The topic is "crew returns to Earth" not arstechnica's routine political spin.
Does arstechnica mention the dolphins even once? Nope. How about Trump? Six times! Meanwhile, sibling comment applauds the writer for his "knowledge of space topics".
When rescuing astronauts stranded on the ISS, one would expect. I can't imagine any other president using that as an opportunity to explicitly bash his predecessor. Can you?
This is a really fascinating case of words having a venacular meaning that become fuzzy out of their normal domain. Could the astronauts have gone back to Earth in an emergency? Yes. Did they have the freedom to leave earlier? Sortof but not really. Could NASA have paid SpaceX another $200 million for an extra mission to pick up in December/January? Probably.
If your car breaks down a couple of miles from home and you call a friend and tell him you're stranded, are you lying? What if it's 20 miles away? But uber exists? What if uber is extremely expensive right now at $2000? But there's a guy next to you offering to sell you a bicycle?
In the end, to ask the question "were they stranded?" we have to unpack "stranded" and figure out what is the question we actually want answered. Is it about the feelings of the astronauts? Their preferences? The danger level they're in? Is it about Boeing's culpability? Is it about whether we can safely call Trump a liar? Musk?
This has the same flaw as the other person who replied to me.
Using the car anology only works if you also say you've got another car following you at all times, fully fuled and capable of getting you home, in which case, no, you are not stranded.
Stranded implies they cant get home. Not that it costs more, or is inconvenient. The litteral definition is "left without the means to move from somewhere".
Words mean what people think they mean. People often mean slightly different (or very different!) things when using the same word. Often words are used non-literally. This all seemed too obvious to mention before now.
If your car breaks down but you decide to wait for the tow truck even though you have a backup car ready to go in case things get bad are you still "stranded"?
The constant in all the news cycles is about how they've been stranded all this time. Which isn't just a bit misleading, its a flat out lie.
Even when starliner departed, they werent standed. There was litterally an emergency plan prepared for how they'd get them home if they had to, and made modifications to the existing crew 8 ship to allow for this. This was all covered in the briefing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc
So once again, nobody was stranded. They could've come home at any point if they needed to.
The definition of stranded is litterally "left without the means to move from somewhere." which is VERY clearly not the case.
You're leaning on some "ackshully technically" definition of stranded. The fact that they had emergency contingencies in place the whole time doesn't invalidate the fact that they were stranded in the common colloquial sense of the term.
If I'm at work and my car breaks down, I'm stranded. I call my buddy to pick me up, and if there is an emergency I can ask a coworker to drive me home, but I'd rather not inconvenience them and so I am stranded until my buddy comes.
The word stranded is almost never used to describe scenarios where literally no contingency exists, because such scenarios almost never happen in modern live. To insist on such pedantry would be to effectively retire the word from common parlance.
The point is not the definition of the word stranded. They were up there for much longer than they expected or planned. That involved some amount of hardship. (Missing their families for months, if nothing else.) Bringing them back was not an appropriate opportunity to make it about how bad Trump thinks Biden is.
All the time. Nothing political about the Punch mission, or the current solar maximum spewing out a bunch of flares last year. Actually it's a bit of a shame the Punch mission wasn't launched sooner, so we could see amazing flares in 3D. But that's just me, I like sun stuff.
The point is, if you seek political stuff you'll find it, even a political spin on a recent flare that is being yet again compared to the Carrington Event. I'm here for the sun stuff and other space stuff. I'm here all the time, before and after the dust settles. I'm here for the "boring" stuff. If you have to ask that question, you're a tourist. Sorry if it comes across as gatekeeping. But it really looks like that to me.
Sure the thing's been politically amplified into oblivion by the parties involved. That doesn't mean ranting about the gulf of america and all the other things the author doesn't like about the current political situation in that arstechnica article, is a good suggestion to be bumped into a top comment. Neither is burying exodust's comment which I think has a very good point that I agree with.
Quote from the arstechnica article: "This is why we can't have nice things.". Yes it is. This is exactly it. Guess I'll just have to wait for the tourists to go elsewhere. Anyone who came for political reasons and stayed for the boring stuff is very much welcome, as always.
What's the design? What's it made of? Where were the materials sourced? Why? Where was it made? Why? Was it supposed to be marked as potentially containing carcinogenics?
What's the design? -Don't know, it's a simple chair.
What's it made of? -Wood and fiber.
Where were the materials sourced? -No idea
Why? -Why what?
Where was it made? -Factory in a town over
Why? -Is it the first "why" or a different one?
Was it supposed to be marked as potentially containing carcinogenics? -Sorry don't follow this one. It's chair to sit on.
I guess you were trying to show that this chair is about just as political as decades running a space race between two world powers? It's a good try but I think we'll need better questions to answer.
It sounds to me like you're starting from a position of "a chair is free of politics" and working backwards to justify that position. Without knowing where the materials came from, how can you declare it's free from politics, or perhaps you don't want to admit the possibility of it being imported, surrendering a toehold for an argument for trade and treaties.
What's considered "normal" for a chair in your corner of the world is determined by your history (and therefore politics). There are regulation that impact the materials and processes that go with making the chair, as well as quality
> Where was it made? -Factory in a town over
Why is the chair factory in the next town over and not your own? Is the factory unionized?
Space can be political or it can be political. Response to Spootnik-level event is political. Gaming with expectable difficulties in space exploration, pointing fingers to the previous administration, is political. But those are different kinds of "political".
I mean, from a certain perspective, it absolutely is.
Where was it manufactured? What were the labor laws where it was manufactured? Was there any environmental impact in its construction? How was it shipped to you, and was there any environmental or safety impact of that transportation? If it broke the day after it arrived, would the manufacturer owe you a replacement, or would you have to replace it at your own cost (caveat emptor)?
These are all decisions that had to be made, and were largely made collectively through a political process. Your chair likely wasn't constructed with slave labor—which was a political choice. If the chair breaks within minutes of arriving, the manufacturer will likely owe you a replacement through its implicit warranty according to the UCC.
So, no, the chair itself doesn't have political opinions. But the chair does have many direct ties to political choices that we've made.
Everything is connected to everything else. Everything anyone does continuously gets tangled with everything else, in a bubble of causality that expands at the speed of light.
That's not a very useful perspective to have, though.
Similarly, everything humans do has some connection to politics. For most things in most contexts, that connection is irrelevant in practice. The only reason one wants to make obviously non-political things political, is to shift the conversation from rational, object-level, reasonable context, to one where truth and objective reality don't matter - and they want to do it, because that bullshit-land is where they live and they have a home-field advantage there.
> I mean, from a certain perspective, it absolutely is.
It's "absolutely" in the same category as running a space race for decades between two superpowers, sacrificing enormous resources including human lives? Ok, then....
Again, the topic is "crew returning to Earth." You, Berger, and whoever posted the arstechnica link have brought politics to the party.
I liked how they had a drone circling the recovery activity at the splashdown site. All live-streamed for our informed entertainment. SpaceX is undeniably doing a great job, although the starship explosions in our atmosphere I'm not a fan of, I look forward to that not happening.
Again, this thread's parent article is a SpaceX mission launch post stating a brief outline and details. And the top comment links to some rubbish tech-wanker article.
What? The parent article is a SpaceX mission post. Meanwhile I note you have contributed 2 posts in this topic and both of them are about Trump. Do you have any thoughts on the actual event that took place? Or is your needle stuck in Trump's groove?
Does arstechnica mention the dolphins even once? Nope. How about Trump? Six times! Meanwhile, sibling comment applauds the writer for his "knowledge of space topics".