Do Not Say The Boeing Starliner Astronauts Are Stranded In Space, Which They Cannot Presently Return From Due To Problems With Their Spacecraft

Back on June 5, NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams traveled from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to the International Space Station, aboard the Boeing Starliner capsule. This was the first crewed mission for the Starliner; it was meant to last eight days. Today’s date is Aug. 1, and Wilmore and Williams are still aboard the ISS. The reason? Well, ah, ha ha, you see, the thing is, uh, hm. Well.

They’re not stranded! That’s the important thing. NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams are not stranded in space. Do not say or write that they are stranded in space, because they are not stranded there. They simply are up there, in space, with a spacecraft that needs fixing, and must stay there until it is fixed, and we do not know when that will be. Whatever you want to call that, surely we can agree that it is not strand, uh, -ment.

The Starliner, Boeing’s first commercially developed spacecraft, had a famously rocky development period. It ran more than a billion dollars over budget and accumulated years of delays; its first crewed launch, in fact, was initially meant to take place in 2017. In the intervening years Boeing’s commercial aircraft developed a habit of disassembling themselves mid-flight; overdue scrutiny revealed the aerospace company to be a rapidly decaying shell of itself, stripped of its rigorous quality controls and drained of its institutional expertise by executives who are by now, in moral if somehow not legal terms, responsible for hundreds of deaths. (Also, whistleblowers against the company keep dying suddenly?) June 5 was at least the third time Boeing had gotten within two hours of attempting Starliner’s first crewed launch; the previous attempts were aborted due to problems with, in turn, an oxygen valve on the Starliner and a computer problem on the ground.

You can see how all of this might have made anybody nervous about the Starliner’s reliability as a means of putting humans into space and then, also somewhat importantly, bringing them back to Earth alive and not incinerated by descent through the upper atmosphere. You can see why this might have made people skittish when the Starliner developed thruster problems on its way to ISS, and made people want to use words like “stranded” and “uh-oh” and “Space Shuttle Columbia” when the Reuters news agency reported, on June 28—nearly two weeks after astronauts Willmore and Williams were supposed to have returned to Earth—that the Starliner was not “approved to fly home under normal, non-emergency circumstances.”

But those concerns were and are unwarranted, because the Starliner is fine and the astronauts are not stranded in space! In fact, they are “safe on space station,” according to NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich—it’s great to know they’re not just floating around up there!—and will come home “at the right time,” which as of this writing is a mere 48 days later than the date of their scheduled return. NASA and Boeing simply need to do some more testing and troubleshooting on the Starliner’s TOTALLY NORMAL thruster and helium-leak (oh right, ha ha, forgot about that) problems in the frozen zero-G vacuum of space, which cannot be simulated on the ground. This is important as it will help engineers determine, according to Space.com, how to “redesign Starliner.” I don’t see why the need to redesign it should alarm anyone!!!

Hell, the astronauts even got aboard the Starliner and decoupled it from the ISS back on June 26, when orbital debris passed dangerously close to the station, posing a threat that might have necessitated an emergency deorbital procedure! So clearly they were willing to, ah, take their chances with the Starliner, when the threatened alternative was possibly being ripped apart by supersonic shrapnel 254 miles above their home planet. Not stranded! Not stuck!

What does “stranded” even mean, anyway? They are still under Earth’s gravitational influence. Are you ever truly stranded if the immutable physical laws of the universe will cause you to fall toward—and even land on, albeit possibly in the form of a very sad and small snowfall of ash—the place you supposedly “can’t” get to? What does “can’t” even mean, anyway? The astronauts’ atoms can return to Earth at any time, and probably will at some future point. Is this not in fact a philosophical and/or linguistic question about what it truly means to “be,” and to be “at” or “on” a place? Yes! Or no. Wait. It’s whichever one means they’re not stranded in space, which they are NOT.

Merriam-Webster defines “stranded” as “having a strand or strands, especially of a specified kind or number.” I mean, why are we even talking about this? That does not describe these astronauts at all. Except for maybe their hair.

Has anybody even considered the possibility that maybe they don’t want to come back? You’ve never even been to space. Maybe it actually is great up there. You’re the one who’s stranded! You are. Shh.