No, Astronauts On The ISS Are Not Stranded Because Of Boeing’s Starliner, Despite What You Read

Starliner Top Stuck
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As we’ve perhaps seen too much of recently, events that are happening in the world – and above it – are becoming leaden with all sorts of extra baggage, and it all just seems to be in service of the constant level of outrage and alarm the internet appears to want us to maintain, nonstop. This is currently happening with the reporting about the situation of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft, currently docked at the International Space Station. You may have read any number of headlines that the two astronauts that traveled in the capsule are currently “stuck in space” or stranded there. They’re not.

Now, Boeing’s Starliner absolutely had problems; it’s already about four years behind schedule, and there were issues prior to this launch, including the helium leaks in the thruster subsystems that are causing the current issues with the spacecraft.

The helium is used to pressurize the reaction control system thrusters that are used to orient the spacecraft in space, and are mounted on the service module, which is designed to be discarded before re-entry and burn up in the atmosphere. The service module systems are separate from those in the crew capsule, which is reusable up to ten times and will return to Earth.

Starliner Diagram

That’s why Starliner is extending its stay at the ISS, at least in part; if Boeing wants to learn what is going on with these helium leaks, they need to study the spacecraft, and to do that it needs to be not incinerated in the atmosphere; hence, the time to study what’s going on is when it’s docked to the space station, because it’s a lot easier to see what’s wrong with something before it’s incinerated.

So far, the Starliner’s flight computer took seven maneuvering jets offline, but subsequent test-firings have confirmed that all but one are still viable for use. From Spaceflight Now:

“That “hot-fire” test gave engineers confidence the jets needed for post-undocking maneuvers and the critical de-orbit “burn” will work as needed to drop the ship out of orbit for re-entry.

Likewise, officials said they were confident the helium leaks could be managed even if one or more gets worse after undocking. Only seven hours of helium is needed for the return to Earth and the Starliner has more than 10 times that amount left on board.”

Now, here’s the important part: Even if they can’t figure out why the helium is leaking and it continues to do so, Starliner has plenty of helium – ten times the amount required – to make the return back to Earth. The spacecraft is rated to be able to remain docked at the station for 45 days – which can be stretched to 72 if needed – so it’s not like they’re in a major time crunch, even if some headlines like to say things like “the window for return flight is closing,” which, yeah, it is, but in the sense that technically, any window to do anything is closing.

The point is, nobody is stranded. If the two astronauts who went up in Starliner, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, need to get back to Earth, they can. And yet, we see headlines like this one, written in massive, we’re-at-war-sized type:

ASTRONAUTS STRANDED IN SPACE, screams Yahoo! Finance, despite the fact that there are no astronauts stranded in space. This is just shitty, alarmist reporting, and Yahoo! is not alone here:

Headlines Starliner

They’re not stuck! Nobody is stuck or stranded or anything like that! It’s having problems, yes, absolutely, but those problems do not mean that the astronauts are stranded on the ISS! Maybe something will change, maybe something will get worse, maybe a micrometeorite will puncture a critical system or an alien pod will burst its offspring out of the chest of an astronaut, I can’t predict the future, and perhaps that will cause them to become stranded and succumb to Space Madness or whatever, but at this moment? Nobody is stuck.

If you’re really desperate for tales of people being stuck in space, may I suggest the 1969 Gene Hackman space-thriller Marooned?:

I can’t believe how many outlets are reporting this as a stranded-in-space story when it is very much not that, by the simple fact of them not being, you know, stranded in space.

On top of all of this are the SpaceX/Elon Musk acolytes, because it seems to be impossible to have any story lately that doesn’t some how involve the world’s richest man. Their take on this seems to mostly be masturbatory fantasies that the Starliner capsule will be unusable and NASA will have to beg Elon to send up a SpaceX Dragon capsule to save the astronauts:

There’s more, of course, posted by people unfamiliar with the meaning of “literally”:

…and more, shittier takes, too, seasoned with some extra-shitty racism, because why not:

… there’s so, so many more. It’s ridiculous. But the rabid Elon-worshippers I expect this from, it’s not a surprise. It’s the major news outlets that are latching onto the alarmist and inaccurate “stranded” narrative that get me. Yes, Boeing has had a long string of problems recently, and so has the development of the Starliner, but that doesn’t mean we just get to make up whatever narrative is the most luirdly thrilling at any moment. We deserve better than this.

I’m very confident these astronauts will be back on Earth quite soon, and the people at NASA and Boeing will have the information they need to get this fixed. And there will be SpaceX capsules that go to and from the station, and the world will continue to revolve below.

Man. Everyone needs to just calm the fuck down.

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66 thoughts on “No, Astronauts On The ISS Are Not Stranded Because Of Boeing’s Starliner, Despite What You Read”

  1. Thanks Torch for some legitimate reporting on this. Now, how do we get this article featured on the evening news on all networks so that our internet averse older generations can see it?

  2. This is a needed article. Same thing on the airplane side. Yes, Boeing sucks. No, Boeing is not responsible for every bad thing that ever happens on a Boeing plane. Headline today talked about a plane dropping 27,000 feet in 15 minutes, as though that was horrible. That’s an 1,800 foot per minute descent, which is a very mild one. Planes routinely hit 3, 4, and even 5,000fpm on initial descent from high altitudes.

    And the pressurization problem they reported could very easily be “the copilot forgot to put pressurization on auto.”

  3. I used to be a huge Boeing fan but once the MBAs usurped the engineers it all went downhill from there. I do agree with the main take of the article that they are not STRANDED!!!ZOMG111 but I’ll admit at this point I don’t fully trust that craft to get our people home safely, either. As others have stated, zero surprise if the Starliner goes back empty and the crew comes home another way – and if that’s what it takes to keep them safe, so be it.

  4. you seem to have an abundance of faith that NASA and ULA/Boeing are being completely honest in their public statements.

    I, for one, fully expect the capsule to return from orbit unmanned “out of an abundance of caution” and the astronauts will come home in one of the 2 other capsules that are actually known to work and be safe (Soyuz or Crew Dragon).

    over/under on this is 30 days.

    anybody care to wager tree-fiddy?

    1. There I was, goin pee in my space bag, and this other astronaut come up to me and say “hey I need to use that space bag.” I said “well hold on now I got to finish peeing in this space bag so you just gonna have to wait a minute” and then the astronaut said “in that case, I’ma need about tree-fiddy” and then I realize it wasn’t no astronaut in that space suit, it was the gotdamn loch ness monsta!

      2. Did you know that astronauts in zero gravity pee themselves a lot? Your bladder’s signal to your brain relies on gravity. It says, “Hey brain, there’s a shitload of pee in here and it’s getting really heavy. We need to release all this soon.” In a zero gravity environment, the bladder doesn’t feel weighed down, which means they typically can’t tell they need to go until they NEEDTOGO. Being an astronaut is actually super gross in a lot of ways. Don’t even get me started about their farts.

        Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get shoved into my locker.

  7. None of these crazy headlines would be happening if Boeing hadn’t become a shit company, with even shittier quality control and a horrible culture. You reap what you sow. In this case, they are reaping massive distrust, because they’ve shown they can’t be trusted to try to do right by anyone except their shareholders.

  9. Tomorrow’s headline:

    AUTO JOURNALISTS ISSUE FUTILE APPEALS TO REASON

    Sorry, man, the internet is a Borg universe and we’re all just drones in the collective. Resistance is futile.

    2. What, is that a headline from some nicer multiverse place? I think our universe’s would be something more like AUTO JOURNALISTS CALL PEOPLE STUPID FOR BEING CONCERNED ABOUT HEROIC ASTRONAUTS

      Sub headline: various well-known people offer strong opinions from which to choose affiliation.

  10. Ya know, being stuck at least 254 miles from 99.9999999% (rough estimate) of the population of Earth wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing….

    2. Funny enough, there are places in the middle of the ocean where they would be even more removed from contact with the rest of civilization!

    3. I wonder if they have the lowest average proximity (average of distances to each person/number of people) of any members of the human race in their flight path. Like if you flew between India and China, and drew a triangle from those two points up to the ISS, would they be essentially closer to more people than anyone on the ground?

      That said, a nice 250-mile moat has got to be good for your mental health.

  11. I hate Musk, but I hate how much of the Starliner launch vehicle is just incinerated even more.

    Also I used to work for the company that made the parachute mortars so I sure hope they work.

  12. Not on the “inside” but I think that the thrusters going offline is the primary problem, and having tried to fix it once, they are really looking that one over before, as you point out, losing the SM in the return. As the astronauts do not have dragon compatible flight suits, they can’t immediately come home that way, so I think the S word might be ok, coming from the highly reputable news outlets you cite… 🙂

  13. Man, this is out of this world…ha ha
    Yeah, Yahoo is just full of yahoo’s…
    Yup, there’s so much bad reporting by mainstream news

  14. Thank You! First, for a clear and concise description of what is going on, but most of all, for lambasting the shit out of the scaremongers.

  15. First Boeing can’t keep doors on their planes, and now space alien pods in their astronauts’ chests? What ever happened to quality control?

  17. If you’re really desperate for tales of people being stuck in space

    No, thank you. Imagining being part of a perfectly routine mission already turns my claustrophobia up to 11. Yikes.

    Although I assume the rigorous (two-year?) simulation training thing filters out people who don’t like being confined to very small spaces. No, not prison, the NASA thing.

  18. It’s the major news outlets that are latching onto the alarmist and inaccurate “stranded” narrative that get me.

    Isn’t “alarmist and inaccurate” just the norm? I’ve only slightly paid attention to mainstream news for maybe two decades and this just seems right in line. I don’t know much about the news before then but from history texts it seems to track back pretty far.

    1. Yup.. I mean even weather news have been “weaponised” this way. The worse part is when crap really hit the fan, people ignore the news because they have been desensitized.

    2. Let me just read some random headlines:

      “Slammed”
      “Lost”
      “Once in a lifetime”
      “Worst”
      “Critical”
      “Big changes”
      “Radical”

      Nah, just some level headed news reporting, crisis averted. No embellishment at all, not at all clickbait. I love when they use words in quotation marks; I never know if they’re quoting or elaborating further to stretch the sentiment and they didn’t actually say that word (or they did, but context is wildly off).

        1. HBO’s “From the Earth to the Moon” episode on Apollo 13 delves into this. The episode is focused on the Earth during the mission since the movie was fairly recent and they saw no reason to re-hash it for the mini-series. Also, the entire series is excellent.

  19. Torch, sometimes you are too good of a person to be in this business. Don’t you know the money isn’t in inconvenient facts, but overblown hype? You like money, don’t you? Sell yourself to the devil of mass media, be rich.

    Of course, this comes from an evil space lizards using mass media to take over the planet.

  21. Starliner needs thrusters to maneuver itself for re-entry. Thrusters failed to operate correctly on the first approach to the station. That is not very confidence inspiring. Is being unwilling to risk using the capsule mean you are stranded? Yes, in my book.

  22. Thank you Torch! Boeing def has it’s issues right now, and news outlets are living for it.

    However you are correct they are not stranded in anyway shape or form. Rumor is:

    Unnamed source indicates internal NASA target date for Starliner return is currently July 6.

  23. Man, those headlines are some top quality hysterical yellow journalism, only thing that would make them maybe a little better would be if there was some way to suggest NASA was feeding astronauts food made from yoga mat chemicals

    1. I’m surprised that 6 people liked this, since we’ve already covered every Elon joke/insult/angle to death the last 48 hours.

  25. it’s a lot easier to see what’s wrong with something before it’s incinerated.

    Whoa whoa whoa whoa there buddy! You can’t just make a statement like that and not cite your sources man! How do we know you didn’t just make that up?!?

      1. If they were serious about inspecting that helium they could put it in some balloons and send them down with the astronauts! Failure is not an option!!!

        1. Now this is proper problem solving! Helium balloons attached to lawn chairs are a brilliant way to gently lower the crew safely back to Earth.

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