NASA management have been in deep discussion this week around whether to return the agency's astronauts on board Boeing's misfiring Starliner capsule.
  • ptfrd@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    the most likely alternative would be to bring the astronauts back using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon by removing two astronauts from the Crew-9 mission

    The most likely? Not convinced. Wouldn’t anyone removed from Crew-9 just be shifted to Crew-10? So it’d seem silly to announce Crew-10 only to have to change it a week later.

    And even if they don’t care about looking silly in that way, they might instead just go with one empty seat ‘uphill’ for each of Crew 9 and 10. Because that’s a less drastic change to make to Crew 9 at such short notice.

    But maybe I’m wrong. So, assuming the quoted scenario actually is what happens …

    I guess they’d have to keep the Russian (Gorbunov)?

    And keep the capsule commander (Cardman)? But she’s never been to space, so maybe the pilot (Hague)? I can’t immediately see if he was expected to be the ISS commander, but if so, I guess that would give them a good excuse to ‘promote’ him over Cardman?

    Wilson has had more launches than Hague (3 versus 2ish) but a lot less time in space, and I don’t know if she would be as well trained for Dragon as the commander & pilot.