#BREAKING SpaceX launches rescue mission for 2 NASA astronauts who are stuck in space until next year https://t.co/v4AMjpGGiT
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) September 28, 2024
I mean, yeah, I guess Crew 9 now kinda sorta counts as a "rescue" mission, but I hate this frame so much.
The original 4-person crew was announced in January, with a launch targeted for August (all these things take a lot of planning far, far in advance of what we see on TV). NASA did delay the mission and make a crew adjustment so Suni and Barry - who are just fine - will come home in February on that vehicle since their test item returned uncrewed out of a surfeit of caution.
The term 'rescue' is loaded, suggesting that they are somehow lost in space and SpaceX has heroically scrambled to get them back before they run out of life support. Like NASA has no contingency plans when testing spacecraft. Those 2 members of the Boeing Crew Flight Test mission are still doing their jobs, now part of Expedition 72, which is commanded by...Suni (who says she is in her happy place).
We've seen shuffles like this before. Gemini 6A was the result of an exploding Agena target vehicle in '65 (they conducted the first successful rendezvous in Earth orbit - because Gemini 4 failed to - with Gemini 7 instead) . Apollo 8 as we know it today came about because the Lunar Module was behind schedule (didn't go up until March '69 on Apollo 9). Stuff happens when you're working with new platforms.
Everybody's acting like this is Apollo 13 or a West Wing episode, and it's just fucking dumb.
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