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In an emergency, can they really prep and launch a rocket quickly? Are we talking hours/days/week/months?


There is no emergency that would require launching a rocket. They have craft docked to the space station at all times that they can return to Earth on at a moment’s notice.


And they are not using one of those because…


Because more than 2 of them would need to come back to Earth.


I thought about this overnight and isn’t the real problem that nobody is saying is that NASA never wants less than 1 re-entry module on even an empty ISS, so that if god forbid they had to evacuate everyone for any reason other than a dead station, that the next crew has two ways to get home?

So even though everyone fits in the existing modules there is no spare if they let these two go home.


Yes exactly.


No they don't. Dragon takes 4, Soyuz takes 3, 9 people on the ISS, none of the other pods are rated for crewed missions.


Dragon can carry an extra two if necessary in an emergency.




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