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Comment by Denote6737 | Hacker News Reader

What about all the other things. For example the crew dragon was docked back in september waiting for return. The last administration could have called for return at any point before the inaguration to claim glory, but didn't because they aren't hacks.

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Having a docked ship is not enough. There must be a docked ship on station at all times for evacuations. The thing that was needed was another ship to take some people back and not everyone (well, all but any Russians, since they have their own ships).

Wrong, they could have packed all 4 astronauts (the 2 that came to the ISS on the dragon and Suni and Butch) into the docked dragon and returned at any point. They only waited for the next dragon (crew 10) so that not only the 3 people using the Soyuz would be left on the ISS. But this would have absolutely been possible. The remaining crew would have used their Soyuz in emergencies anyways, they don’t need the dragon.

There's way more than just them. Thanks to all the delays the 4-man SpaceX Crew-8 [1] stayed on the ISS until October 23rd, becoming the longest Dragon stay ever. And the 3-man crew from Soyuz MS-26 got there on September 11th, and is still there.

In fact reading the Soyuz MS-26 Wiki, one of the many records this whole debacle ended up breaking is that when the MS-26 entered into space, there were more humans in space than ever before, with a total of 19!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-8

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-26

Did you read my comment? Currently, there is one Dragon and one Soyuz docked to the ISS. If Crew-9 had left earlier, before the Crew-10 Dragon had arrived, there would have been only the Soyuz left.

Do the Soyuz still touch down in a desert in a place like Kazakhstan or do they touch down on water nowadays? The desert solid ground touch downs seem so brutal.

Soyuz is always landing on ground (except in emergencies, and Soyuz 23 broke through a frozen lake). They do have Retro rockets that are fired shortly before contact and dampened Seats, but from the reports I heard, it's still a very rough landing.

But Crew 10 had also been planned for a while, so the narrative that Trump ordered a new ship to go up "NOW" can't be true. For example, heres a post about NASA moving the launch date to March, in December last year: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2024/12/17/nasa-ad...

This is definitely true. The only questions are: a) could they have gone back home on the retrofitted seats on Crew 8 or b) could there had been a Crew 10 sooner to allow them to go home on Crew 9 sooner. I don't really know what's up with those questions.

What do you mean? The fact that they didn't return the astronauts implies the last administration's integrity?

Yes, it shows they weren't manipulating NASA for political points.

That does not make sense.

Did they care more about "not manipulating NASA for political points" than about astronauts who were stuck in space for 9 months, with all the harmful effects that it entails?

To be fair, death from re-entry is pretty bad for your health as well.

Why didn't they do it for the health of the astronauts? What would make doing so "hacks"?

Why would you do it for the health? Their stays weren’t extremely long compared to other ISS expeditions.

Standard rotations are about 6 months - Butch and Suni were supposed to be up there for 8 days... Their families, their lives, and everything normal for way longer than planned. Health routines or not, that’s a brutal toll—mentally, emotionally, not just bones and muscles. Stop downplaying it like it’s no big deal

All you said are literally in the descriptions of the jobs they signed up for.

They literally train for multiple gruesome death scenarios as part of their training. Not just "well, your 8-day stay has now become several months"

Just because they signed up for it, doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to prevent it. Staying for 9 months in space is not a small deal for people's health.

So NASA did indeed try to prevent it, and weighed it against a multitude of other considerations, and actual experts running actual missions have explicitly and patiently explained the what, the how, and the why.

>All you said are literally in the descriptions of the jobs they signed up for.

Dismissing every exceptional circumstance as "the jobs they signed up for." is absurd. That's like saying the crash of flight 5342 that killed 67 people is what those passengers signed up for, so it's no big deal.

Turns out they were prepared for this circumstance, had a back up plan, and communicated this plan many times.

Just because you don't like this plan doesn't mean it's bad/political/whatever other fantasy you may come up with.

> That's like saying the crash of flight 5342 that killed 67 people is what those passengers signed up for, so it's no big deal.

Nope, it isn't like that at all. None of those passengers trained, rigorously, for an extreme number of extreme situations. Unlike astronauts whose training includes all that, and more.

And risk and exceptional circumstances are absolutely one hundred percent in the job description. Unlike the passengers in the your analogy you pulled out of an unmentionable place.

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