Starliner Astronauts Return To Earth After More Than 9 Months In Space (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0176765919
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2258246/starliner-astronauts-return-to-earth-after-more-than-9-months-in-space
- Source link: https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/18/science/spacex-crew-9-astronauts-space/index.html
While the mission has been [3]politically fraught , the astronauts said in a [4]rare space-to-earth interview last month that they were neither stranded nor abandoned. "That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck -- and I get it. We both get it," [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. "But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded." Wilmore added a request: "If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.' That's what we prefer..." CNN has more details on the arrival:
> Williams and Wilmore, alongside NASA's Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, safely splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida at 5:57 p.m. ET. The crew's highly anticipated return came after the crew climbed aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and departed the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET. Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov spent Tuesday morning and afternoon in orbit in the roughly 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide), gumdrop-shaped SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Gradually descending, the capsule carried the astronauts from the space station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, toward the thick inner layer of our planet's atmosphere.
>
> Around 5 p.m. ET, the Crew Dragon capsule began firing its engines to begin the final phase of the journey: reentry. This leg of the journey is considered the most dangerous of any flight home from space. The jarring physics of hitting the atmosphere while traveling more than 22 times the speed of sound routinely heats the exterior of returning spacecraft to more than 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,926 degrees Celsius) and can trigger a communication blackout. After plunging toward home, the Crew Dragon spacecraft deployed two sets of parachutes in quick succession to further slow its descent. The capsule decelerated from orbital speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,359 kilometers per hour) to less than 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) as the vehicle hit the ocean.
>
> After the vehicle hit the ocean, a SpaceX rescue ship waiting nearby worked to haul the spacecraft out of the water. Williams and Wilmore and their crewmates will soon exit Dragon and take their first breaths of earthly air in nine months. Medical teams will evaluate the crew's health, as is routine after astronauts return from space, before deciding next steps. Ultimately, the NASA crew members will return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
You can watch a recording of the re-entry and splashdown [5]here .
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/18/science/spacex-crew-9-astronauts-space/index.html
[2] https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0033233/spacex-launches-nasas-crew-10-mission-to-iss
[3] https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delayed-return-of-u-s-astronauts/
[4] https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/15/033223/iss-astronauts-give-space-to-earth-interview-weeks-before-finally-returning-to-earth
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDYt1l_7UvU
No (Score:2)
Their feelings on the matter are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if they were prepared for it. It doesn't matter how committed they are. It wasn't supposed to happen. Glad they were prepared and could handle it, but that isn't the point, and it never was.
Re: (Score:1)
> Their feelings on the matter are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if they were prepared for it. It doesn't matter how committed they are. It wasn't supposed to happen. Glad they were prepared and could handle it, but that isn't the point, and it never was.
Just pointing out the double standard if this were SpaceX there'd be a small Xitter army defending it with think about all the data that was collected, look at all the science that was done, but.. NASa bad, SpaceX gud.
SpaceX rocket explodes, raining debris from sky for second time in a row
[1]https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj92wgeyvzzo
Re: (Score:2)
They're definitely outdoing the rest of the world, combined, with the Falcon 9. It's a good rocket.
So far, Starship appears to be going through the development cycle that was revolutionized with the Soviet N1.
By any metric, anywhere else in the world, the entire rocket would be considered a failure many times over. The Soviets would have shot the person responsible for it by now.
That all being said- I'm glad work is still chugging away on Starship.
But the double standard is real.
Re: (Score:2)
Weren't there multiple falcon 9 failures too?
I'm not a fan of Musk, but I'm not convinced this is a shockingly worse development cycle than the falcon 9.
Re: (Score:2)
1 that I know of.
Lots of booster landing failures, of course. But I don't think anyone counts that as a launch failure, as the boosters were disposable anyway, with recovery being a long term goal.
I'm pretty sure the Starship upper stage either holds the current record for the most exploded rocket in history, or is working on catching it.
Re: (Score:2)
> 1 that I know of.
> Lots of booster landing failures, of course. But I don't think anyone counts that as a launch failure, as the boosters were disposable anyway, with recovery being a long term goal.
> I'm pretty sure the Starship upper stage either holds the current record for the most exploded rocket in history, or is working on catching it.
Elon Musk's favorite SpaceX explosions, posted 7 years ago: [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9FzWPObsWA
Re: (Score:2)
Ya, I remember that. All booster recovery kabooms, except for one.
Re: (Score:2)
> Ya, I remember that. All booster recovery kabooms, except for one.
There are others. Here's another: [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTVkhp0MxMc
Re: (Score:2)
From [1]wiki [wikipedia.org]:
Rockets from the Falcon 9 family have a success rate of 99.35% and have been launched 463 times over 15 years, resulting in 460 full successes, two in-flight failures (SpaceX CRS-7 and Starlink Group 9–3), one pre-flight failure (AMOS-6 while being prepared for an on-pad static fire test), and one partial failure (SpaceX CRS-1, which delivered its cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), but a secondary payload was stranded in a lower-than-planned orbit).
CRS-7 was the one I was th
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches
Re: (Score:2)
You are ignoring the "test" flights of Falcon1 where merlin engine was first used, that experienced three consecutive launch failures, with the first two attributed to fuel leaks and the third to a timing error during stage separation
Starship is no N1, having actually left the launch pad repeatedly without rud
The Boeing Starliner, on the other hand was supposed to be human-rated and was on an occupied test flight when NASA decided they could not depend on the thrusters to operate properly
Getting the astrona
Re: (Score:2)
No, I am not ignoring the [insert rocket here that isn't a Falcon 9]
Thank you for playing, though.
> Starship is no N1, having actually left the launch pad repeatedly without rud
Well, to be fair, they only worked on the N1 for 3 years ;)
Starship is on its way to year 5.
> The Boeing Starliner, on the other hand was supposed to be human-rated and was on an occupied test flight when NASA decided they could not depend on the thrusters to operate properly
How is this relevant to this conversation??
> Getting the astronauts back was planned months ago and has nothing to do with who is in the WH
Hi, welcome to the discussion, where you'll see this is entirely what was debated, and you're telling this to the person who agrees with that sentiment. But uhhh, thanks?
> You should check out the development steps leading to the current centaur 2nd stage before giving starship any awards for being the most explody
Eh?
"Centaur" is such a complicated multi-dimensional context that I'm afraid you're going to have to be mo
Re: (Score:2)
The first three Falcon launches failed. The first one actually failed twice, once on the pad and once in the air.
They weren't test launches either, they were carrying real payloads. For the fourth launch they decided to do an actual test launch with no payload and it succeeded.
Re: (Score:2)
Falcon 1, not 9.
Re: (Score:2)
Rocket science is normally meant that you prepare and plan and verify in advance because there is no second chance. Sorry, but the track record of Starship is abysmal.
Re: (Score:2)
These people were on a mission for NASA. It was going to take as long as it took.
There was never some kind of mythical ability for them to leave whenever they wanted.
As they said- that's the spaceflight program.
Had there been an emergency, they could have come home early. There wasn't, and so it was "whenever it was expedient."
I, for the fucking life of me, can't figure out how in the fuck you feel like you're somehow entitled to to replace these peoples understanding of the mission they signed up for,
Re: No (Score:1)
Without commenting on this situation in particular, generally it should be reasonable to assume that the comments of the astronauts are also obviously politically motivated and represents the view that their employer wants them to a represent and not some genuine expression of their lived experience.
Re: (Score:2)
Were that the case, they obviously would have said the Biden administration had abandoned them there ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody said it was the plan. It's what the plan became when the planned return trip failed.
Why was a new rocket not spun up instantly to bring them back? Because the better plan, in the eyes of NASA, was to bring them home on Crew-9.
[1]As was the plan back in 2024 [factcheck.org].
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delayed-return-of-u-s-astronauts/
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing can really prepare you for what was the world's longest layover.
Re: (Score:3)
They're both test pilots. It was a test flight.
Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)
> Starliner Astronauts Return To Earth After More Than 9 Months In Space
And then DOGE fired them. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
As Boeing Test Pilots, are they even Federal Employees?
Re: (Score:2)
> As Boeing Test Pilots, are they even Federal Employees?
Does that even matter to this Administration? :-/
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Williams and Wilmore are both NASA employees, not Boeing employees.
Lets be clear about what they're evading (Score:1, Troll)
There were earlier options for bringing them back, but the Biden administration demurred because they didn't want to give the "win" to persona non grata Mr. Musk.
They did not say that they were not stranded nor abandoned, as the summary misleadingly says.
They said that they don't FEEL stranded nor abandoned. Adults understand that is a different statement, and such weasel words are usually used to evade the truth by people who are uncomfortable with outright lying.
Musk has said several times he was willing
Re:Lets be clear about what they're evading (Score:5, Insightful)
> There were earlier options for bringing them back, but the Biden administration demurred because they didn't want to give the "win" to persona non grata Mr. Musk.
BULLSHIT
As soon as it was determined that the Boeing ship was unsafe, the return plan was to "give the win to persona non grata Mr Musk" by having them come back on the SpaceX ship.
The only question from that point on was how and when to do that. Do we ship them back as cargo in the SpaceX ship that was already there (dangerous)? Do we send a SpaceX ship just to pick them up and bring them back (big cost)? Do we bump two astronauts off of the next planned SpaceX ship (only sending two up) and then have all four astronauts come back together on the SpaceX ship (compromise)?
All the solutions were SpaceX -aka Musk.
It was not a "BIDEN HATES MUSK" issue, it was a question of which MUSK option is best. For the astronauts. For NASA. For the mission.
Fuck your need to politicize everything.
Re: (Score:2)
As I understand it, there were exactly two ways the two test pilots could return to earth, either on a Space X rocket or a Boeing rocket... excluding the amazing stunt displayed in the movie Gravity.
The issue was, as I heard, that there was a political calculation about trying to bring them home before the 2024 election in November - they were, as the previos commenter said, going to return on a Musk Rocket - but not under an air of "saving stranded astronauts" but instead when it was convienient to fold th
Re: (Score:2)
> The issue was, as I heard, that there was a political calculation about trying to bring them home before the 2024 election in November
The problem, is that this is hearsay, and multiple actual fucking astronauts publicly said it was a bald-faced lie. Musk then proceeded to call them idiots.
The story, as told by people who are not Musk, or Trump, was that it was a simple decision to fold them into the normal rotation to avoid the cost of an expedited launch that frankly wasn't in their budget, or their plans.
> Im not so certain if the test pilots were stranded, or felt stranded, they would have felt free to say that while they were, uhm stranded.
Ok. My cousin was stranded in Afghanistan for 4 years.
Before that, my Great Uncle was stranded in Germany for I think 6.
I think, wh
Re: (Score:2)
> ...the idea of a Musk rocket launching off-schedule to retrieve the test pilots was supposedly offered and refused.
Citation needed. Please choose a citation or citations that explains who was supposed to pay for that, and how that would better coincide with the work plans at the ISS for the last half year and the next half year (which is reasonable given that Crew-11 will occur at July or thereafter).
Re: (Score:2)
Was this the return flight that Trump promised on his first day as president? The one that didn't happen?
Re: (Score:3)
This is a lie.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop spreading absurd lies. Here is a [1]very clear description [arstechnica.com] of what actually happened:
> The reality is that NASA set a plan for the return of Wilmore and Williams last August. The spacecraft that brought them back to Earth on Tuesday safely docked to the space station in September. They could have come home at any time since. NASA--not the Biden administration, which all of my reporting indicates was not involved in any decision-making--decided the best and safest option was to keep Wilmore and Williams in orbit until early this year. Musk knew this plan. He had to sign off on it. Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpartisan-when-basic-spaceflight-truths-are-shredded/
Re: (Score:1)
> Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons.
The entire ISS program is full of politically motivated decisions.
The original plan was for the ISS to have a low inclination orbit so it could serve as a waypoint for missions to the moon, Mars, or other stops in deep space. Because there was a decision to include the Soviets in the ISS program the orbit was changed so that launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome could get to the ISS with a reasonable payload. It's not that they could not have put the ISS in an orbit that would make the ISS a useful waypoi
Orangeshit! (Score:2)
> There were earlier options for bringing them back, but the Biden administration demurred because they didn't want to give the "win" to persona non grata Mr. Musk
PROVIT or SHOVIT! Strong claims require strong evidence.
A rescue mission would have thrown off the rotation schedule, cost big money, and possibly left the station under-personed, risking run-away maintenance headaches.
Re: (Score:3)
Why would there be?
If NASA had contracted Boeing back in 2024 instead of SpaceX, would we have mentioned Dave Calhoun?
That's what so fucking hilarious about you parasites.
You can't fucking tell that you're the ones being partisan.
Re: (Score:3)
[1]No. You are a liar, and a cult member. [factcheck.org]
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delayed-return-of-u-s-astronauts/
Welcome back to earth (Score:2)
Please do not mind the gentle pull of gravity on your souls, we kinda have to live with it the whole life.
It's a real shame (Score:1, Funny)
I was hoping for a televised rescue mission where Elon Musk and President Donald Trump go up there to personally rescue the stranded astronauts. Of course there isn't enough space for everyone on the return trip so someone would have to stay behind.
Re: (Score:1)
> where Elon Musk and President Donald Trump go up there to personally rescue...
And then get stranded there for 100 years. LOVEIT!