[rst]

? There's no other spacecraft there now with spare seats. NASA could arrange to send a Dragon up, but at a pretty fearsome cost. (Crew dragon missions are something like $300 million. There's one scheduled, and paid for, to launch fairly soon, but with no spare capacity -- if they wanted to use that for Butch and Suni's ride down, they'd need to bump two of the currently scheduled crew for that mission off.)

[neverokay]

There's one scheduled, and paid for, to launch fairly soon, but with no spare capacity

Stupid question of the day, can we not just force jam a bunch of astronauts into it?

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

The police complain if you have people riding on your lap in a car. Imagine what NASA thinks of that for a space pod.

[dessimus]

There's no way the NASA flight director wants to deal with the paperwork for elevated vital data of those whose laps were occupied: "Sir, the whole craft was vibrating, not to mention these flight suits are ...restricting..."

[aejm]

Yes absolutely. SpaceX Dragon is cleared to seat up to, I believe, four extra astronauts in an emergency.

[falcolas]

Weight is probably a big one.

Slowing things down requires energy (or the dispersion of energy) and that amount of energy is directly related to the weight.

Plus breathing gases, waste management, and any other required consumables.

[6nf]

Isn't there a Dragon docked at the ISS right now?

[Manabu-eo]

That Dragon came with it's own crew, not empty.

[aejm]

However, in emergency situations, the Dragon capsule can seat up to, I believe, four extra astronauts, and there are only two on Starliner.

[DoesntMatter22]

Can't they send up one of the space x ones?

[flutas]

Dragon is SpaceX.

https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/dragon/