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Comment by consumer451 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the options are if it is decided that Starliner is unsafe to return with human occupants.

A bit like imagining how many of the royal family have to die before Princess Eugenie becomes Queen or a Borgen-type affair where a junior minister becomes prime minister, can you imagine the crazy sequence of events that has astronauts rescued by a Shenzhou capsule?

And would it produce some detente or raise tensions?

Not really. You mentioned a sequence of unlikely events, while I am wondering about the outcome of an ongoing investigation.

Note that "a bit" refers to the second half of the sentence, not your comment exactly.

Sounds like they may ask Space X to send a Crew Dragon mission to retrieve the astronauts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_2

Crew Dragon

Do they have Dragon suits to fit butch and suni?

Someone @musk that question. knowing his ego, he'll have them made. even I would push to have them made just as a big FU to Boeing and take all of the free press about it.

Well, I have solid evidence that the CEO of Boeing molests small woodland creatures, but I'll come up with some way to rescue the stranded kids^H^H^H^Hastronauts. Trust me - Elon Musk

They might decide it's less risk to just return without suits.

Or maybe they could just send up air and power supply adapters so that their Starliner suits can plug into Dragon?

source: wild speculation with no understanding of how difficult or risky that would be

So bump Crew-9 astronauts and send it up autonomously, or add 2 extra seats to Crew-9?

I read something they would send up Crew Dragon with 2 and bring back 4. At the rate SpaceX launches, they could probably send up a life boat and not even interrupt their schedule. That would be a total flex to pull off. Hell, let the Axios guy go get them!

> I read something they would send up Crew Dragon with 2 and bring back 4.

This makes a lot more sense.

> At the rate SpaceX launches, they could probably send up a life boat and not even interrupt their schedule.

I was wondering about this, but the bottleneck might be Dragon 2 capsules which are ready for launch.

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