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It's great we can bring them down. What a terrifying experience to have a medical issue on the space station. Kidney stone? Ruptured appendix? intestinal blocka
by heyflyguy 9mo ago
It's great we can bring them down. What a terrifying experience to have a medical issue on the space station. Kidney stone? Ruptured appendix? intestinal blockage? How could you keep calm so far away!
- NooneAtAll3 9mo agowhatever is the cause, it is not immediate - or they would've been on the ground couple days ago so no, not appendix
- xeonmc 9mo agoMaybe testicular torsion triggered by zero-G conditions?
- alphager 9mo agoThat's a "needs to be in the OR in 6 hours" situation; no way they waited several days for it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoPregnancy?
- ninkendo 9mo agoThis is what I keep thinking. - Theres a 38 year old woman in the crew - It’s a medical condition that likely wasn’t present when the mission started 4 months ago - It’s serious enough to return the crew, but not serious enough that they must do so immediately I guess we’ll find out in 9 months? (Or not…)
- roryirvine 9mo agoAs I understand it, the studies done with mice suggest that microgravity prevents normal embryo development. The ISS should therefore be regarded as a teratogenic environment, and I'd be shocked if women of childbearing age weren't prescribed highly-effective contraceptives (ie. IUD/IUS or implant) before, during, and after spaceflight.
- ninkendo 9mo agoI’m sure they were prescribed, but it’s always possible for them to fail. I’m curious at what point in the embryo’s development the zero-g becomes an issue, if its immediate vs long term thing. It’s very possible that if it was pregnancy, the embryo is already not viable but she still needs some procedures to ensure her own health (a DnC, etc) that are important but not enough for an emergency evac.
- yunnpp 9mo agoAre you implying that the pregnancy condition occurred onboard?
- ninkendo 9mo agoYes. Sex isn’t allowed on the ISS due to complications with pregnancy, but it’s not crazy to imagine that maybe they just did it anyway. (Who wouldn’t want to? It’s sex in space and it sounds amazing.)
- Rastonbury 9mo agoThere are probably a hundred ailments or illnesses that can fit this description, maybe someone noticed a swollen lymph node or lump somewhere
- ninkendo 9mo agoYeah it’s definitely just a thought. Getting pregnant in space the sort of sordid thing that’s fun to speculate on, but ultimately we just don’t have enough information. We’ll probably never know, either.
- dabadabahn 9mo agoFrom an alien?
- wmf 9mo agoHow could you keep calm so far away By going through a ten-year process that selects for calm people.
- almost_usual 9mo agoI can’t imagine any other group who would be as calm as NASA astronauts. Maybe SEALs or other special forces. It looks like there are a few astronauts that were SEALs, one returned December 9th from the ISS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonny_Kim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonny_Kim
- drewda 9mo agoIn the US, many astronauts start as Air Force pilots. And for the preternaturally calm and confident who don't have the perfect eyesight required to enter the Air Force, many of them apparently serve instead on nuclear submarines...
- decimalenough 9mo agoJonny Kim was indeed a SEAL, and a few more things as well, with a CV almost as impressive as Johnny Sins: > American NASA astronaut, physician, U.S. Navy officer, dual designated naval aviator and flight surgeon, and former Navy SEAL. Note that "physician" here means Harvard MD.
- throwaway2037 9mo agoThis guy is the Chuck Norris of NASA. His Wiki page is wild.
- themafia 9mo agoThe point of training someone to their breaking point is not to make them immune to breaking. It's to give them experience with a realistic battlefield situation and their own physiological responses during it so they stand a basic chance when it does occur.
- manuelmoreale 9mo ago
- vpribish 9mo agoit's only 250 miles
- zitterbewegung 9mo agoMaximum operating depth of a Nuclear submarine is 3,350 ft.
- rudasn 9mo ago(250 miles is about 400km and 3350 ft is about 1km)
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 9mo agoSource? The operating depth of most submarines is ~300 -- 500m (980 -- 1640 ft), roughly one-third to one-half the depth you cite. The two USN nuclear submarines lost due to pressure-hull failures, the Thresher (1963) and Scorpion (1968) both failed at depths of 1,200 to 2,000 ft. Threser's test depth was 1,300 ft (400m), and she was operating at about this depth when communications were lost. Scorpion likely failed at 1,530 ft. (470m). <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)#Cause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)#Cause> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)#Disappearance:_May_1968 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)#Disappe...> There are other submersible vessels in the US Navy which can and have operated at greater depths, notably the submersible Alvin and bathyscaphe Trieste II, but those are not combat vessels. Alvin's test deopth is 6,500m (21,300 ft). Triest II's predecessor, Trieste, reached the floor of the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, deepest known spot in the oceans, at 10,916m (35,814 ft). Trieste II incorporated the pressure sphere from its predecessor. A more conventional, but still experimental, submarine, the USS Dophine (AGSS-555) was a deisel-electric research submarine which reached a depth in excess of 3,000 ft (910 m), probably in 1969. The boat was in-service through 2006.
- 9mo ago
- YVoyiatzis 9mo ago[flagged]
- robertoandred 9mo agoIt's not that the entire crew is compromised medically, it's that logistically if one goes home they all have to.
- spockz 9mo agoWell, yes? The medical issue is apparently severe enough to warrant return. Because the crew dragon is the only way for those astronauts back, barring sending another one up shortly, they also have to come back.
- thot_experiment 9mo agoBruh, you're talking about one of the most protocol laden risk averse organizations known to man. That's an absurd speculation compared to the thing you would naively expect, which is exactly what is happening.
- mrpippy 9mo agoEveryone on the ISS needs to have a seat reserved for them in a docked spacecraft, in case they need to evacuate the station quickly (or for a medical issue like this). You can’t bring back just one person from a 4-person crew; the other 3 would have no way to leave.
- glemion43 9mo agoThis mission doesn't matter to any normal human in any relevant way that NASA would need to hide anything. I'm completely lost on your way of thinking
- dh2022 9mo agoThe reason they are bringing the whole crew back is most likely cost related. The whole crew was due back in February anyway. They are bringing everyone home a bit early; otherwise they would need another flight a few weeks later. And nobody is retreating: there will be 1 American and 2 Russians left on ISS. All of this from the article.
- CamperBob2 9mo ago[flagged]
- SJC_Hacker 9mo agoAstronauts are of a breed apart. They're strapped onto a literally bomb which launches them into a vacuum, and windows where there is no chance of a mission abort. They've pretty much accepted a risk of death that most would simply not tolerate. Ex-military is common for astronauts for a reason.
- yesitcan 9mo agoGoing on a spaceship is probably safer than driving a car.
- qgin 9mo agoBeing an astronaut is about 50x more risky than riding in a car
- ben_w 9mo agoPer mile, sure. Per launch? I think the "everyone died" rate is about, what, 1.2% of crewed launches?
- yesitcan 9mo agoNot a good sales pitch for commercial space flights
- yurishimo 9mo agoWhile I’m confident we will probably have large scale commercial spacecraft in my lifetime, I suspect I will be long retired by then. I’m 31. We need a decade of accident free autonomous launches before humans will line up in mass to visit space like a Carnival Cruise.
- AIorNot 9mo agoI used to work in ISS mission control, this is not an emergency return but an early return Also coming down on the Soyuz is pretty routine and only takes a few hours- I’d say it was overall a far less risky situation than being in Antarctic on a deep ocean vessel with appendicitis etc We have dozens and (hundreds behind them) of men and women monitoring those folks from a global network of control centers 24 hrs a day- The station is mostly commanded from the ground and plans and procedures exist for everything - if anything its all over orchestrated and over-planned in my opinion, owing to national politics, corporate contracts and international bureaucracy Is it risky- yes obviously-but I’d argue its less risky then being out at the south pole in winter See: https://nasawatch.com/iss-news/crew-medical-telecon-summary/ https://nasawatch.com/iss-news/crew-medical-telecon-summary/
- trebligdivad 9mo agoor on the way to Mars.
- NetMageSCW 9mo agoThen why did you mention Soyuz when Dragon is coming down early?
- stefantalpalaru 9mo ago[dead]
- potato3732842 9mo agoI think the responses to your comment speak volumes about how insular the office worker filter bubble of HN is. There's dozens upon dozens of professions where things go wrong infinitely faster than they do in medical situations.