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Comment by bnralt | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this is better:

Cruise line A and cruise line B drop their passengers off at a remote island for 5 days, and then come to pick them up and take them home. After cruise line B drops theirs off, the cruise ships breaks down, and the passengers can't be picked up after 5 days, so they're stuck on the island with no immediate way to get off. Cruise line A says "OK, the next cruise ship we send will be at half capacity, so we can get the passengers from cruise line B off the island and get them home."

Is cruise line A rescuing the passengers from cruise line B? I'd say yes.

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The main reason people don’t want to call it a rescue is because they dislike Musk. If there were no politics involved people wouldn’t be handwringing themselves so much over the word rescue.

If the spaceship that took you somewhere wasn’t able to get you back as planned and cannot get you back as planned and someone else has to go get those people, that’s a rescue.

> If the spaceship that took you somewhere wasn’t able to get you back as planned and cannot get you back as planned and someone else has to go get those people, that’s a rescue.

If you were on cruise then yes, if you are a professional team who trained for years to stay in dangerous conditions and the only thing out of ordinary is delayed transport back then not. If politics were not involved no one would call it a rescue.

Seems like similar things in the past were called rescues: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/russia-launches-res...

Good point. If this situation is equivalent then why not I guess. But note the PBS one says "urgent need for the capsule". Unclear why. Is it urgent in this case?

In case of Russians there was a coolant leak

If you are working in Antarctica and need to wait for another transport home it sounds okay. If you urgently need treatment and must perform a surgery on yourself then that's an emergency

> In case of Russians there was a coolant leak

Starliner’s manoeuvring thrusters weren’t working!

They really hate that Elon is actually sending a ~~submarine~~ capsule to get people stranded in a ~~cave~~ metal tube.

It's slightly more nuanced than that, in that starliner didn't actually break down. It had some issues which presented increased risk for the astronauts, but it was still operational. If there was a true emergency on ISS, they would've gone on starliner. But because there was no danger of them staying longer till the next ride, they opted out of using starliner given the increased risk.

> It had some issues which presented increased risk for the astronauts, but it was still operational

We didn’t know that!

> because there was no danger of them staying longer till the next ride

I suppose it’s a step forward that we’ve normalised the baseline dangers (and costs, personal and financial) of being in space.

Cruise passengers stuck on an island without other transport would be rescued because personally for them it is completely out of ordinary.

Workers who signed up to get paid to be on the island and do some work? Knowing that there is only one line of transport and it can be irregular? Going through months or years of training beforehand? Maybe "rescue" is a sensationalization when used in a news headline.

> Is cruise line A rescuing the passengers from cruise line B? I'd say yes.

IMO that's only true in line A's PR campaign, assuming they're adversarial enough to run with it.

In your analogy, the passengers are always "stuck on the island with no immediate way to get off" for at least 5 days, as they have no alternative way to get back during their planned stay. If B's cruise ship breaks down - and AFAIK in this case, "breaks down" doesn't mean the ship can't move, just that the risk of catastrophic failure during the trip crossed a preset threshold - that's more of an operational disruption. The stranded passengers are still safe and sound, they just need to wait for the next scheduled cruise to take them home.

The schedule bit matters IMO. It would be a rescue if the next scheduled ride would be way too late to help them and thus it had to be moved up to save their lives.

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