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.
> 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.