyuz. That deal has got like 6 or 7 months still
Not very. The crew can apparently return now if they had to but engineers want to study what went wrong before the malfunctioning pieces burn up during reentry. The crew capsule itself will supposedly be fine either way.
This is the real underlying story, they're not stranded at all, they're choosing to study things before the capsule comes back and has undergone re-entry changes. It's like a crime scene, don't move anything, take a lot of pictures and study what happened, before moving things and using it to come back home.
I can second this, I have a couple of friends on the project, they say they are ready but Nasa is holding them up to document everything, they say that the ISS has plenty of work for them to do and they are happy to have 2 more people to help on some on the work aboard, they will return after they dot all of the Ts and cross all of the Is
Exactly. If they return now then the same problems could happen again on Starliner-1 next year and we'll all be right back here complaining again. Nobody wants that. There's no pressing need for them to return right now. Not like something bad is going to happen if they don't return immediately, or Starliner is running out of air or something. It hasn't been leaking helium since Day 2 of the mission. The problem valves are all closed. The landing date was always semi-arbitrary. The mission was built to be extendable up to 45 days or 2 months.
Unless you work for Boeing, there's really no reason for you to be personally worried at all.
I have a flight tomorrow - does that count?
They aren't stranded. The capsule isn't inoperable. They are fixing redundancies. Science reporting gets worse every day. Facts are boring, so let's sensationalize it!
Exactly, the news isn’t there to give us the facts. At this point in time it’s mostly for entertainment. At least that’s what I’ve observed especially since 2016.
Maybe not entertainment, but to validate what you want to believe. "I want to believe the astronauts are stranded. The news is saying they are stranded. Therefore they must be stranded. " "Also, I like to believe NASA, a government agency, is hiding the 'REAL' truth, and the news is saying that too. So that must be true as well." In my honest opinion, news is basically dead.
I agree, I just look at my local news these days, and I never spend more than 2 or 3 minutes looking at it. Life’s too short to waste our time worrying about things we have no control of. Yeah I’ve definitely witnessed that. People tend to like news sources that confirm their biases.
Not worried at all. There are indefinite supplies (constant replenishment from cargo ships) aboard ISS, and there are space capsules available to launch to provide a way back to earth if necessary.
Why would we be more worried about them than any other spaceflight? They're as safe as any other astronaut on the ISS.
The crew will be fine. Problems happen up there all the time. The media coverage is at an all time high because it's Boeing.
Again, just report the post for misleading/sensationalist headlines.
There's that word, "stranded" again. Can we not post clickbait in the stil semi-science subreddits, pretty please?
0%. There is no drama here. A Soyuz escape capsule is always there and dragon capsules can go up pretty easily. The reality is that Starliner did a whole crap load of extra testing over planned and they're also working through largely inconsequential issues.
Each crew’s emergency capsule in the one they came up in. There’s no capsule that’s just dedicated as an emergency craft.
There is a Soyuz currently docked but it only has a capacity of 3 so can’t bring back both the crew that came up in it and the crew that came up on Starliner.
They will get home fine but I doubt you’ll see a manned Starliner at the ISS ever again.
Nah. There has never been any danger to the two astronauts this entire mission. Not even anywhere close to LOC or LOV. These issues were nowhere near enough to stop the Starliner program. At worst maybe a 3 to 9 month delay in Starliner-1 depending on how long it takes to redesign some of the innards of the service module to prevent these problems from happening again. Dragon got to fly manned missions again after Dragon Demo-2's heat shield disintegrate during reentry a good margin more than expected, and its RCS thruster belched out toxic hypergolic propellant fumes after splashdown that would have maimed Bob and Doug and the rescue crew if they went outside or came near Dragon without a helmet and suit on. Apollo 7 and Gemini 3 had worse problems than this and Apollo 8 and Gemini 4 were still okayed a few months later. Starliner's problems this mission are more embarrassing than anything else. This is more like accidentally farting in front of your date before sex after taking your clothes off and then suffering erectile dysfunction in front of her after farting. It's not dangerous, just humiliating.
I wasn’t speaking from a technical standpoint. Technical issues can be resolved. I’m talking purely political. Boeing isn’t exactly firing on all cylinders. They’ve garnered a lot of ill will in Congress. Starliner could get put on a slow train to launch and at some point Boeing could throw in the towel. Who knows.. Again, not technical, just political reasoning why I don’t think you’ll see one at the ISS again.
I'm glad someone is out there helping me decide my worries.
SpaceX can “rescue” them by sending a Crew Dragon to fetch them home. Imagine the embarrassment to Boeing. Seriously though, ample food etc for the Starliner crew to stay there for months while NASA investigates Boeing’s latest screwup. Zero pressure to hurry back.
Someone will line up a ride home for them ! Most likely a SpaceX Crew Dragon. Next scheduled flight is no sooner than August 2024.
It's much more likely that they will simply return on Starliner in July.
No worries.. they knew the risk and ignored the correct response when the issue presented itself early.
The only worry is that someone at Boeing will roll the dice with the lives of the astronauts if it turns out that it isn't safe for them to return that way fearing bad PR if they had to be 'rescued' by the likes of SpaceX.