The Chinese space program has three astronauts on board their space station without a lifeboat home.

Unprecedented, according to Bob Zimmerman.

Maybe bad news, maybe something they can adjust to.

But here he estimates how long it will take to get a spacecraft up there they can come home in.

And also, we do not have transparency as to what happened to their spacecraft, the window cracked, how, why, what ran into it?

Why won't they give us more? It's unusual. The Chinese space program, my observation, cuts corners.

It drops boosters on human beings in their inland launch facility. Odd. Here's Bob to explain.

Right now, three astronauts, tycho knots called by the Chinese,

without a way home on a space station, about 400 kilometers or 400 miles above the Earth. I can't remember which.

More of this later tonight.

Various sources I've seen on the web say it would be difficult for them to get ready in anywhere from 10 to 20 days. It would be difficult. So in that time period, that's almost a month from now. These astronauts will have no lifeboat. Let's pray nothing goes wrong on Tianan on 3. There are other rumors that they're going to try to launch in a week. I don't know if those are real or not.

We'll have to wait and see.

But either way,

until they get a capsule up there,

you have three astronauts on board

the Tianyang station's on

that have no lifeboat.

This is kind of comparable

to the Titanic.

Not enough life boats

for the people on board.