Maybe. There are only four Crew Dragons. One’s attached to the station right now, and one’s had its docking equipment removed in preparation for the spacewalk on the Polaris Dawn mission. That leaves two. I’m sure one’s already in prep for the next regularly scheduled crew rotation. A rescue mission would mean either leaving two of the astronauts scheduled to fly that flight on the ground to leave open seats for the Starliner crew, or a special mission using the last Dragon.
Originally they had planned on two more seats in the Crew Dragon behind / below the commander and pilot, but when they switched from a powered land landing to a parachute splashdown, they had to adjust the angles of the seats & the travel in the seat suspension. Those changes required them to drop the second row of seats.
In the event it was deemed too compromised, how long would it take to get an emergency Dragon capsule up there?
After this, the FAA should require Boeing to pay spacex to maintain a crew dragon rescue ready to launch at all times the starliner is on orbit.
Honestly SpaceX probably has one on standby right now.
Maybe. There are only four Crew Dragons. One’s attached to the station right now, and one’s had its docking equipment removed in preparation for the spacewalk on the Polaris Dawn mission. That leaves two. I’m sure one’s already in prep for the next regularly scheduled crew rotation. A rescue mission would mean either leaving two of the astronauts scheduled to fly that flight on the ground to leave open seats for the Starliner crew, or a special mission using the last Dragon.
Depending on how the Starliner leaks progress, I might be fine with lying on the floor of a Cargo Dragon.
Originally they had planned on two more seats in the Crew Dragon behind / below the commander and pilot, but when they switched from a powered land landing to a parachute splashdown, they had to adjust the angles of the seats & the travel in the seat suspension. Those changes required them to drop the second row of seats.
I think the original design had three seats in the second row, for a total of seven.