Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed in a New Mexico desert late on Friday, months after its original departure date and without the two astronauts it carried when it launched in early June.
Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch, a Nasa live stream showed, nailing the critical final phase of its mission.
The spacecraft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere around 11pm ET at orbital speeds of roughly 27,400km/h (17,025mph). About 45 minutes later, it deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated a set of airbags moments before touching down at the White Sands Space Harbor, an arid desert in New Mexico.
That makes me wonder. What happens if an astronaut just…refuses to come back? They’re up on the station and their mission is at its end. They broadcast to NASA. “Actually, I’ve decided not to come back. I live here now.” How would NASA handle that situation?
I seem to recall reading somewhere they have sedatives and stuff because people have a real potential to freak out and try to walk out of air locks.
I’ll see if I can find the article.
Edit: I didn’t reread it… but I had this one book marked
Wow. Good find. It looks like they were concerned about a potentially suicidal person opening the hatch. So much so that they actually installed a padlock on it in future flights.
That’s right, I remember that now. A failed experiment or something made the astronaut suicidal…not the one I was thinking of, let me see if I can find the other one lol
Ed Baldwin, is that you?
This video explains it.