[heyflyguy]

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!

[wmf]

How could you keep calm so far away

By going through a ten-year process that selects for calm people.

[almost_usual]

I 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

[manuelmoreale]

Somewhat related to this topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zo62S0ulqhA

[iancmceachern]

Totally, they put a bunch of people in those giant spinning chair things and weed out the ones that puke or freak out. Those are the astronauts, they have the right stuff.

[AIorNot]

I 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/

[NetMageSCW]

Then why did you mention Soyuz when Dragon is coming down early?

[trebligdivad]

or on the way to Mars.

[SJC_Hacker]

Astronauts 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.

[gpm]

Not that it really changes the point but modern spacecraft do have an option to abort (begin returning to earth) at just about any time. There's still contingencies where that won't save you of course.

[CheeseFromLidl]

This is the reason I cringe every time I hear or read statements like “we went to the moon”, “we’ve split the atom”, “we developed antibiotics”, …

No, we didn’t. A few who are not like us did.

[yesitcan]

Going on a spaceship is probably safer than driving a car.

[NooneAtAll3]

whatever is the cause, it is not immediate - or they would've been on the ground couple days ago

so no, not appendix

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Pregnancy?

[xeonmc]

Maybe testicular torsion triggered by zero-G conditions?

[vpribish]

it's only 250 miles

[zitterbewegung]

Maximum operating depth of a Nuclear submarine is 3,350 ft.

[potato3732842]

I 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.

[mrpippy]

Everyone 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.

[spockz]

Well, 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.

[dh2022]

The 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.

[robertoandred]

It's not that the entire crew is compromised medically, it's that logistically if one goes home they all have to.

[thot_experiment]

Bruh, 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.

[glemion43]

This 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

[phyzome]

Why the conspiracy theory?