Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
NASA ISS

ISS Astronauts Give Space-to-Earth Interview Weeks Before Finally Returning to Earth (cnn.com) 18

Posted by EditorDavid from the earth-below-us dept.
Last June two NASA astronauts flew to the International Space Station on the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner. But they aren't stranded there, and they weren't abandoned, the astronauts reminded CNN this week in a rare space-to-earth interview: "That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it. We both get it," [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. "But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded." Wilmore added a request: "If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.'

"That's what we prefer," he said...

[NASA astronaut Suni] Williams also reiterated a sentiment she has expressed on several occasions, including in interviews conducted before she left Earth. "Butch and I knew this was a test flight," she told CNN's Cooper, acknowledging the pair has been prepared for contingencies and understood that the stay in space might be extended. "We knew that we would probably find some things (wrong with Starliner) and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise," she said.
When Cooper opened the interview by asking the astronauts how they're doing, Williams answers "We're doing pretty darn good, actually," pointing out they had plenty of food and great crew members. And Wilmore added that crews come to the space station on a careful cycle, and "to alter that cycle sends ripple effects all the way down the chain. We would never expect to come back just special for us or anyone unless it was a medical issue or something really out of the circumstances along those lines. So we need to come back and keep the normal cycle going..."

CNN's article notes a new announcement from NASA Tuesday that the astronauts might return a couple weeks early "after opting to change the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule it will use." That mission's targeted launch date is now March 12.

In the meantime, Williams says in the interview, "We do have some internet connection up here, so we can get some internet live. We've gotten football. It's been this crew's go-to this past fall. Also YouTube or something like that. It's not continuous — it has chunks of time that we get it. And we use that same system also to make phone calls home, so we can talk to our families, and do videoconferences even on the weekends as well. This place is a pretty nice place to live, for the most part."

And they're also "working on with folks on the ground" to test the NASA's cube-shaped, free-flying robotic Astrobees.

ISS Astronauts Give Space-to-Earth Interview Weeks Before Finally Returning to Earth More | Reply

ISS Astronauts Give Space-to-Earth Interview Weeks Before Finally Returning to Earth

Comments Filter:

  • That's a serious question, not because I sympathize with the hard-core astronomer types who'd prefer that NASA spend its $20bn/year exclusively on space telescopes and robotic probes but because we are, in fact, $36tn in the hole and still digging.

    About the only positive economic value from the space station I can think of is that Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew subsidized the development costs of Falcon 9 and ended up slashing commercial launch costs by half or so.

    But even if the commercial launch mar

    • NASA has been wanting to get rid of the ISS as well, for a while now. Seems like they've been asking themselves that very question.

      Personally I am a fan of space exploration (human or by machine) for its own sake. But the ISS hardly contributes to furthering our reach into space anymore. Let's return to the moon, see if we can put together a mission to Mars.

  • They weren't stranded, they just couldn't get back.

    • Perception means more than reality, and they wanted us to perceive that they weren't stuck, because the reality of them being stuck would be perceived as a bad thing, and we can't have that, because it reflects poorly on management.

      • reflects poorly on management.

        If you think it has been poorly managed, then you can say how it should have been done instead. Crew 9 was launched in September with two crew members instead of four, and the plan has been to stay for six months and return with Wilmore and Williams. What are you suggesting would be better? An extra launch? A curtailed Crew 9 mission?

    • They absolutely could get back at any time. There's a Crew Dragon docked to the ISS. It's just cheaper and more in tune with the launch schedule to stay on board and come back after N months (where N depends on the details of SpaceX's capsule availability).

      • No they couldn't anytime they wanted too, not without endangering other austronauts lives. The crew capsules connected to the station are needed for when something goes wrong and they all need to escape at the same time. If one capsule would be leaving with only 2 persons there would not be enough crewcabines to hold the rest in time of an emergency.

        • The two Starliner astronauts can leave at any time, as long as two other astronauts also leave. In other words, business as usual. I'm not sure if this thread is just a discussion of the exact meaning of "stranded". If not, then I assume people will tell me how many space flights and crew members are necessary to improve on the current plans.

  • The employees were already warned.

    • The employees were already warned.

      That was more about SLS, although Starliner has been on the cutting block too. SLS should have been cancelled years ago. With the exception of those congress critters whose constitutes ate the pork sent from Washington, and is why it has survived so long, pretty much everyone agrees SLS should be ended.

  • This just shows that at current time our spaceprogram is just too slow, we don't have such a routine that we can just send up a crewcabine anytime we would need/like. Also, still don't understand why the ISS is being destroyed in a couple of years, when they could reuse a lot of it to start a new station, or even use it as an extra station as a backup.

  • The Starliner technology and any models in production are up for sale. I doubt there will be any takers.
    These two will now be brought back by a competitor's product is just towing the company line. It's also sad that this will probably
    be the last mission they'll ever do in their professional career, and it'll still be labeled as a failure. Boeing is losing money daily on Starliner and
    they want to get off, the big problem is nobody wants it.
    Now SLS appears to be a failure as well, over budget and delayed. On

  • Seriously, every comment they make oozes with professionalism and courage in the face of adversity. They are clearly well trained and highly intelligent. Why can’t more Americans be like this? Why, instead of dreaming to be astronauts, does every young American dream of now being an “influencer” who knows nothing more than saying vapid shit on a TikTok video? Maybe some aspects of “make America great again” should be embraced.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."

Close