We've been told multiple times over the past several weeks by both NASA and Boeing that a decision about when and how stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be attempting to return to Earth was "coming soon." Well, "soon" has come and gone, and we apparently still don't know much more than we did at the beginning of July. The latest announcement from NASA certainly sounds as if they are leaning heavily toward having Elon Musk bring them home on a Dragon Heavy rocket (assuming they can clear the crippled Starliner from the docking port) but now they've run into yet another problem. Butch and Suni are wearing Boeing suits that are only compatible with the Starliner. They aren't compatible with the Dragon Heavy. Meanwhile, nobody can dock with the ISS unless they get the Starliner out of the way. (NY Post)

Two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station after their Boeing spacecraft malfunctioned could be there much longer than anticipated because of an incompatibility with their spacesuits.

NASA told Fox News Digital their Boeing spacesuits are made to work with the company’s spacecraft, while SpaceX’s spacesuits are made to work with its own Dragon vessel, which NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams may ride in on their descent back to Earth.

The two astronauts arrived in the Starliner vehicle June 5 and were only supposed to stay until the middle of the month.

NASA is making it sound as if this big announcement is a piece of new information, but that's not true. We knew that the suits weren't compatible almost a month ago and Musk has already pointed that out. Also missing from this latest update are the results from the massive software upgrade they were performing on the Starliner's control systems earlier this month. Did it work? Will they now be able to undock Starliner from the ISS safely, with or without astronauts onboard?  We don't know because they're still not saying.

There was a casual observation dropped into the linked report that's worth a closer look. It said, "With the commercialization of space, NASA is not as deeply involved as it once was with every aspect of mission and spacecraft design." Oh, really? Looking around at the situation today, do you suppose anyone is looking back on that idea as potentially having been a poor choice? They awarded a contract to SpaceX and they made their own suits, which makes sense. But if you're going to be handing out contracts to multiple companies, shouldn't some standardization be required in basic functions in case of a scenario such as this? The current generation of spacesuits seemed to be compatible with the Soyuz, and that was made by the Russians!

Now they're talking about potentially bringing Butch and Suni back on the Starliner assuming that's even possible anymore. If not, they would send up the next Dragon Heavy with only two people aboard, leaving room for the Boeing astronauts to ride back sometime in February. Yet there would still be logistical challenges remaining, or so it seems. They would need to bring two extra Starlink suits with them. I'm pretty sure the suits are each customized for the astronaut wearing them. Do they have the correct measurements to use to get them ready? And then a way will have to be found to get the astronauts out of their current suits and into the new ones. If the docking port is cleared by then, I suppose that should be doable. But the entire situation has obviously devolved into a mess. Once this is (hopefully) all straightened out, NASA needs to take a fresh look at who they are assigning missions to and pay more attention to details like these.