Stranded in space

NASA astronauts Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Pilot Sunita “Suni” Williams boarded the Boeing Starliner for an eight-day tour that turned into an eight-month mission (so far). It reminds me of that fateful day that five passengers boarded a ship called The Minnow for a three-hour tour. They ran into a bad storm and ended up stranded on Gilligan’s Island, a tropical paradise, unable to get back home.

Butch and Suni did not run aground in a storm. Their spaceship had a malfunction in the propulsion system. NASA and Boeing said that the Starliner flight was a test flight designed to uncover problems, so it was not a surprise that they found some. Besides the thruster problem, helium gas, which is supposed to push fuel into the propulsion system, also leaked. Engineers are not certain the Starliner will be able to bring the two astronauts back to Earth any time soon.

Butch and Suni have both completed six-month missions before at the space station and said that it feels like home to them. Suni seems to be a lot like Mary Ann. Mary Ann was the farm girl on Gilligan’s Island and was the least concerned about getting rescued because life stranded on a tropical island was much better than her life working on the farm. I suspect Butch and Suni, considers it more like their boss has asked them to extend their European business trip for a few more months — giving them the chance to complete more comprehensive experiments.

Butch and Suni’s microgravity plumbing skills have already been useful. Sweat and urine is normally recycled into drinking water but a recent problem required that the crew store the urine instead, not an ideal situation in cramped quarters with two extra crew. The Professor (on Gilligan’s Island) did not have to solve problems regarding the rationing of urine.

Even though Mary Ann was not interested in being rescued, she kept throwing bottles into the ocean to let her boyfriend know she was okay. It’s not like the astronauts can put a note in a bottle and throw it out the window. Who knows who might show up. It could be Darth Vader in a UFO full of storm troopers — and nobody would want that.

NASA and Boeing officials have refrained from using the words stuck or stranded, but says the spacecraft has simply been delayed by technical setbacks. The Professor once fashioned a lie detector out of bamboo, the ship’s horn, and the batteries from the radio. This lie detector could be used on those NASA Engineers to determine whether or not Butch and Suni are “stranded” or not.

NASA does have a back-up plan. The Crew Dragon is scheduled to launch in late September or they could hitch a ride home on a SpaceX craft leaving some time in the fall — or they could travel on a SpaceX flight early next year. But there is the problem of their Starliner space suits which may not be suitable to wear on a rescue spacecraft. The Professor created a pedal-powered sewing machine so that everyone on Gilligan’s Island always wore stylish clothes that fit properly.

In 1991, Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was stranded on board the Mir space station for 311 days when a coup against Soviet leader Michail Gorbachev caused the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the country that had sent him into space no longer existed.