And thus begins the pitch for a theatrical release. A dark comedy about a few zany Russians on the Space Station who did not want to return home, BUT did NOT want - TO STAY in SPACE!

I was just wondering if those guys will ask for asylum

Only if they don't have loved ones

Why on earth would they? They are important public figures they'll still live comfortable lives. The upper crust have the capital to ride out this war unscathed.

That is never going to happen lol, Russia will keep them up there for a double cycle if they have to. They are probably more referring to the one American who went up in that Soyuz and how to get them back should Russia fail to come up with an alternative.

for the low low price of a twitter sized bailout

I’m sure NASA will offer the Russians a ride home. It will be on Roscosmos to decline it.

Yes, that is what I already said

As long as they use elevators, rich important russians have been falling off stairs a lot lately

> Why on earth would they?

Right, but they are not currently on earth, so…

We already had the movie in 1991 when when the Soviet Union dissolved and ended up stranding a cosmonaut on MIR.

"What's that? I didn't make that out. The plasma fire build up is about to make us LOS. Catch you back at the ground after we land, Russia."

I would ask for asylum from Earth and just stay up there.

And avoid windows, food and Putin.

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And this is how the ISS ended up with its first permanent residents.

The Russians don’t have the cool spacesuits so this is a no go.

Commercial crew missions are carefully negotiated. I get the Elon hate but just stop.

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For those interested in a serious answer: The two issues are spacesuits and seating. Both are custom fitted. This will apply to the two solutions: A) Sending another Crew Dragon to return the 2 cosmonauts & 1 NASA astronaut and B) Adding these 3 to the return of the Dragon currently attached, making a total of 7.

This answer addresses the article. Of course if Russia launches a replacement Soyuz this will be moot. But we don't know if a Soyuz is near readiness.

Option B seems extremely unlikely even though the article makes it sound like it's under consideration. Option A is much safer and much easier to implement. Crew 6 is scheduled to launch in mid-February. That Dragon has had plenty of time to be refurbished and is probably just waiting for loading the consumables. It could be launched with 1 pilot, with 3 empty seats. Could be launched empty but NASA does like manual back-up to autonomy. Plus, the other 3 aren't familiar with Dragon's systems, something they'll need even for their brief flight. Another Dragon is due to launch the Polaris Dawn mission and may be physically available, and I've no doubt Jared Isaacman would agree to postpone the mission if NASA requested it.

Dragon seats and IVA suits are all custom fitted. However, afaik the sizing for the seats is done with various bolt-on pieces. Among the 8 crew on the 2 upcoming launches there are probably 3 seats close enough in size to the 3 unscheduled crew members. The suits will be more difficult. But again, there are a number of suits made for several upcoming flights - and ones from old flights, afaik. The crews didn't get to keep them as souvenirs. Among all these there may be some that are a "close-enough" fit for this unusual circumstance. But the SpaceX suits are a snug fit, that may not work.

IVA suits are very much desired but a descent can be made without one. It's needed in case of sudden depressurization or a fire (in which case the cabin is depressurized to starve the flames). But no American spacecraft has had a problem like this in space. The risk of making a descent in shirtsleeves is very low - definitely lower than in a Soyuz with possibly fried avionics and no way to regulate cabin temperatures. (Yes, the risk isn't zero and it did happen to a Soyuz decades ago, but that hardly applies. And geez, if anyone brings up Apollo 1, I swear you haven't paid attention to spacecraft designs since the 70s.)

Option B involves a longish answer of its own, available on request. I can only see it occurring if there's a drastic emergency requiring evacuating the ISS entirely.

I guess neither the US astronaut, since everyone goes up with his/her flight suit, which in case is a Russian one, not compatible with Dragon.

Until war breaks out down here, all future relief missions are cancelled and than the crew butcher and eat each other. And it’s all broadcast down here because they leave their feeds on and the horror of it all is so disturbing that it leads to a more lasting peace. Well after all national boundaries are dissolved we form a world government and the poor rise up and eat the rich.

They could send some up if necessary, though. There's a CRS mission and two crew dragon missions (Crew-6 and Polaris Dawn) coming up in the next 2-3 months, so if they thought the risk was high enough to warrant it there is definitely solutions available.

Which film was that? Sounds great. If you’ve not seen it yet, Salyut 7 was an amazing film.

I would be surprised if the Dragon planned for Polaris Dawn still has its IDA. With the planned spacewalk for Dawn there has been a lot of talk about how the docking adapter makes the entrance quite small-too small to even fit a NASA EVA suit. I've no doubt that Jared would give NASA his Dragon if asked, but it may not be possible.

I hate to be that guy... But can I hear option B please? Thank you for taking the time to write this out. I found your explanation above very interesting.

So the agency that has never LANDED a rocket is also permissive body to the people who CAN and DO land rockets regularly?

Good point. The question we don't know the answer to is how quickly the IDA can be reinstalled but NASA is loath to accept anything quickly. Fortunately we have the Crew 6 option.

Option B is putting 7 people in a capsule with 4 seats. 3 people ride strapped down with the cargo.

It's not the safest option, but if the ISS has to be evacuated it's certainly better than being stranded in orbit and probably better than gambling on a possibly crippled Soyuz

No problem. This is actually just a copy/paste from my answer in the SpaceX Lounge.

When Crew Dragon launches it carries a small amount of cargo strapped to the floor in the standard NASA/ISS stowage bags. This also implies there are attachment points for these bags. Stuff these with soft materials and the g-forces are taken care of. Splashdown will be a bit intense but I'd rather risk small injuries vs dying in a spacecraft with fried electronics and potentially deadly internal temperatures. The space station has plenty of soft stuff like empty equipment stowage bags and especially bags and bags of dirty laundry. Doubtless there are a variety of additional straps to improvise with. IIRC some of the ubiquitous storage bags are held to the walls by a cargo netting made with flat straps.

In this scenario descending in shirtsleeves is the only option, there won't be enough umbilical ports for 7 SpaceX suits even if they were available on the station. The Russian Sokol IVA suits have a very different design to supply air to the suit for breathing and cooling.

No he's talking about a real life incident in 1991

lol

I get people like to claim Elon is overcharging for space access and here’s currently the punching bag of the week for how he’s handling twitter, but the opposite is pretty true. Space access is a lot cheaper now that SpaceX exists compared to legacy space companies like blue, NG, ULA, etc. The Falcon 9 is a good, well designed rocket that works really well and is way cheaper to launch than any other commercial space rocket before it.

all true. except for one thing. It is a 100% inevitability that spacex will kill astronauts at somepoint if they are doing manned spaceflight. Not because of Elon or because of SpaceX but because things break and go wrong always.

Who thinks Elon will react well to all the careful, slow deliberation NASA has traditionally responded to such things? Especially in the face of putting a hold on SpaceX's launch ambitious schedule pending the investigation?

Personally, i think it will go about as well as congress asking trump for his tax returns. Especially if it comes out while Elon is still playing the petulant man-child over at twitter.

There’s not a lot Elon can actually do in that scenario since they are reliant on NASA and the US government letting them launch to do so. Private space flight is another story, but SpaceX has only started doing manned flights somewhat recently so I actually do think they would do the right thing in that scenario because no one is going to fly on a rocket that they think will kill them.

Also remember that SpaceX has been gung ho about testing in ways that don’t risk anything other than the vehicle, like the Starship test flights they did earlier and failing to land the booster stage of the F9 thousands of times before doing it consistently. It took a long time before they started flying people on the Falcon 9 and we’re not going to see Starship fly people for years.

? Quote “we already had the MOVIE in 1991” ? Sounds like he was talking about a movie

He's usually the word movie as a joke because it's something that sounds like the plot to a movie, but actually happened in real life. You can just Google it and find it yourself so I'm not sure why you're still here arguing, it definitely DID happen in 1991:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Krikalev