Crew-9 Returns to Earth

Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points certainly feels like a line to me.

Berger is not a "one note journalist". He literally wrote the book "Liftoff" which is great telling of the story of SpaceX, and has covered space topics in extensive detail for a long time. The article is important because the narrative told by the administration is clearly not true and in bad faith, and it is right to call it out.

You're effectively tone policing an article for not being kind enough to the current administration that is lying their ass off about everything they do every step of the way.

What about all the other things. For example the crew dragon was docked back in september waiting for return. The last administration could have called for return at any point before the inaguration to claim glory, but didn't because they aren't hacks.

NASA, the pork factory, not impartial? Impossible!

When? Do you have a link?

Because the most recent delay was down to SpaceX. Their new dragon capsule was not ready on time to collect them, so they had to shift and replan for an older one.

"free".

Elon Musk offers a lot of things for free, and then turns out you have to pay anyway.

When was space not political?

I would like to see the qualifications of the people who disagree with that decision before I waste time listening to them.

Wasn't this (or rather, the original short mission) expected to likely be the last mission for them anyways, due to age?

I really hope they'll at some point clearly say either "well, of course we missed our families, but really, getting such an opportunity was AWESOME and Boeing's misfortune was a huge lucky event for us" or "Being up there is awesome, but quite honestly, having to do it unexpectedly really sucked".

And I don't think that it is the slightest bit unprofessional to have feelings about where you spent a year of your life, or to talk about those feelings.

This was likely their last mission to start with. They’re already past prime and nearing retirement (of official astronaut duties, at least).

earth is cool but people are not

"corp-owned slave town"

in space human slave is literally most expensive labor you can choose, automatons is the way

Or the Mars envisioned in Total Recall

When you are strapping to a rocket the plan is that you explode into lots of little pieces. Getting there and back alive is a bonus.

Erm they didn't plan to go on some 8 days business trip for some work project.

This is their life and profession. The job is extremely difficult, dangerous and mega mega expensive. Hence they don't get to do it as much as they love. Now they did.

What is this about "planning" stuff? They trained and volunteered as astronauts/cosmonauts, and that still typically entails a military career as well, and military families indeed suffer the absence of loved ones, but that is always part of the collective sacrifice that makes America, well, great... and astronauts are public figures, celebrities, smiling for the camera and making prepared statements at each milestone, and that glory they earned this for this crew was simply following orders and being trained/prepared for all eventualities while the rocket scientists worked out the logistics.

And if you follow JPL robotic missions that far outlast their mission objectives and keep going like Energizer Bunnies, then is it not sort of amazing that the astronauts really suffered no privations or hardships, in terms of food/shelter/clothing/hygiene, by extending their missions and doing useful things up there?

People watch "The Martian" and "Lost in Space" and they can't seem to grasp the careful pre-planning, incident response, resource allocation, and orcestration that goes into everything that's done by space programs.

Space missions include sprawling, branching flow-charts of every contingency they imagined, and they inform the press of mission objectives and a proposed timeline, and then life happens and when glitches come up, they roll with them because they prepared for them. Apollo 13, for example, is categorically different than a space habitation in Earth orbit; as a lone vehicle with limited resources and an isolated path, that Apollo mission ran out of planned contingencies to the point of improvising so many things and returning to fundamentals, preserving human life.

It's the peril of human life that definitely adds drama for us, and the ISS being influenced by geopolitics is categorically different than the nationalist glories of Mercury-Gemini-Apollo vs. the Soviets. But with ISS in Earth orbit, receiving regular resupply missions, being a habitable outpost, it's far different than sending up a vehicle like the Space Shuttle while everyone speculates whether another Saturn V could be constructed in time to rescue the crew because tiles fell off their heat shield.

Speaking of Saturn, I've been peering into Greek/Roman mythology, and learning what Cronus/Saturn did with his children and how Aphrodite/Venus was born, gives new insight into super heavy-lift launch vehicles named after the deity.

oh I don't know, grueling rehab and moderate health consequences in exchange for getting to spend nine months in space seems like it'd be a deal many would take.

i think the flight up is the scariest part.

Did someone ask them to really know they liked the unplanned stay or are we all just making things up?

...especially since both are at an age where this will probably be their last mission.

Whether the astronauts are rescued after 8 months or a week doesn't change the issue, as far as Boeing's unreliability in space goes. If anything the delay is even more damaging to Boeing because it's an ongoing issue that received ongoing coverage, constantly painting Boeing in a negative light.

From the very same article:

  Q. Did politics influence NASA's decision for you to stay longer in space?

  Wilmore: From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. From our standpoint, I think that they would agree, we came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short. That's what we do in human spaceflight

When Starliner had issues, the already prepared backup plan was for them to join the crew and stay until "no earlier than February 2025" and be picked up by SpaceX on the crew rotation.

The early February SpaceX crew rotation was then pushed back by SpaceX to late March.

All of that was already "in the pipeline" as plans and contingency plans before Wilmore even left Earth.

Any offer by Musk falls more in the PR by Musk bucket side of the equation, and as an out of band out of scope offer it was likely just rejected due to there already being a rotation in the works ... which Musk had to push back in any case, casting doubt on any SpaceX ability to met any early pickup offer by Musk.