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Lonely at the Top
The dismal failure of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft left two NASA astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station this year, meaning they won't be able to return home until this coming February. At that point, their return will be more than half a year overdue.
This is something that fellow NASA astronaut Frank Rubio can sympathize with. He too was once left marooned on the orbital outpost, when the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that brought him there couldn't carry passengers on its return trip due to a radiator leak. What was supposed to be a six month rotation turned into longer than a year.
It's the price you pay for being the elite of the elite. As a family man, some of the sacrifices Rubio's had to make were especially gut-wrenching, like not being there for his son's high school graduation or his daughter's send-off to college.
And don't even think about the holidays: Christmas and Thanksgiving were pretty much a write-off.
"There's a little bit of disappointment in knowing you miss those things as a father," Rubio told The Washington Post in a new interview.
Star Stuck
Originally, the currently-stranded NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams were slated for just an eight day mission. But it will now last at least eight months.
Their ride, the ill-fated Starliner, sprung helium leaks on the way there, while its thrusters malfunctioned. It was deemed too dangerous to carry any passengers and instead went barreling back to Earth empty-seated.
Another Starliner will not be coming to the rescue. That honor will be going to a SpaceX Dragon Crew capsule — which is still months away. Unfortunately, Wilmore and William's winter festivities will have to be spent in the confines of the ISS, eating the astronaut equivalent of a TV dinner.
"I think it's important to acknowledge it's not the ideal situation," Rubio told WaPo. "We're all humans, we all have expectations that kind of set the tone for things. So when you're expecting an eight- to 15-day mission, and you get the news that it's going to be longer, it's always going to be a little bit hard, mostly for personal reasons."
Nightmare Layover
Life as an astronaut aboard the International Space Station can be lonely, claustrophobic, tedious, and even grueling.
You have to work out two hours everyday to stave off muscle atrophy that comes from living in microgravity. You look at the same "walls of computers, walls of cables," everyday, Rubio described. Your sole respite is the stunning view of Earth from a room called the cupola — and that's about it.
"You only get to look out the cupola for a few minutes a day... so the monotony is something that you fight," he told WaPo. "You almost just block out the fact that it is repetitive and it is monotonous, because it is your job."
Yeah, that's rough. To our stranded spacefarers: hang in there.
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