I wasn't very convinced by his arguments - the main one being:
Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons.
To be a little snarky here - so Senior NASA officials: honest, Musk: liar?
If, hypothetically, NASA was pressured for political reasons, I don't think Senior NASA officials would reveal it to the public anyway. So the fact that they said it's not for political reasons doesn't really prove anything for either side of the argument.
What about all the other things. For example the crew dragon was docked back in september waiting for return. The last administration could have called for return at any point before the inaguration to claim glory, but didn't because they aren't hacks.
Having a docked ship is not enough. There must be a docked ship on station at all times for evacuations. The thing that was needed was another ship to take some people back and not everyone (well, all but any Russians, since they have their own ships).
Wrong, they could have packed all 4 astronauts (the 2 that came to the ISS on the dragon and Suni and Butch) into the docked dragon and returned at any point. They only waited for the next dragon (crew 10) so that not only the 3 people using the Soyuz would be left on the ISS. But this would have absolutely been possible. The remaining crew would have used their Soyuz in emergencies anyways, they don’t need the dragon.
There's way more than just them. Thanks to all the delays the 4-man SpaceX Crew-8 [1] stayed on the ISS until October 23rd, becoming the longest Dragon stay ever. And the 3-man crew from Soyuz MS-26 got there on September 11th, and is still there.
In fact reading the Soyuz MS-26 Wiki, one of the many records this whole debacle ended up breaking is that when the MS-26 entered into space, there were more humans in space than ever before, with a total of 19!
Did you read my comment? Currently, there is one Dragon and one Soyuz docked to the ISS. If Crew-9 had left earlier, before the Crew-10 Dragon had arrived, there would have been only the Soyuz left.
Do the Soyuz still touch down in a desert in a place like Kazakhstan or do they touch down on water nowadays? The desert solid ground touch downs seem so brutal.
Soyuz is always landing on ground (except in emergencies, and Soyuz 23 broke through a frozen lake). They do have Retro rockets that are fired shortly before contact and dampened Seats, but from the reports I heard, it's still a very rough landing.
But Crew 10 had also been planned for a while, so the narrative that Trump ordered a new ship to go up "NOW" can't be true. For example, heres a post about NASA moving the launch date to March, in December last year: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2024/12/17/nasa-ad...
This is definitely true. The only questions are: a) could they have gone back home on the retrofitted seats on Crew 8 or b) could there had been a Crew 10 sooner to allow them to go home on Crew 9 sooner. I don't really know what's up with those questions.
Did they care more about "not manipulating NASA for political points" than about astronauts who were stuck in space for 9 months, with all the harmful effects that it entails?
Standard rotations are about 6 months - Butch and Suni were supposed to be up there for 8 days... Their families, their lives, and everything normal for way longer than planned. Health routines or not, that’s a brutal toll—mentally, emotionally, not just bones and muscles. Stop downplaying it like it’s no big deal
Just because they signed up for it, doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to prevent it. Staying for 9 months in space is not a small deal for people's health.
So NASA did indeed try to prevent it, and weighed it against a multitude of other considerations, and actual experts running actual missions have explicitly and patiently explained the what, the how, and the why.
>All you said are literally in the descriptions of the jobs they signed up for.
Dismissing every exceptional circumstance as "the jobs they signed up for." is absurd. That's like saying the crash of flight 5342 that killed 67 people is what those passengers signed up for, so it's no big deal.
Turns out they were prepared for this circumstance, had a back up plan, and communicated this plan many times.
Just because you don't like this plan doesn't mean it's bad/political/whatever other fantasy you may come up with.
> That's like saying the crash of flight 5342 that killed 67 people is what those passengers signed up for, so it's no big deal.
Nope, it isn't like that at all. None of those passengers trained, rigorously, for an extreme number of extreme situations. Unlike astronauts whose training includes all that, and more.
And risk and exceptional circumstances are absolutely one hundred percent in the job description. Unlike the passengers in the your analogy you pulled out of an unmentionable place.
An earlier article[1] goes into more detail about how the decision was actually made, which provides more perspective about truth vs narrative. It is much more interesting than the one linked by the GP.
NASA in practice isn't what most people think it is. A lot of stuff they're doing is just a mixture of a terrible idea (SLS) and will never go anywhere (Artemis), amongst others. People in-the-know in space are fully aware of this, including NASA officials.
But they keep cheerleading it all and pretending that everything will just be awesome. The reason is that NASA is basically forced to be political (at least their heads seem to feel that way), or their funding will get cut. And this also trickles all the way down to the astronauts who play politics for the sake of being able to keep flying.
It's become a highly dysfunctional organization, so yeah - "Senior NASA official" is certainly not a reliable source on anything remotely related to politics, and this is hard in that domain.
Blaming NASA for SLS is something I keep seeing but isn't it entirely congressional pork barrel politics that makes the SLS what it is? What degree of control does NASA itself have to force a project of that scale not to devolve into such a mess despite congressional corruption?
It's a mutual affair. Congress dictates the programs and NASA carries them out with substantial discretion. But I think the thing that really makes NASA deserve the blame is that they cheerlead for it all endlessly, and compel their astronauts to do similarly. More or less literally every single interview NASA carries out or does with their astronauts, they'll make sure SLS/Artemis are brought up, and pretend it's all just amazing.
This results a very misled electorate, which are the exact people that could (at least in theory) put pressure on their representatives in Congress to stop wasting tens of billions of dollars that could have easily had us on the Moon, if not Mars, long ago. But even more in general - people are forced into doing stupid things all the time. That's part of life. But the second that you begin praising those things, you are now a part of the problem.
Exactly. If NASA had full control over how and where SLS money got spent, I can guarantee you the thing would've been a success a decade ago or more, and we'd have American boots on lunar ground full-time by now.
And how does that relate to this particular issue? Had they been playing political games for the sake of funding, they would've immediately jumped as soon as Musk and Trump barked, right?
Instead they carefully and patiently explained all the issues, and what is going on.
And yet, still, "ah yes, it's NASA that is lying for political clout, not the very public very shameless very serial liars"
The return vessel was docked in September. The return was always planned to be around today, not in September.
Trump and Musk are lying about the astronauts being forgotten. They're lying when they claim Biden abandoned them.
As far as I can tell, NASA didn't delay for political reasons. Nor did they allow the return journey today for political reasons. This was the plan all along (well, once the initial plans had to be scrapped for technical reasons).
Probably cherry picking their c-span interview on March 4:
> Asked about the claims of political motivations for their extended stay, Wilmore said that Musk and Trump may have information “that we are not privy to.”
But then he says:
> But, he said, “from my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. From our standpoint, I think that they would agree, we came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short.”
(Note: I don't know anything about the X account. It was just the first result I found.)
Edit: Also it sucks that I can't ask a genuine question on this website without getting downvoted to oblivion. Whatever the answer, it would be nice to get it without being judged.
The astronauts in that clip say they have no information on who said what to whom, so it takes the wind out of the sails of the statement that everything Musk says is factual.
> Also it sucks that I can't ask a genuine question on this website without getting downvoted to oblivion
You asked a question in a confrontational manner, and which had the same misrepresentation as various political operatives have been using. I think you got caught up in looking like you knew the answer but were hoping that readers did not, which is common enough that many people try to discourage it here.
You (and others apparently) applied an incorrect emotion to my unemotional comment. Typical text only communication. The whole point of the "genuinely asking" part was to show I wasn't trying to "gotcha" anyone.
I have barely followed the issue but had heard the astronauts confirmed Musk's side. How else was I supposed to ask about that? What magical wording could I use so that all of you don't try to put me in a belief box?
> Wilmore: I can tell you at the outset, all of us have the utmost respect for Mr. Musk, and obviously, respect and admiration for our president of the United States, Donald Trump. We appreciate them. We appreciate all that they do for us, for human space flight, for our nation. The words they said, politics, I mean, that's part of life. We understand that. And there's an important reason why we have a political system, a political system that we do have, and we're behind it 100 percent. We know what we've lived up here, the ins and outs, and the specifics that they may not be privy to. And I'm sure that they have some issues that they are dealing with, information that they have, that we are not privy to. So when I think about your question, that's part of life, we are on board with it.
> Wilmore: From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. From our standpoint, I think that they would agree, we came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short. That's what we do in human spaceflight.
> Wilmore: I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That's information that we simply don't have. So I believe him. I don't know all those details, and I don't think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.
To be honest "what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went" should register quite highly on anyone's political bullshit meter because "absolutely factual" is a statement that makes a claim that they then say they don't have any facts about.
Anyone who reports those quotes as "comfirming Musk's version" should lose a lot of trust.
And keep in mind that the people saying these things - while doubtless busy for the last three months - have not been locked in isolation. Even the barest hint of recent news would make it clear to them that negative comments about Mr. Trump & Mr. Musk could destroy their own careers, and threaten the programs they have worked on and the lives and careers of their co-workers.
no idea. However the above comment is easily verifiable. Here is a link saying that the return would be around February 2025 [1]. There seems no reason to believe either trump or Elon forced some sort of rush, or Biden and his administration ignored or caused some sort of slowdown. It looks like a schedule was planned and followed.
NASA announced last August that the Starliner crew would return on SpaceX Crew-9 in Feb 2025.[1] This was discussed on Hacker News at the time.[2] Crew-9 was launched in September 2024.[3] Crew-9's return was delayed waiting for the launch of Crew-10, originally scheduled for Feb 2025, but pushed back to March. [4] Anyone repeating the claim that Trump and/or Musk "decided" to return the Starliner crew is spreading lies, deliberately or unwittingly.
I can’t believe anyone took these claims seriously for even a moment.
Musk was a bullshitter even at his best, and he has fallen far from that peak in the past couple of years. Just go to his Twitter feed and see an unending stream of absolute nonsense.
Trump shows no indication that he even understands the concept of truth.
And yet somehow people manage to say, “NASA says X, Musk and Trump say Y, who knows who’s right?”
In a situation where everyone has an incentive to lie, there's no reason to believe anyone.
Musk and Trump have a history of exaggarating, to say it lightly, but NASA, like most of the government entities, hasn't been transparent with their internal processes either.
Imagine you have two friends. Both are known to be the kind of people who eat off of other people’s plates.
You go to dinner with both of them. And while you’re distracted, some food fries disappear from your plate.
At this point, it’s similar. Since both friends steal food, it could be either.
Except, you’ve actually been to dinner many times with both. And you actually know a little more. You know that friend A always takes some of your fries. And friend B has always preferred snatching the croutons from your salad. But right now, you’ve got some missing fries. So… most likely the fry snatcher is at it again.
Coming back to the real world of liars. We’ve observed that trump and and musk stretch the truth to gain the trust/confidence/adoration of others. Braggart style behavior. NASA is less than transparent when it comes to motives behind various pork barrel things. But when it comes to “why’d something not work” they actually have a record of being mind numbing thorough and verbose.
So I personally have no problem pinning the less than desirable behavior around this on Trump and Musk.
It's more like, while you're distracted, your entire plate disappears and friend A tells you that friend C took it. Friend A is known to hate C and frequently makes up completely fabricated accusations about C's behavior. Friend A also frequently fabricates nonsense stories about all sorts of other things. Friend B is known for stealing croutons.
Honestly, the best evidence that Biden did not block a rescue mission is Trump and Musk saying that he did.
I don’t see much incentive for NASA to lie. Or rather, the incentive goes the other way. The “who cares about the truth” approach would be to curry favor with the new administration by agreeing with their claims.
There’s also a world of difference between “not transparent” and the Musk/Trump approach to the truth where you’re more likely to be correct if you just assume everything they say is false.
- They'll reconfigure Crew-8 for 6 occupants for contingency evac between Starliner undock and Crew-9 arrival.
- Starliner leaving ISS autonomously early September
- Crew 9 launching no later than Sept 24th with 2 crew + 2 empty seats
- Crew 9 coming back down in ~Feb 2025
The advent of Trump and Musk into government seems not to have changed that plan one whit, which makes absolutely no sense if they're telling the truth.
Berger wrote two books on SpaceX in a very positive light generally, portraying Musk as extraordinarily driven and capable though not passing over less admirable traits. Berger is not a hater.
Yeah, instead of evaluating a journalist by looking at over a decade of high-quality work he has done writing about this space, let’s pull up a joke from one article and judge that.
Do you realize that you’re the one behaving like a low-quality Redditor here.
Basically any online article site like ars comes across as a Redditor with reddit-tier takes and a mixture of ChatGPT. If you graduate to something like the NYT then you sound like a lobbyist.
Just noting 'throne of lies' is a subheading and not in the body of the article. I don't know how Ars Technica does things, but in some news outlets a separate editor have control over titles and subheading rather than the author of the article.
IIRC Ars has stated that the story author is the ones that writes the headers/subheaders, but they write multiple and A/B testing picks the one to show.
Eric Berger used to be a major standout from them, and has traditionally never delved into the partisan nonsense. I've recommended him, on this account alone, countless times. He was a diamond surrounded by a pile of crap.
It's extremely out of character and the writing on this exact topic is somewhat contradicted by other articles he himself wrote on it, like this [1] one. I have a suspicion he's being pressured to increase engagement/subscriptions, and it's trivial to do that in the age of such extreme political derangement.
“For what it is worth, all of the reporting done by Ars over the last nine months suggests the decision to return Wilmore and Williams this spring was driven by technical reasons and NASA's needs on board the International Space Station, rather than because of politics.”
Read the article I linked above, also written by Eric Berger! Butch confirmed Elon's claim that he made an offer to bring them home last year was accurate. So we know that that offer was made, and must have been rejected. What we don't know is why.
But the real thing here is that Eric Berger has written extensively about the political games NASA plays or (depending on one's perspective) is compelled to play. They support a lot of fundamentally flawed programs that are either a complete waste of money or will never go anywhere, like SLS/Artemis. The reason they do this is because, in NASA's case, their funding depends on it and, in the astronauts' case, because they'll never fly again if they don't play ball.
So you don't simply take things NASA says at face value - again something he has written about ad nauseum. His understanding of the industry, and the games surrounding it, are part of what made (and hopefully in the future continues to make) him such an excellent reporter. But this latest article just dumps all of that and is written with all the insight and worldview of somebody on /r/politics.
This is the main quote from the Willmore interview you linked, that seems most relevant:
"I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That's information that we simply don't have. So I believe him. I don't know all those details, and I don't think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for."
That has to be a nominee for doublespeak quote of the year -- and that's not a low bar this year.
I think the most likely scenario is that a message made its way up the grapevine to him along the lines of 'We're working with Elon to look at getting you guys brought back home on a Dragon.', nothing more, nothing less. NASA awarded a ~$270k contract to SpaceX on July 14th called "Special Study for Emergency Response." NASA claimed that study had nothing to do with Starliner, but that was probably a typical administrative lie of the sort Eric Berger has regularly pointed out (until this article...):
"NASA said this study was not directly related to Starliner's problems, but two sources told Ars it really was. Although the study entailed work on flying more than four crew members home on Crew Dragon—a scenario related to Frank Rubio and the Soyuz MS-22 leaks—it also allowed SpaceX to study flying Dragon home with six passengers, a regular crew complement in addition to Wilmore and Williams."
Nobody knows the details of exactly what was offered, or why it was rejected, besides Elon and whoever he was talking to in the previous administration. But at this point I think one cannot reasonable argue that no offer was made. And we know because of what happened that it was rejected. So the only question remaining is why.
That interview doesn't really say much. It is mostly an carefully worded, polite but empty statement made after earlier extemporaneous comments by Suni and Butch seemingly contradicted Musk. The headline claim is basically just Butch saying he has no insight into the decision process but he trusts Musk is telling the truth.
In contrast other articles Eric wrote talking to people who where involved in the decision of how and when to return Butch and Suni, those officials clearly state that the decision was made for technical and programmatic reasons, not political pressure.
I 100% agree he's phrasing things 'politically', but think about how you might also be reading what you want to read. For instance the section where you [reasonably] claim he's contradicting Musk (by claiming the decision was not political) was also not only phrased politically, but even came with a sort of disclaimer starting with "From my standpoint." There were no such disclaimers when stating that Musk made some sort of an offer to return the astronauts.
And again something you can't discount here is that Eric himself has written extensively about NASA frequently carrying out/endorsing poor decisions (SLS/Artemis being the low hanging fruit there) owing much more to political pressure than pragmatic decisions about the best direction for progress. Here [1] is one example, including an interview with a former high level NASA insider (30 years experience, up to deputy administrator) openly and casually talking about such.
It's not a secret whatsoever that NASA is under constant and significant political pressure. It's just a part of the game. And in this case you had a situation where the guy, who had basically become public enemy #2 (from the previous administration's POV), was going to be spearheading a high visibility rescue of a launch that should never have been approved in the first place - undoubtedly while blasting it all to his tens of millions of followers. To imagine this would not have provoked some behind the scenes 'management' just seems unthinkable to me.
> And again something you can't discount here is that Eric himself has written extensively about NASA frequently carrying out/endorsing poor decisions (SLS/Artemis being the low hanging fruit there) owing much more to political pressure than pragmatic decisions about the best direction for progress.
The reason he was able to write about this was that he had sources within NASA that would tell him the inside story behind the decisions, and how much politics influenced them. Now his sources are telling him that this decision was not political. I don't have any reason to trust his previous sources but not his current ones (especially when many are the same).
No it wasn't. It's based on visible logic, as everybody knows this, well at least everybody within the 'space domain.' People outside of the 'space domain' don't realize how absurdly dysfunctional things like the SLS or Artemis are, and generally have a completely erroneous impression of NASA.
If you want to see this in action search for pretty much any article on SLS or Artemis by him. The one I offered with the former NASA administrator was to clarify to people who might want to claim he was just speculating or whatever. NASA is the posterboy for making bad decisions under political pressure, and not just in contemporary times...
How are you possibly parsing "We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went" as "I can confirm that Musk made that offer and it was declined"?
That is a HUGE disclaimer. "no information on that, though, whatsoever" - it doesn't get any bigger than that.
> Read the article I linked above, also written by Eric Berger! Butch confirmed Elon's claim that he made an offer to bring them home last year was accurate. So we know that that offer was made, and must have been rejected. What we don't know is why.
Read his goddamn quote you're citing. The part where he says "We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went".
Which part of "I believe him despite having no information" do you think is "confirming"?
When you have the owner of the company which provides your space flight lying about spaceflight and nasa, calling the commander of the space station an idiot, and the president making total lies up about the entire process, you can't be apolitical.
What is your standard of fairness? This seems eminently fair: Musk lied for political reasons and people who care about that whole objective reality thing are criticizing him for it. He’s arguably the second-most powerful man in the world right now and craves attention like few others, so it seems quite unfair to say he shouldn’t be the subject of public criticism when he certainly doesn’t apply that standard to his own behaviour.
Musk's donations to political parties is public (leaving aside SuperPAC and other funding being hidden).
He has NEVER donated more to the Democrats than the Republicans. Like most billionaires he donates to both parties. Historically, he donates ten times more to the Republicans and the Democrats.
Nothing about Musk has ever seemed "liberal". Just convenient. He smokes weed on shows, but if you work for one of his companies you'll be fired if you don't piss clean. Anti-taxes. Anti-regulation/oversight.
How has he ever been democrat-leaning in any meaningful way?
Do you think it's easy to be "fair" to someone who continually spouts misinformation, falsehoods, and retweets or reply-boosts such things on an almost daily basis?
I think the author probably made a mistake in using that subheading. For those familiar with the meme[1] it's saying that this isn't that important but read straight it says the opposite. I'm all for playful subheadings, I love when The Economist uses them, but they shouldn't radically alter the meaning when a big fraction of the audience won't get any particular subtle reference and I think that makes this a failure of writing.
Let's not forget that right now it seems that only SpaceX is putting in the "monumental efforts" to advance the "pioneeribg industry", being responsible for the vast majority of launches, the only safe crewed spacecraft, as well as pushing the frontier of space travel with ambitious new projects such as Starship.
Just last year NASA launched the largest ever interplanetary space-craft, and hopefully the first craft to approach and conduct scientific studies on Europa. SpaceX is almost entirely focused on getting humans into space - which is great - but NASA's work is not to be discounted.
NASA built the probe, but SpaceX launched it. [1] I don't think you were suggesting otherwise, but somebody who did not know as much would probably misunderstand what you're saying.
The Europa Clipper is really cool. I think the Cassini Huygens that launched in 1997 has greater mass though.
SpaceX isn't entirely focused on getting humans to space since they launch the vast majority of satellites thanks to great innovations in reducing the cost of launches, such as reusable rockets. But there are some competitor launch vehicles coming soon that could be interesting as well.
Doubt it. Musk only owns something like ~15% of Tesla, and owns about 50% of spacex. He knows tesla is overvalued immensely and wants to deeply integrate himself with government to make sure spacex becomes the de facto space org. for the United States (possibly).
What "blatant lies" though? The question hasn't really been answered. The user wrote:
>Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points
I don't know what this means. When someone tells a blatant lie, it would be easy to quote them for a start. What 'monumental effort' was lied about? If it's about Boeing then I have to say I too think the company is doing a terrible job and if anyone is lying about the effort it's them, there have been numerous whistleblowers who came out and talked about the coverups at Boeing.
I didn't personally use the word "blatant", but when I said "lying" I was referring to claims that:
* The Biden administration either forgot about or deliberately chose to leave astronauts in space for political reasons.
* Trump's request accelerated the decision to bring the astronauts home.
"Monumental efforts" was a more general comment about the space industry, including the activities of both NASA and SpaceX. Bringing astronauts home from space when equipment has gone faulty is a challenge I do not envy whatsoever. For Trump to claim credit in the venture is bordering on obscene.
Eh, the whole space race has its origins in a propaganda war with the USSR staffed by ex-Nazi engineers. It's not more deserving of sacred purity than anything else.
On the other hand, the sheer lying about everything is exhaustive and corrosive to the public sphere.
(also while dealing with the villain of the week we've forgotten about the previous villain responsible for this situation, Boeing)
> Eh, the whole space race has its origins in a propaganda war with the USSR staffed by ex-Nazi engineers. It's not more deserving of sacred purity than anything else.
I certainly agree with this, but at the same time I think it's a red herring. So much good tech comes from war, but the nice thing (imho) is that it's "path independent". I'm no more going to scorn the work of Werner von Braun than I would John von Neumann.
I also think that calling von Braun a Nazi isn't necessarily correct. He worked for the Nazi party, but if he didn't it probably wouldn't have worked out very well for him, and I don't think he supported their ideals all that much. He also always wanted to make his rockets, and working at Peenemünde gave him the opportunity to do that, even if it did require PoW labour. Obviously I'm not saying he was a saint, but I don't think he was as "evil" as some people make him out to be, and I don't think many people came out of the war with clean hands. He just really liked making rockets
Don't say that he's hypocritical- say rather that he's apolitical. 'Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down - that's not my department' says Werner Von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown. But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude, like the widows and cripples in old London town who owe their large pension to Wernher von Braun
I'm not the downvoter here, but somehow this made me think of an old play on the title of a biographical film about him: 'I aim at the stars! But sometimes I hit London...'
FWIW I didn't mean to make any accusations about von Braun's character. I was taking "ex-Nazi engineer" to mean someone to had been an engineer in the Nazi regime. In fairness though, he was an NSDAP member.
Sorry, I didn't mean it to come off as disagreeing with you, I think you're right, this is just a topic that's been on my mind recently and I wanted to express my own thoughts on it =) And yeah, he's not perfect, he was directly and indirectly responsible for some bad things happening, but a lot of people on the "good" side were too
Firstly, I understand people will disagree with me on this and that's fine – if you disagree please just explain why.
Based on what I've read on this, I can see why Trump and Elon MIGHT feel like the return flight was held back for political reasons... But I'm not really able to take either side of this argument as it stands, so I'll give my thoughts for why that is in the hope someone might be able to convince me one way or the other...
Firstly, the assumption that NASA is apolitical should be questioned. This might just be my ignorance, but I still haven't seen any good reasoning for why NASA would delay the return flight. As others have noted the capsule was already there, but NASA seemingly just decided to randomly keep them up there months longer than necessary? Why?
And while it's not fair to blame the Biden administration for this directly, ultimately the actions of any government agency would be the responsibility of the current administration to some extent, so if there was any suspicion that the return flight was being pushed back for political reasons the Biden administration should have intervened.
I imagine if Elon did push for an earlier return and was denied this without a good reason he might have questioned why, and I could imagine someone in that position might assume a political motive – perhaps reasonably depending on those private conversations had.
I also think there's an argument to be made that if the Biden administration was friendlier with Elon and didn't go out of their way to alienate him that this return flight would have happened earlier too. Perhaps because Elon could have spoke to Biden directly as he did with Trump, or because NASA would have changed their calculation on the PR of the return.
I have tried repeatedly to find a reason why the return flight might have been delayed, but haven't been able to find any good reason for this so I'm on the fence about why this might have happened. If someone can give me a reasonable explanation for why they weren't returned earlier (especially if it's a reason Elon would have been aware of) I'd likely conclude Elon is most likely lying.
Either way the argument, "Elon is wrong because the capsule was up there the whole time so they could have been brought back whenever, but NASA just decided to push it back" is not a convincing explanation that there was no political calculation here.
The normal process is that you always have at least one US and one Russian Vehicle docked to the ISS. In emergencies, each crewmember uses their spacecraft to return to earth.
The normal rotation is that an additional spacecraft arrives at the ISS (so there are now 3 vehicles docked in total) and then the older spacecraft leaves with its crew. So before the single dragon leaves, a new dragon would arrive.
I think the general idea is to always have at least some Russians and Americans on the ISS at all times (although they are doing swapped missions now so even having only one vehicle left would ensure that most of the time) and to always have crew on the ISS, even if one vehicle needs to return early due to technical problems.
The Crew-10 was not a rescue mission because they just rotated with Crew-9 which carried the Starliner Astronauts back. Crew-9 could be called a rescue mission because they took back the Starliner Astronauts. But Rescue makes it sound more urgent and dedicated than it actually is. They would have flown anyways, just with more crew.
That is exactly what it is. That mission has been scheduled for more than 6 months (though the exact date changed a couple of times for technical reasons).
My understanding is that Crew 9 was always scheduled for a 6 month mission and they couldn't come back before Crew 10 arrived (in March 2025) or else the ISS would be shortstaffed.
The two astronauts in question are simply hitching a ride back on this scheduled mission.
> Firstly, the assumption that NASA is apolitical should be questioned. This might just be my ignorance, but I still haven't seen any good reasoning for why NASA would delay the return flight. As others have noted the capsule was already there, but NASA seemingly just decided to randomly keep them up there months longer than necessary? Why?
Why is anybody actually thinking that? The return of Crew-9 is the culmination of a well orchestrated series of missions to cope with the outage of Starliner Calypso. It may have slipped the attention of some, but space missions are not like buying groceries. These assumptions are basically just betraying a lack of understanding how space travel works. Musk, OTOH, should know this.
Furthermore, there is the long-standing policy of having at least one working capsule at the ISS for emergencies. A lifeboat or escape pod, so to speak. Plus, there are only two docking slots for large-enough capsules, such as Starliners or Dragons, on the ISS. So you have to schedule your trips even more than for normal space missions. You have to coordinate and swap crafts in sequence and deal with the launch windows schedule -- which is exactly what has happened. Again, Musk should know this.
> I think there's an argument to be made that if the Biden administration was friendlier with Elon and didn't go out of their way to alienate him that this return flight would have happened earlier too. Perhaps because Elon could have spoke to Biden directly as he did with Trump, or because NASA would have changed their calculation on the PR of the return.
Why would the CEO of a contractor of a US government agency need to speak to the president of the USA to do the job they were hired for? The agency has more capable people to decide on such matters than any White House staff.
It's all a huge charade of grandstanding and chest-thumping. Disappointing.
I think it’s a hugely complex problem but it basically boils down to a few key things.
- could ISS support docking an additional crew dragon for the time it would take to return the starliner crew without adversely disrupting other scheduled spacecraft flow?
- could spacex have delivered an additional crew dragon to the ISS and departed before any other without downstream impact to future crew dragon missions?
- was someone willing to pay for all of this?
- could it have been done safely for all crews and the ISS?
If the answer was yes to all of those questions, then there likely was a political reason behind waiting to return them on crew 9. What that is, I can’t speculate.
If any question gives a “no” then the decision was probably not political but operational in nature.
I think the only question that might be a no is 'was someone willing to pay for all of this.' But I think even that being a 'no' is suggestive of a political motivation, given that the alternative (that "we" ended up going with) was borderline ridiculous in the chaos that it caused. We ended up, for the first time ever, with a Russian cosmonaut was in control of an American spacecraft, and a rookie cosmonaut with only basic training on the Dragon at that.
It also forced NASA to completely change their safety standards. In particular NASA requires there be a 'lifeboat' on on the ISS for all crew in case of an emergency, but because of the Boeing crew (and the lack of a corresponding vessel), NASA approved a new 'configuration' of the Dragon where up to 3 people could strap themselves to the floor of it, where cargo would normally go, in case of the need of a mass escape from the ISS. [2]
There are stories that Musk was willing to foot the bill. Of course thats easy to say after the other decisions have been made, but my guess is my second point was probably the real no—at least not in a timely or safe enough manner to make the overall future mission disruptions worth it from NASA’s POV.
> I still haven't seen any good reasoning for why NASA would delay the return flight
So many comments spread unsourced assertions on the topic on both sides. Let me change that.
On 24 Aug 2024, NASA stated in a conference published on X[0]:
> NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February.
So the decision sounded like it stemmed from NASA, and the plan a year ago was for a return in the time frame that actually occurred.
On 28 Sept 2024, the spacecraft that would bring Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore was launched. They restated the same plan[1]:
> A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon spacecraft will launch Crew-9 to the space station for about a five-month mission. Hague and Gorbunov will join Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who are already aboard the space station, and all will return to Earth as a crew of four in February 2025.
Thus there was no action after Mr Trump took office that changed the plan.
(Note that the SpaceX article we’re commenting on has a mistake, stating that Mr Grebenkin has come down on 18 March, but Mr Grebenkin came down on 25 Oct; it is indeed Gorbunov that came down.)
On 7 March 2025, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate, stated[2] on the motivation for this:
> When it comes to adding on missions or bringing a capsule home early: those were always options but we ruled them out pretty quickly just based on how much money we've got in our budget and the importance of keeping crews on the International Space Station.
When asked specifically about a request from Mr Musk to have an earlier return:
> Was anyone outside NASA or the White House involved in the decision not to bring Suni and Butch back sooner? — There may have been some conversations that I wasn't part of. When we made the technical decisions about Starliner […] our leadership at NASA was trying to make sure that we considered everything just at a technical level and that's what we did.
Berger is not a "one note journalist". He literally wrote the book "Liftoff" which is great telling of the story of SpaceX, and has covered space topics in extensive detail for a long time. The article is important because the narrative told by the administration is clearly not true and in bad faith, and it is right to call it out.
My impression is that Berger is well meaning, but out of his element.
By asking "Can space remain nonpartisan?", as if any government agency was even remotely non-partisan to begin with, or as if that was even a theoretical possibility, betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of how government functions.
You're effectively tone policing an article for not being kind enough to the current administration that is lying their ass off about everything they do every step of the way.
I'm not tone policing, I'm saying he sounds condescending like the rest of these types of articles... making it sound like noise, adding to the static.
I didn't say he was wrong in what he was saying, I'm just seeing this as an outsider who immediately gets a sour taste in my mouth.
Tone policing is an ad hominem argument focusing on the tone and not the merit to DISCREDIT the information within, i am not intending to discredit him, i don't dispute his factual claims, just noting that he made it harder to see his side of things from my perspective.
> They liked the "Artemis Program" created by the Trump administration well enough that they simply kept it.
This cannot be overstated. Prior to Biden there was a long history of new administrations of both parties coming in and wanting to make their mark on NASA. Everyone wanted to be what JFK was to the moon race, which meant that whatever the previous guy came up with obviously had to be canned and replaced, so that the new thing would be their thing. NASA was jerked around for decades. You can't do 15 year projects if they're always cancelled after 8 years.
Biden coming in and simply continuing Trump's plan broke the trend. And yet Trump still needed to find a bone to pick to advance his cult of personality.
Just another example of the US government stuffing media and the public and also foreign countries with three outrageous 'things' per day. It's exactly like the quote from a famous movie where Gust Avrakotos says that if you present three scandals in the left hand, you can park an aircraft carrier behind your right hand and nobody will notice.
Claiming the astronauts where stranded by the Biden admin is just one of those things for the left hand. Of course had Kate dared call it the Gulf of Mexico, she'd be in serious trouble only an hour later. Defiantly, without a job two hours later once CEO heard from lower management.
Something any dictator sooner or later gets into serious trouble, because he is only surrounded by obedient people from his bubble. Warping the view of reality. All others fell out a window or best case, got fired.
That DOES seem to be the rule for the right in the USA. Democrats still get kicked out of the club when they do blatant crimes and carry around bags of gold bars.
The decision to make this political and partisan came from the Trump administration, the response to that is obviously political and it is natural that it would come from someone that is not a Trump supporter.
well for starters, if you're writing for a tech news website, maybe just stick to tech news instead of injecting politics into absolutely every part of our lives. tell me about some new phone or video card and keep the political rants for your twitter.
Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces. It's just as grating, and when every other news org is reporting it more measuredly you should be very cautious before calling their summary 'good'. For example, this article claims the political reasons are unspecified, but they were in fact discussed at length (I think Musk even mentioned them on a podcast at the time, though can't remember which one).
The choices were whether to leave them up there longer as the next crew rotation, or let them come home and send up another crew like normal. One would save the government the cost of a new Crew Dragon launch (not insignificant - $100m-150m), and the other would save NASA's valuable astronauts from the long term health effects of a year in space (usually crews are rotated every six months for health reasons, like bone density and muscle mass problems).
NASA reported that the factor keeping them from being brought home was cost, and they didn't have the $100m for a new Dragon launch in the budget. But this was bunk. The next launch was already budgeted for, because this is on a well-planned-for rotation. It could have been because they wanted to keep the $100m, but if they falsely claimed it wasn't budgeted for, then (as Musk postulated) it's a good bet that the real reason is that this would have been a big PR win for Musk, saving America's cherished astronauts from Boeing's massive screwup, and since he had already begun bankrolling Trump's campaign, Biden did not want him to have this PR win.
I think trying to fit things into a dichotomy of puff/hit pieces is actually obscuring the truth here. Eric Berger is a space flight enthusiast and so he covered SpaceX positively when they were doing good work there, but now that Musk seems to be interested only in playing political games rather than running his companies, there isn’t much positive to report: it’s not a hit piece, just the truth many SpaceX fans didn’t want to hear. It’s not a left/right thing (do you know how Boeing’s CEO votes?) but rather Musk having fully embraced the post-modern world of right-wing politics where there’s no such thing as truth which contradicts what the party wants to be true.
Fundamentally, it's the "reality has a liberal bias" problem. Accurate reporting is interpreted as a political act because it disagrees with the "alternative facts" being presented by the right wing.
> Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces.
You have to go a long way back to find Ars articles on Musk that aren't derogatory. They were ahead of the curve on this, apart from their rocket articles (usually). I've always found it unprofessional and off-putting.
> Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces.
When Musk wasn't insane, I think a lot of people valued him a bit more. I personally haven't cared for him since pedo guy, but others did.
Reality is he's now batshit crazy, destroying America, and intersecting himself in a bunch of shit nobody wants him close to. Of course that has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
It's not a "shift to the right". I don't care of someone is a bit right or a bit left. This man is dangerous, out there setting America back decades, and sending out some hail Hitlers along the way.
> Musk was clear that the reason was that they didn't want someone pro trump having success so close to the election.
This makes no sense whatsoever. The election was in November. If that was their calculation, they’d just have cosplayed astronaut-saving heroes before Trump had an opportunity to do so, between November and January. Musk is full of it, as usual.
It is not the first time some astronauts stay in space longer than expected and it never was controversial before. The people making noise cannot even find a single reason for Biden to do what they accuse him of doing, much less any proof that he did so.
Tbh i personally thought it was an common sense economic thing: why pay more for SpaceX early return + a direct flight for the other astronaut that were scheduled to work on the ISS, if you can make the ones already there work in the ISS.
> This makes no sense whatsoever. The election was in November. If that was their calculation, they’d just have cosplayed astronaut-saving heroes before Trump had an opportunity to do so, between November and January. Musk is full of it, as usual
Musk offered to bring them back way before the election so HE would have appeared as the saver (and boeing would have looked terrible). Musk is probably exaggerating, but you can't completely ignore the political forces behind all this.
The topic is "crew returns to Earth" not arstechnica's routine political spin.
Does arstechnica mention the dolphins even once? Nope. How about Trump? Six times! Meanwhile, sibling comment applauds the writer for his "knowledge of space topics".
When rescuing astronauts stranded on the ISS, one would expect. I can't imagine any other president using that as an opportunity to explicitly bash his predecessor. Can you?
This is a really fascinating case of words having a venacular meaning that become fuzzy out of their normal domain. Could the astronauts have gone back to Earth in an emergency? Yes. Did they have the freedom to leave earlier? Sortof but not really. Could NASA have paid SpaceX another $200 million for an extra mission to pick up in December/January? Probably.
If your car breaks down a couple of miles from home and you call a friend and tell him you're stranded, are you lying? What if it's 20 miles away? But uber exists? What if uber is extremely expensive right now at $2000? But there's a guy next to you offering to sell you a bicycle?
In the end, to ask the question "were they stranded?" we have to unpack "stranded" and figure out what is the question we actually want answered. Is it about the feelings of the astronauts? Their preferences? The danger level they're in? Is it about Boeing's culpability? Is it about whether we can safely call Trump a liar? Musk?
This has the same flaw as the other person who replied to me.
Using the car anology only works if you also say you've got another car following you at all times, fully fuled and capable of getting you home, in which case, no, you are not stranded.
Stranded implies they cant get home. Not that it costs more, or is inconvenient. The litteral definition is "left without the means to move from somewhere".
Words mean what people think they mean. People often mean slightly different (or very different!) things when using the same word. Often words are used non-literally. This all seemed too obvious to mention before now.
If your car breaks down but you decide to wait for the tow truck even though you have a backup car ready to go in case things get bad are you still "stranded"?
The constant in all the news cycles is about how they've been stranded all this time. Which isn't just a bit misleading, its a flat out lie.
Even when starliner departed, they werent standed. There was litterally an emergency plan prepared for how they'd get them home if they had to, and made modifications to the existing crew 8 ship to allow for this. This was all covered in the briefing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc
So once again, nobody was stranded. They could've come home at any point if they needed to.
The definition of stranded is litterally "left without the means to move from somewhere." which is VERY clearly not the case.
You're leaning on some "ackshully technically" definition of stranded. The fact that they had emergency contingencies in place the whole time doesn't invalidate the fact that they were stranded in the common colloquial sense of the term.
If I'm at work and my car breaks down, I'm stranded. I call my buddy to pick me up, and if there is an emergency I can ask a coworker to drive me home, but I'd rather not inconvenience them and so I am stranded until my buddy comes.
The word stranded is almost never used to describe scenarios where literally no contingency exists, because such scenarios almost never happen in modern live. To insist on such pedantry would be to effectively retire the word from common parlance.
The point is not the definition of the word stranded. They were up there for much longer than they expected or planned. That involved some amount of hardship. (Missing their families for months, if nothing else.) Bringing them back was not an appropriate opportunity to make it about how bad Trump thinks Biden is.
All the time. Nothing political about the Punch mission, or the current solar maximum spewing out a bunch of flares last year. Actually it's a bit of a shame the Punch mission wasn't launched sooner, so we could see amazing flares in 3D. But that's just me, I like sun stuff.
The point is, if you seek political stuff you'll find it, even a political spin on a recent flare that is being yet again compared to the Carrington Event. I'm here for the sun stuff and other space stuff. I'm here all the time, before and after the dust settles. I'm here for the "boring" stuff. If you have to ask that question, you're a tourist. Sorry if it comes across as gatekeeping. But it really looks like that to me.
Sure the thing's been politically amplified into oblivion by the parties involved. That doesn't mean ranting about the gulf of america and all the other things the author doesn't like about the current political situation in that arstechnica article, is a good suggestion to be bumped into a top comment. Neither is burying exodust's comment which I think has a very good point that I agree with.
Quote from the arstechnica article: "This is why we can't have nice things.". Yes it is. This is exactly it. Guess I'll just have to wait for the tourists to go elsewhere. Anyone who came for political reasons and stayed for the boring stuff is very much welcome, as always.
What's the design? What's it made of? Where were the materials sourced? Why? Where was it made? Why? Was it supposed to be marked as potentially containing carcinogenics?
What's the design? -Don't know, it's a simple chair.
What's it made of? -Wood and fiber.
Where were the materials sourced? -No idea
Why? -Why what?
Where was it made? -Factory in a town over
Why? -Is it the first "why" or a different one?
Was it supposed to be marked as potentially containing carcinogenics? -Sorry don't follow this one. It's chair to sit on.
I guess you were trying to show that this chair is about just as political as decades running a space race between two world powers? It's a good try but I think we'll need better questions to answer.
It sounds to me like you're starting from a position of "a chair is free of politics" and working backwards to justify that position. Without knowing where the materials came from, how can you declare it's free from politics, or perhaps you don't want to admit the possibility of it being imported, surrendering a toehold for an argument for trade and treaties.
What's considered "normal" for a chair in your corner of the world is determined by your history (and therefore politics). There are regulation that impact the materials and processes that go with making the chair, as well as quality
> Where was it made? -Factory in a town over
Why is the chair factory in the next town over and not your own? Is the factory unionized?
Space can be political or it can be political. Response to Spootnik-level event is political. Gaming with expectable difficulties in space exploration, pointing fingers to the previous administration, is political. But those are different kinds of "political".
I mean, from a certain perspective, it absolutely is.
Where was it manufactured? What were the labor laws where it was manufactured? Was there any environmental impact in its construction? How was it shipped to you, and was there any environmental or safety impact of that transportation? If it broke the day after it arrived, would the manufacturer owe you a replacement, or would you have to replace it at your own cost (caveat emptor)?
These are all decisions that had to be made, and were largely made collectively through a political process. Your chair likely wasn't constructed with slave labor—which was a political choice. If the chair breaks within minutes of arriving, the manufacturer will likely owe you a replacement through its implicit warranty according to the UCC.
So, no, the chair itself doesn't have political opinions. But the chair does have many direct ties to political choices that we've made.
Everything is connected to everything else. Everything anyone does continuously gets tangled with everything else, in a bubble of causality that expands at the speed of light.
That's not a very useful perspective to have, though.
Similarly, everything humans do has some connection to politics. For most things in most contexts, that connection is irrelevant in practice. The only reason one wants to make obviously non-political things political, is to shift the conversation from rational, object-level, reasonable context, to one where truth and objective reality don't matter - and they want to do it, because that bullshit-land is where they live and they have a home-field advantage there.
> I mean, from a certain perspective, it absolutely is.
It's "absolutely" in the same category as running a space race for decades between two superpowers, sacrificing enormous resources including human lives? Ok, then....
Again, the topic is "crew returning to Earth." You, Berger, and whoever posted the arstechnica link have brought politics to the party.
I liked how they had a drone circling the recovery activity at the splashdown site. All live-streamed for our informed entertainment. SpaceX is undeniably doing a great job, although the starship explosions in our atmosphere I'm not a fan of, I look forward to that not happening.
Again, this thread's parent article is a SpaceX mission launch post stating a brief outline and details. And the top comment links to some rubbish tech-wanker article.
What? The parent article is a SpaceX mission post. Meanwhile I note you have contributed 2 posts in this topic and both of them are about Trump. Do you have any thoughts on the actual event that took place? Or is your needle stuck in Trump's groove?
Their opening paragraph immediately attempts to trigger partisan responses. A bit off putting.
Then this line: "NASA—not the Biden administration, which all of my reporting indicates was not involved in any decision-making—decided the best and safest option"... NASA is part of the executive branch. So yes, it was the Biden administration.
I don't necessarily agree with Musk that the delay was politically motivated, but this article is a political hit piece through and through.
Absolutely, but in the context used here the author is trying to absolve Biden of responsibility. Could/should Biden have done something to bring them back sooner? I don't know, but it is a government organization under his command.
I think it’s downvoted because you seem to be suggesting that Joe Biden could have have overridden the decision making process led by domain experts at NASA. While in theory the President could do that, it would be a silly thing to do.
I'm pretty sure I'm correct, and that you are too: the president could theoretically do that. Or, in the very least, strongly influence decisions made by NASA.
I'm also saying that the NASA _is_ part of President Biden's administration, as the "NASA Administrator" at the time, Bill Nelson, was actually nominated by President Biden.
---
But maybe I'm wrong and the downvoters could elaborate as to how and why?
The President could theoretically muck around with decision making in all kinds of federal agencies. That doesn’t mean that the President’s administration is responsible for every technical decision made by every agency. If the NTSB fails to correctly identify the cause of an air accident, is that the President’s fault because the President nominates the board? Most people wouldn’t think so. They realise that as the President isn’t an expert at investigating air accidents, it doesn’t make sense for the President to interfere directly with the agency that investigates them.
> That doesn’t mean that the President’s administration is responsible for every technical decision made by every agency.
I disagree. There's a known point of view "the buck stops here", meaning the President is the ultimately responsible. Yes, it's hard for President to do that all, even harder - without expertise, but still.
I disagree with the original comment - look, the article this thread is attached to isn't Arstechnica's anymore - because it suggests the article is a political hit piece. I don't think so at all.
Assigning blame and fault are a similar, but still different than being seen as responsible for something, but I'm actually don't care to do either (blame/fault or responsibility).
The point I am making is perhaps just being taken as a semantics issue about the use of the word "administration", but NASA _is_ part of the president's administration, technically and practically. But I can see how someone could think "Biden administration" and only think of him and those involved in "everyday" presidential actions.
I've heard rumors that SpaceX suggested another mission to bring them back earlier, but as it would only have been a couple of months earlier NASA very sensibly declined (not worth >100 million to reduce their time in space by a third).
Because the most recent delay was down to SpaceX. Their new dragon capsule was not ready on time to collect them, so they had to shift and replan for an older one.
"Wilmore said he had no reason to doubt Musk’s claims about an offer to bring them home earlier"
"Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said, “I think there may have been some conversations that I wasn’t part of.” But he said the option to fly a separate mission to the space station to retrieve the astronauts was “ruled out pretty quickly.”
So your demonstration they offered to do it and publicly, is two NASA administrators saying there is no record or conversation of such public offer, a tweet, post event, from a pathological liar, capable to even lie, about the death of his own child...
> Wilmore said he had no reason to doubt Musk’s claims about an offer to bring them home earlier, though Wilmore said he was not privy to such an offer.
Which pretty much amounts to "I don't know, but I can't see why Musk would lie."
no - it's a tiny fraction of the actual cost. so it's not "free" but it's massively subsidized to the point of being nearly free when it's a country paying for it
In a high-development high-capital low-marginal cost it's tricky to determine the "actual cost". The marginal cost is minimal. The opportunity cost is minimal too (not like the satellites over Ukraine could be providing connectivity for other congested areas).
You are going to have to do better than some tweet battle. AFAIU from Wikipedia with decent sources the service is free, but the terminal's not, and that is what Poland paid.
Also, it's not like Ukraine or even Poland has to pay, the can pay if they want, they can also not pay if they want. It's entirely elective. They can stop using any time they want. I heard that Google has a Starlink replacement in the works that is super awesome and I also heard that while Europe has completely killed itself with regulation they are entirely willing to buy things made by China which has absolutely no regulation.
back in reality, no, they said "address world hunger", not "solve". I know we are in a post-truth phase of the decline, but please, try do do your part.
he gets paid for the contracts he already has and for new ones (billions in corporate welfare). some government agencies tried to investigate his companies and contracts (which would cause a loss of handouts from the government), so he bought his way into the government and fired everybody who was investigating his companies.
> I've heard rumors that SpaceX suggested another mission to bring them back earlier, but as it would only have been a couple of months earlier NASA very sensibly declined (not worth >100 million to reduce their time in space by a third).
I guess it came down to money more than politics? But interestingly that part is missing from reporting about this. Which, if true, reporters hiding that yet saying “let’s not make it political” are making it political. Which sadly is also not surprising.
It’s been widely reported since Musk attacked that Dutch astronaut but only in the sense that he claimed something with no evidence that it ever happened.
Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said “I think there may have been some conversations that I wasn’t part of.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...