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nullhole

Article on nasa.gov:

"NASA Decides to Bring Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew"

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-decides-to-bring-star...

@dang this seems like a better link, could it replace the current one?

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No, that NASA article is mostly fluff. The original link to the ongoing press conference and Eric Berger's summary of it (https://x.com/SciGuySpace) are better.

The highest quality and most up to date source is EricBerger on X https://x.com/SciGuySpace

He’s also covering space topics for Ars Technica and you can certainly expect an article on this in the next few days.

This one is from yesterday, maybe it will receive an update? https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/as-nasa-nears-major-de...

Here's the link to all of his articles: https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/

I don't have a positive opinion of Ars, but he's absolutely one of the best sources for space news and reporting.

More up to date than the actual press conference currently ongoing linked else where in the thread?

Yes, because NASA and Boeing have been both putting their own spin on the things they say. If you read his threads on X you can get a good idea of what I'm talking about

Isn't the question of how the astronauts will get back the real story here?

And also, do they have a way to evacuate right now in case of emergency?

They will reconfigure Crew 8 for six occupants for emergency evacuation.

So they don't have an evacuation option right now? I assumed the problem was the spacesuits are not compatible with SpaceX requirements?

https://www.adastraspace.com/p/boeing-spacex-spacesuits-comp...

I'm guessing if the ISS was no longer able to sustain life support, Starliner would be used. Guaranteed loss of life by staying on ISS or having an unknown <100% chance of surviving using Starliner, of course it will be chanced.

I'm not really sure what point your question is attempting to get at

They don't have a way to come back to Earth right now on a Spaceship cleared for human flight.

I'm sure the astronauts would much prefer to have a Dragon available, but I don't think NASA's "cleared for human flight" means much. After all, 4% (14/355) of all the astronauts that flew on the space shuttle died when their vehicles exploded.

Starliner is the evacuation option right now. It's a risky one, but until Crew-8 is reconfigured their only option.

ISS is huge, and is very unlikely to fail all at once. In a case of a catastrophic failure, they could stay in a less affected part of the station. All life-critical systems on spacecraft are duplicated and triplicated. With the current SpaceX launch capabilities, a rescue Crew Dragon could arrive within days if not hours.

The evacuation option right now is Starliner

They would use Starliner, which was announced a few weeks ago.

The option was between Starliner or Crew-9, so not using Starliner means they'll use Crew-9.

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