NASA astronaut Nick Hague, who was already aboard the ISS, gave the incoming crew an extraterrestrial welcome by donning an alien mask for their arrival.
“We come prepared, we come committed. That is what your human spaceflight program is: It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those,” Wilmore told Cooper. “We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded.”
In fact, Wilmore pointed out, all the astronauts aboard the ISS are capable of returning to Earth immediately, in the event of an emergency. “We would never expect to come back, just special for us or anyone, unless it was a medical issue or something really, really out of the [normal] circumstances,” he said.
“Help us change the rhetoric,” Wilmore asked Cooper. “Let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed.’”
the astronauts themselves stated they arent stranded.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/international-space-station/boeing-starliner-astronauts-on-the-iss-set-the-story-straight-we-dont-feel-stranded
Fair enough. Let’s just say they had to wait way longer than anticipated for the preferred way back to earth.
And I’d say that counts as stranded. I didn’t write the headline though, so…