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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

"It isn't a rescue mission, it's a regular crew rotation mission with modifications..."

Rescue definition: an act of saving or being saved from danger or distress. The mission to take astronauts off the space station clearly fits this definition - an extended, unplanned and indefinite stay in space has to be distressing at the least.

Has the HN standard become that you can argue the most ridiculous thing if you make that argument against the media?

Edit: "regular crew rotation" implies normal and expected but the point is, even if the crew is in no danger, this wasn't regular or expected.

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I can sorta see why some would quibble over "rescue", because it's not like they're in immediate danger, but at the same time they're stranded because their ride malfunctioned and left them somewhere rather inhospitable. And I think "normal and expected crew rotation" as someone put it undersells the fact that while there isn't a special trip for them only, they had to bump other people off the flight just to get them, specifically.

Would people really be that much happier if it was said instead that they were making room for crew marooned by an unsafe spacecraft? I think I'd normally use the word "rescue" there if it was a ship.

But yet it is true that they plan for this kind of thing and that's why they're not in any particularly significant danger due to being marooned.

> I can sorta see why some would quibble over "rescue", because it's not like they're in immediate danger, but at the same time they're stranded because their ride malfunctioned and left them somewhere rather inhospitable

In any other context this wouldn't be quibbled. If my car broke down a mile outside town and my friend gave me a lift the rest of the way, I would say he rescued me and nobody would quibble it.

The only reason it's being quibbled is because people have a stick up their ass about Elon Musk personally and that stick extends to the way they feel about SpaceX.

This launch was normal and expected crew rotation, they just kicked a few people off the mission so that there would be open seats on the way back.

Yes, to rescue two other people stranded on the ISS who were supposed to return home weeks ago.

> normal and expected crew rotation, they just kicked a few people off the mission so that there would be open seats

That’s neither normal nor expected!

Go back to the age of exploration. A crew’s ship strands them on an island. Another ship was due to come anyway in 6 weeks, and the crew have enough food to last them that interval. They use witches to tell the coming crew of their problems, and that ship agrees to lighten its load to make room for the stranded.

This is a rescue! It’s an easy rescue. But so was, like, pulling my puppy out of the neighbor’s pool when it went under the cover.

Only seems like a rescue if you specify that they're alone on the island to be honest.

If you had said that they were left at an outpost with other people for six months it somewhat loses it's "rescue" vibes.

> If you had said that they were left at an outpost with other people for six months it somewhat loses it's "rescue" vibes

When a country pitches into instability and nations evacuate their citizens, are they not rescuing them?

I suppose I’d invert the question: why does framing the mission as a rescue bug you?

I think rescue implies a higher degree of imminent peril.

I agree. The dictionary definitions mostly involve urgency or distress in the situation. This would be more like a retrieval I think.

"SpaceX capsule used to retrieve astronauts stranded on ISS by malfunctioning starliner."

Is it a rescue? Maybe. Is it a rescue mission? No. It's a normal crew rotation mission that has happened to (arguably) rescue a few people on the way. The mission itself is ordinary, expected, and planned prior to any crisis.

Arguable because everyone has a way back already, the modification to the crew rotation mission just provides a somewhat safer way back.

Edit: And the distinction here matters. A rescue mission would be an expensive unexpected endeavour. The regular crew rotation is an expected operating cost. The modification to the details of the plan for the crew rotation haven't significantly impacted the mission goals - i.e. for the same cost there are still the same number of fresh qualified crew members up there for the same duration, just a slightly different set of people.

> Is it a rescue mission? No. It's a normal crew rotation mission that has happened to (arguably) rescue a few people on the way

I like this.

Nit: it’s not a normal mission. Normal missions don’t leave two seats for folks trained on a different spacecraft. It’s a scheduled mission.

If my car breaks down while I'm at my fully-loaded villa on day 2 of my 30 day vacation, my friend coming to pick me up isn't a rescue mission.

You shift from talking about danger or distress, to "not regular or expected".

Which is it? I think danger and urgency are marks of "rescue". If they had supplies and were in no immediate danger, I don't see how the term or the alarmism qualifies.

If my car breaks down while I'm at my fully-loaded villa on day 2 of my 30 day vacation, my friend coming to pick me up isn't a rescue mission.

I don't think being in a leaky space station for eight months, where you suffer the effects of accelerated aging due to zero gravity, is equivalent to a being in a fully loaded villa for a month.

I'm using the "distress" part of "danger or distress". The average person would view the situation as distressing for the astronauts, for the average person "rescue" is appropriate term. Jeesh.

You mixed the numbers there.

"day 30 of my 2 day vacation" is more accurate.

Your villa is totally incomparable to space or a space station.

Hypothetically:

- you can walk outside, hitch a ride home

- fully loaded means there’s electricity and phones? Call a Taxi?

- walk to a near town shop, buy car parts and fix the car if you have the skills

None of those hypotheticals are even remotely possible in space. It’s a bad comparison.

I would describe rescue as:

Whenever I travel to a location, the planned return transport fails AND I would eventually be dead without outside human assistance. That’s a rescue.

In your villa example that is correct: your friend helping you is not a rescue. It’s a convenient helping hand. A space station is a different beast though.

If your villa was on a remote isolated island without anyone else on it, it would be closer to the space station but still not exactly the same. The island, depending on its size might have bountiful food/animals you can hypothetically harvest, not to mention attempting to plant and grow some seeds from the hypothetical fruits and vegetables you already have.

Very little of this is realistically possible in a space station like the one we have.

> If my car breaks down while I'm at my fully-loaded villa on day 2 of my 30 day vacation, my friend coming to pick me up isn't a rescue mission.

If you chose to say it was, nobody would be doing the "Well ACKSHULLY..." routine with you because that is in fact totally in line with common use of the word rescue and not worth making a stink about even if you think it sounds a little melodramatic.

The ISS situation is more extreme than your example in every way, but you're pulling the ackshully bullshit because you don't like the company that has done it.

>but you're pulling the ackshully bullshit because you don't like the company that has done it.

I wonder if you, like me, have taken a vacation to travel half-way across the United States to watch a SpaceX launch, or had discussions with former heads of NASA as far back as 2011 about what the company meant/means for manned spaceflight. I wonder if you grew up around astronauts or knew people who died on Columbia.

This isn't an appeal to authority, it's a statement of experience. I'm in a pedantic HN subthread and threw in my subjective opinion regarding the use of the term "rescue" - please don't jump to assuming I'm some evil troll.

I will repeat myself, you wouldn't be doing this pedantic nitpicking bullshit with the word 'rescue' in any other context.

No need to repeat yourself, it serves only to self-gratify.

Oh yeah that's annoying. But please, tell me more about all your vacations.

I really hope you're as young as you you're acting.

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