User blog comment:The Milkman/No Love For Leviathan?/@comment-4950455-20120921100328/@comment-24174486-20120921160030

My belief was that the Normandy's crew would eventually be rescued or they would be able to repair the ship (if they survived, of course).

I figure they included a "Shepard lives" ending possibility to sate the people who only cared about Shepard surviving...then again, there's more than a few players who have no clue that ending exists (or that there's variations on the ending sequence based on EMS).