NASA doesn’t say the Boeing Starliner astronauts are ‘stranded’ on the space station, but it’s a word that a lot of people are using.
If you go somewhere expecting an eight-day trip and end up not being able to leave for eight months, most people would consider that “stranded.”
That is what has happened to Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, two NASA astronauts who traveled to the International Space Station in June aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. During the test flight, the propulsion system malfunctioned, and engineers are not certain it would bring the two astronauts back to Earth alive.
So doesn’t that mean the astronauts are stranded?
Delian Asparouhov, a founder and the president of Varda Space Industries, which aims to manufacture drugs and other materials in space, posted on X: ”I don’t know about you, but if I got stuck at an airport for seven months longer than expected, that would definitely qualify as ‘stranded.’”
But for astronauts who spend their careers hoping to travel to space, extra time in orbit — now 10 weeks and counting — is not a nightmarish struggle for survival as it is for Matt Damon’s marooned astronaut character in the movie “The Martian.”
Indeed, it might be more like your boss asking if you would mind extending a short business trip to Paris by half a year.
“Butch and I have been up here before, and it feels like coming home,” Ms. Williams, who has had two previous long stays on the space station, said during a news conference last month. “It’s great to be up here, so I’m not complaining.”