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Comment by nickhalfasleep | Hacker News Reader

How many seats does this leave them in an emergency? Isn’t there only a Dragon now?

Vehicles currently docked at the ISS:

  CRS-26 Cargo Dragon
  Crew-5 Dragon
  Cygnus-18
  Progress 81
  Progress 82
  Soyuz MS-22

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/visiting-vehicle-launches-arriv...

Only the Crew Dragon and the Soyuz are designed for human spaceflight and capable of returning to Earth. The Cargo Dragon can also land, the rest are all expendable.

That's a lot - I did not realize that ISS is so busy of a space port.

Which of these are return vehicles (human-rated or otherwise)?

Just the two Dragons and the Soyuz, right?

Edit: neat that I get to call a spacecraft a “Dragon”.

Could people ride the Cargo Dragon down in an emergency?

Cargo Dragon doesn't have seats, so no.

They could try and move he seats from the duff Soyuz into Crew Dragon if they have suitable fixing points and tools...

It's still pressurised, so they should be able to survive in it.

But what happens when the capsule hits the water?

The same as those old-school wooden roller coasters with no safety-bar. You'd better hold on tight!

It floats. It’s designed for bringing cargo down as well as up, so it doesn’t experience dangerous levels of deceleration. Theoretically, it could bring back people, although they may need an oxygen tank and a way of strapping themselves down.

It probably wouldn’t be a pleasant landing, but it’s unlikely to injure them significantly.

And even if there is a significant injury risk, it's still better than certain death.

Funeral expenses instead of cremation.

Maybe one day, they'll have capsule not to return to earth, but just hang out in orbit to dock with the Chinese station to use as a life boat.

A station in a different orbital plane would me more difficult to reach than the ocean's surface, so long as an adequate heat shield is provided.

I haven’t done the maths, but my gut (and maths degree, but mostly kerbal space program experience), says that even without an adequate heat shield, a significant plane change manoeuvre in LEO would take comparable delta V to slowing to the point where the spacecraft fuselage is sufficient shielding that the astronauts onboard won’t die on re-entry from the heat.

That being said, G-forces of such a steep descent would probably kill them instead.

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