re: If something happened on the ISS that killed the astronauts

It always surprised me that no one has ever died in space. Only on return and take off.

The station has so many redundancies that it will seal off and detach a damaged section before it lets a vacuum leak spread.
If they all died who knows what they would do with it. Technically it's only reachable by Russia with people on board (thanks Obama, literally) and half owned by them, so it's hard to tell what WE would do. It's not like they are going to blast off in a space shuttle from a museum.

SpaceX and NASA would needs months to fasttrack a mission like this.

I was at a museum recently and they said for every shuttle launch they had five boosters, two fuel tanks and seven main engines on site.
They had the ability to launch a shuttle, launch another and have a back up booster or engine.

Also the engine is very impressive in person.


We currently have no public knowledge ability to reach space with people on board ready to go.
(some say the Air Force has a light orbit entry vehicle launched from a plane, manned)