After making multiple calls to Boeing to see how they can finally get home as soon as possible, the company generously offered the two Starliner astronauts who have been stranded at the International Space Station since early June some travel vouchers for their trouble.
“While we reject completely the idea that these astronauts are trapped in space, we acknowledge that there have been some delays in their return flight and are taking steps to ameliorate any inconvenience this might have caused,” said Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun. “Each astronaut will receive a complimentary snack box with their choice of tang flavors and a $75 voucher that can be used on any future Starliner flight, as long as it’s booked in the next six months.”
The astronauts, who were originally projected to return on June 13th and have no return date in sight, said that the offer was underwhelming.
“When our flight was first delayed, Boeing tried to put us up on the Mir station, despite it having been de-orbited 23 years ago,” said astronaut Sunita Williams. “They’ve also managed to lose our checked bags which somehow ended up on Mars, so we’ve been living out of the same set of clothes for a month now. After hours on hold, Boeing said that they probably wouldn’t be able to get us back home until they’d built a functional spacecraft, and they couldn’t give us a date on when that would be.”
Boeing insists that if the astronauts really needed to return home, they could safely do so in a Soyuz capsule, a successful spacecraft developed by the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
