Crew-9 Returns to Earth
spacex.com
spacex.com
Is there any information about what drone/camera equipment was used?
"That is, the Apollo Program brought the country together in the turbulent 1960s and helped make everyone feel good about the country"
This certainly was not 100% true, as some communities protested against Apollo program [1], even though, overall, the progress it has caused helped eventually those communities as well.
Nevertheless there were kind of bipartisan agreement to push this program which, in current situation of the divide in the society, would be hard to achieve, given some program pitfalls, like the tragic catastrophe of Apollo 1, which killed Virgil Grissom, Edward Higgins White and Roger Chaffee (worth to not forget those people, who sacrificed their lives for humanity progress). Kennedy (and his wife) personality helped here a lot too, with some murky person, like Nixon, or someone featureless like Johnson it would've been more difficult.
Also the claim that 1960s were turbulent is not really correct. In fact, 1970s were really turbulent with the rise of domestic terrorism [2][3].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/14/apollo-11-ci...
[2] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OPSR_TP...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States
"There ain't a space program for niggas
Yeah, you stuck here, nigga"
These notions and ideas and citizens live in space
I chuckle just like all of y'all, absurdity, after all
Takes money to get it running and money for trees to fall
Imagine for one second all the people are colored, please
Imagine for one second all the people in poverty
No matter the skin tone, culture or time zone
Think the ones who got it
Would even think to throw you a bone?
Moved you out your neighborhood, did they find you a home?
Nah cypher, probably no place to
Imagine if this shit was really talkin’ about space, dude
Thanks for posting it here
Note that the bipartisanship of the post-WW2, pre-2000s period was almost entirely a product of the long series of overlapping political realignments going on, which left the main political divides in the country poorly aligned with the split between the major parties—there was intense political polarization, and at many times intense political violence, but it wasn't partisan because the splits cut across rather than between the major parties.
> Also the claim that 1960s were turbulent is not really correct. In fact, 1970s were really turbulent with the rise of domestic terrorism
Thr 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were all turbulent, and domestic terrorism (including state and state-tolerated terrorism, particularly around racial issues) was quite prominent in the 1950s; “domestic terrorism” was not unique to the 1970s, though calling domestic political violence “terrorism” may have increased then.
Nothing to do with the CEO or the company culture. Sort of like Apple, Jobs was probably just annoying his engineers all the time and contributed nothing.
/s
After that he started getting more and more unhinged, leading through to buying twitter, then trying to get out of it, then doubling down.
Take heed, if you have money, power, and poor social skills, hire people to manage it for you.
What was the genre of that film again?
Musk is DESPERATE to be adored and DESPERATE for influence and power outside the scope of his success.
Those are personal failings, not the failings of society.
It's not merely about "likability" but more about carefully controlling the messaging, and avoiding controversies or really bad missteps.
A defendant or plaintiff can choose to remain totally silent in a court of law and speak through their attorney. The attorney filters what their client has to say, recasts it in legal terminology, and everything the attorney says and does should protect the interests of the client and the court, in opposition to the other side.
It's also about a division of labor: for God's sake, what CEO/politician/bishop wants to open all his own mail when a secretary can filter it? What CEO is going to read social media all day and respond to their DMs? Waste of a salary! Does Mr. Musk or President Trump really write all the covfefe on his own, or does he employ ghost writers? How would we know?
A PR firm likewise has a fiduciary and legal duty to protect the interests of an entity, to keep them out of litigous entanglements, and yes, to put on the best public face that they can in order to 'be liked'. Unless the org has some weird reason to play the villain or adversary in some way, and likability is not an ultimate goal, such as a gangsta rapper with a public beef, I suppose. They still use social media to sell music.
If he'd had better social skills, he wouldn't have been fired from x.com and made even more money from PayPal.
If you read the Isaacson biography of him, it seems like he's always been like this.
It's only regrettable through the lens of partisan politics. DOGE is undeniably a good concept.
You will notice governments around the world copying the method. That is, launching initiatives to audit everything, cut wasteful spending, expose corrupt spending, and trim bureaucratic inefficiency via external oversight. It would be regrettable not to undertake the task.
Cut wasteful spending -> things Musk doesn’t like? Or people responsible for safely handling nuclear waste?
Expose corrupt spending -> would be nice to get a report of this
Trim bureaucratic inefficiency -> like firing people and then having to hire them back?
I can get behind the concept of DOGE. But that’s not what DOGE is actually doing.
Audit committees have been around forever, because people think they are a good concept. A large fraction of the (time) cost in government (or dealing with the government) is dealing with initiatives to audit everything, and cut wasteful spending.
Not to say that eliminating waste isn't a good concept, but do not conflate the _idea_ of eliminating waste with any one particular implementation.
Of the $6.8T budget, $55B (or whatever is the truth) would amount to less than 0.9% of spending. https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everythin...
Anyway, we have a Government Accounting Office already which is highly critical of waste. If anyone was earnest, they'd send them more resources.
On the other hand, if someone wanted to cripple every infrastructure, institution, and agency across the board in order to cause chaos, without transparency, accountability, and compliance, then DOGE is super effective!
As it is, that "small" corruption is funding an extensive network of NGOs, nonprofits run by the families of people in government, media, etc. -- all to (a) keep a ton of money flowing to people in Washington DC and (b) protect that status quo.
Politics aside, widespread corruption in the US capitol should be taken very seriously.
Presidential administrations have been repeatedly trying to deal with the sheer behemoth bureaucracy, the growing power of unelected officials, and all the associated corruption since the early 1960s and so far have been defeated every time (see JFK's comments on the CIA for one example; there are also videos of Obama and Biden trying to address it during Obama's presidency). Each time it wins again, it grows stronger and more entrenched.
Our partisan attitude is understandable: our tribal wiring seems to make us gravitate towards "us/them" thinking and to cheer when "their" side loses. But doesn't the DC bureaucracy represent a common enemy to those on either side who value democracy?
Timeless: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
How about let's solve problems practically instead of having trillion dollar decisions made in the name of virtue signaling about "moral purity."
> But doesn't the DC bureaucracy represent a common enemy to those on either side who value democracy?
Uh, no. USAID etc. have money because our elected representatives gave it money, as prescribed by the Constitution which governs our country.
The constitution doesn't mention anything about any federal agencies. The Department of State didn't even exist until a 1789 law signed by George Washington.
USAID was established by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Its express purpose is to fund U.S. foreign economic and humanitarian assistance programs.
If the majority of USAID money is going towards things that do not align with the law that governs it, would you say that fits somewhere under the umbrella of "waste, fraud, and abuse"?
If I believe USAID is full of waste, fraud, and abuse, I’m free to express that at the ballot box where I vote for a congressperson who wishes to vote on the next budget accordingly.
The executive has many dimensions of freedom with regard to federal agencies. “Existence of” and “funding of” are not among those dimensions of freedom.
I don't think the current administration actually abolished USAID or its funding; it just froze outgoing transfers from it. Some of the verbage used by Musk & others is exaggerated. They're playing to their voter base, unfortunately. It doesn't accurately describe what is technically or legally happening.
Unelected ones - worse still?
The unsurprisingly-ignored central sin of the Trump administration for those who voted for it for reasons of "free speech" or "reducing government corruption" or "accountability" is that Trump and his circle do not actually believe in any of those things and are not acting in ways consistent with any of those priciples. Those are just the things they say to get votes so they can grab all the power they can.
Anyone opposed to government waste or corruption should be beating down the door to get Republicans to impeach Trump because he's trying to create a whole hell of a lot of corruption-and-waste-enabling precedents.
Yeah, I hate that. Their talk is closer to WWE guys in the ring (at least on X) than the thoughtful orators whose pictures line the oval office. There's no thoughtful, careful, wise poise about it. There are many others like me who also dislike how things are said, but we look back at the actions taken (not words said) and are a lot more happy with them than we are with Biden's actions (or lack thereof).
> whole hell of a lot of corruption-and-waste-enabling precedents
Could you elaborate? I'm curious to know specifics you'd call out as examples.
from this week, lawyerballing on reasons to ignore judicial decisions they don't like https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-hear-arguments-trump-adminis...
here we just call for impeachment of judges who rule against us https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-federal-judges-impea... - “at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.” - what else you got in mind, exactly, Donald?
and obviously there's the whole impoundment thing we've just been talking about - the executive blatantly ignoring a law that restricted that. should be trivial to imagine ways THAT could be misused.
Musk's entire role is pretty suspect - where was the Senate confirmation hearing or law authorizing the delegation of power to him? where is the authority over departments headed by actual cabinet members beyond "Trump said so"?
another big flashing warning sign is RFK and the CDC re-opening the vaccines/autism thing. wouldn't it be curious if suddenly a new study contradicts decades of research there? seems a bit wasteful to re-litigate unless you have reason to believe you'll get the result you want, not the one the numbers have been pointing to...
What are the good actions? Laying people off to save pennies off the budget? Promising tax cuts to enlarge the national deficit? Renaming shit?
(EDIT: another big corruption-enablement thing would be deciding the FCC is the "let's police speech i don't like" department.)
The law didn't restrict it, the Constitution prohibits it without law allowing it. The Impoundment Control Act provided a limited allowance for impoundment, rather than actually curtailing it.
They impounded funding. That’s exactly what they’re doing and it’s exactly what’s illegal.
Glad you don’t dispute Congress’s Constitutional role though!
Clinton cut the size of the government considerably – 400k federal workers! – but you probably didn’t hear a lot about it because it was a thoughtful process designed not to impact the ability of the government, and because it undercuts the narrative that Democrats increase spending which is popular in right-wing propaganda. What DOGE is doing locks in as much cost and disruption as possible while minimizing benefits because that’s not the actual goal (scoring political points against what’s perceived as a democratic stronghold).
Fraud literally means intentional lying in accounting or other financial representations, for the purpose of improperly benefiting someone. If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.
> If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.
Yup, that endpoint is fine and can be agreed with.
People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though. And if a few percent of the money their program spends is wasted or benefits other people through fraud-- that's not corruption either.
And the blanket cuts, layoffs, offers for voluntary separation /early retirement, and contract cancellations don't seem to be aimed at the thing we agree is corruption.
I didn't say anything about that; I don't think I know enough yet to have a fully formed opinion.
But I do think that the overly powerful DC bureaucracy, DC NGOs, and corruption that holds it together is a worthy common enemy for all of us - that's what I'm trying to point out.
I'm actually amazed at Democrats' position on this. I grew up in a Democratic family... We used to be the anti-establishment party! JFK was a Democrat - and he's the one who was apparently taken out by the CIA because he said he was going to destroy it. It used to be Republicans who wanted to keep the institutional status quo in DC.
Either way, I think a pro-Democracy attitude will oppose growing power of unelected officials, regardless of political leanings.
DOGE is headed by an unelected official, from a party with not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now.
In terms of democracy, that is about as direct of an electoral mandate as possible.
> not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now
How about having been duly elected in the ballot boxes? Being pro-democracy means accepting and implementing the will of the people.
(Trump disputed the election results in 2020 because he believed there was widespread election fraud. That may be evidence he was deluded, but I don't think it's necessarily evidence of being anti-democracy in his leanings.)
> How about having been duly elected by a landslide majority in ballot boxes?
How is 49.8% a "landslide majority"?
This is either willful ignorance or something else.
I'm trying to say that the emperor is nude, and you are arguing that the threads might be so small as to not see them - or, rather, that the Media said he was naked, so while the president claims that he is wearing clothes, and that might be evidence he is deluded, his open ass in the wind not evidence of his pro-nudity leanings.
(This ignores the fact that he rose from the republican party, one that has been operating in full defiance of open democracy since bush v. gore. Republcans don't want "the will of the people", otherwise they wouldn't push so hard for voter suppression.)
It's a claim so baffling that it makes me assume you aren't operating in good faith.
The human desire to be richer and the power to make it happen.
Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer?
And worse, that the poorly-vetted people who have attached themselves to this administration don't?
The idea that getting rid of fraud in a chaotic fashion is going to lead to less fraud is laughable, unless the assumption is also 'All of the people who are doing this are altruistic and moral.'
If you create chaos at scale, you simply end up with different fraud.
And you can quote me on this in 6 years when investigations begin to lead to trials...
(Which, naturally, Republicans will claim are politically-motivated? But you know who complains loudest about the rule of law? People who do illegal things.)
Which honestly should happen to some extent (I'm not a fan of SLS). But we shouldn't become beholden to one vendor, and it's sure looking a lot more like removing options for the future and competition than a play for efficiency.
And anyone doing this for their own companies in the past would be a textbook example of corruption.
One of the things that fucked it up was decades of cost-plus government work.
Companies become the most profitable versions of themselves the market allows them to be... which without competition usually doesn't bode well for excellence.
FYI, lots of dumb people actually DO believe that. "Oh they have so much money already" they say. They don't even attempt to square that with collecting more resources than some Gods, for, reasons.
Pointing to money that was spent differently than you think it should be is not fraud, no matter how much you want to claim it.
Pointing to money being spent in suboptimal ways is not fraud. Maybe it's waste - but often it's what the law calls for (aka definitionally the opposite of fraud).
Yelling very loudly about how it's all fraud and waste is not proof. It doesn't matter how loudly you yell.
Repeating "there's so much fraud, omg, fraud everywhere, soooo much fraud" over and over is not proof. Even if your repetitions would make an animated gif jealous.
Actually prove the fraud: Show that the money was spent in a way different than proscribed by law, that the people authorizing the spending were lying, and there was direct enrichment of someone via those lies and misspending. It's not hard if of it around.
When people find loopholes in the law to obtain grants, do you defend their actions because technically it didn't break the law?
DOGE is apparently exposing a system of dubious and questionable spending at scale. If "wasteful" is an understatement, don't be surprised when taxpayers use "fraud" to describe the decisions made to blow their money.
Even if a court finds that funding that "drag show in Ecuador" was lawful, doesn't take the sting out. It doesn't take the fact away that someone benefited who probably shouldn't have, relative to the government's broader budget purposes. It might enrage people even more that it was a systemic abuse of grant money.
I don't defend their actions as moral. I think the loophole should be closed. I also think that they didn't commit fraud, as a loophole is by definition legal.
As for all your nonsense about money being spent different than you would like: I get it, you're very upset. As I covered before: money being spend different than you would like it to be spent is not fraud, no matter how much you rant and hate.
You mention morality, but then say my "likes" are nonsense. You've even pushed me into the "rant" and "hate" zone! I'm trying to have a civil discussion about curious things. Insinuating I'm ranting and hating doesn't help.
Maybe we differ on the morality point. In my mind, anything immoral is a problem worth solving.
The law sometimes trails behind what the community needs. In my country Australia, the law sometimes doesn't protect the community from harm (bail laws, police strip-search powers, weak foreign investment review boards, lack of industry oversight allowing criminal gangs to infiltrate construction industry including major government contracts - yes these are real and recent examples.) We don't want the law to fail. We like "the law", and because we like it, when it does fail we need to face it, name it, and deal with it.
Prove fraud.
The post I originally replied to accused fraud. There is a legal definition of fraud - so prove it.
Everything you're going on about has nothing to do with fraud, and is 100% irrelevant since its not about evidence of fraud.
I mentioned morality of loopholes because to me your question looked like some sort of end-run around providing evidence of fraud. That's also why I clearly stated the difference between my opinions and the legal factuality.
Prove the claimed fraud.
If you want the law changed, that's fine - convince congress to do it. Even if the law changes, fraud must be proved under the laws that were relevant when the allegedly fraudulent event occurred.
So again - prove fraud (hint, i doubt you can no matter what your feelings are).
This is a forum not a court of law. You're hung up on "fraud" and lost sight of the discussion.
Sometimes "fraud" is, for the time being, billowing black smoke. There's a small chance it's a harmless smoke machine, not a fire. Some will cling to that hope, but many others will yell fire.
The process with DOGE is unfolding, so hang tight! Surely you agree "efficiency" would be a good outcome. They're aiming for a tight ship not a cash-haemorrhaging behemoth.
Let Musk work on it for a bit. Heckle later if he doesn't get results. I'll join you in heckling, but for now it's great what they're doing. Shocking that Teslas are burning.
You originally replied to someone who asked "How much fraud and abuse...", so they weren't tethered to only "fraud", they were talking about the generally alarming and wasteful spending of the public's money.
Prove it.
They keep saying “fraud” without proof of anything other than just spending they disagree with. Spending, I might add, which was previously duly authorized by Congress.
The use of the word “fraud” is a smoke screen. To unquestioningly accept it is to be complicit in their lies. And that’s what they’re doing: lying.
If there really is fraud, let’s see it prosecuted via due process, like it should be. The fact that that isn’t happening speaks volumes.
No one can "prove" anything without a clear goalpost that doesn't move :) That being said, there is evidence I can present from the past. Here are a couple of cases:
- https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/chemonics-internatio...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/usaid-suspends...
Also, not exactly "fraud" in the accounting sense, but there is a slew of NGOs that purport to support foreign aid, but most of the money is paid to people in DC. Only about $5B/yr actually went from USAID to directly meet needs in other countries: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/opinion/us-foreign-aid.ht...
If you don't see how problematic that is, then why not just avoid the discussion in the first place?
I am personally not calling for that. What I do want is for the flow of money to this network of DC-based NGOs to get cleaned up.
Have you ever heard of a grant "poem"? That's an inside term for the fancy language that is written when an NGO or university requests funding from a US federal agency. It has to sound quasi-legitimate, even erudite. But the purpose is to secure more money, and for NGOs, the actual funds are almost entirely used to enrich the people in the NGO, and often to fund things that keep the left in power (like local protests, far-left media, "grassroots" left-wing campaign organizations, etc). Grant poems to enrich NGOs constitute fraud -- maybe not in an accounting sense, but it very much is a defrauding of the citizens who pay taxes.
Also, DOGE has so far found 14 "magic money" computers located in various agencies, including the department of the treasury. When a particular API call comes in, these computers will transfer money from nothing, essentially creating new money out of thin air. That is the worst form of fraud.
> If you don't see how problematic that is, then why not just avoid the discussion in the first place?
Because the faithlessness of the federal bureaucracy and its network of NGOs, combined with its sheer magnitude and entrenched power, is a very real problem. I guess I'm not articulate enough to engage productively with folks like yourself who inexplicably seem to think it's really great...
Modern democratic governments ought to implement the will of the people, not subvert it to enrich themselves and stay in power. Do you disagree?
---
In summary, Trump will be gone in 4 years, Elon Musk is rapidly losing his money and influence. The wheel of fortune turns rapidly for elected officials and their administrations. But by default, these lifetime Washington DC residents (and their WEF allies) who exert enormous power over the populace will only be more rich and powerful with each passing election season. They hate the USA and those who love it, precisely because the freedoms and stipulations of the Constitution, and the hardy "free settlers of the frontier" ethos, threaten their power.
(I don't mean every, or even most of the residents of DC. I mean those who are the most personally enriched and who wield the most political power without being elected or appointed by someone who is elected. Most of these people are in the vast NGO network.)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/15/opinion/forei...
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-rubio-usaid-mu...
On paper.
I'm all for audits, reducing waste, transparency, etc., not wanton firing and publicity stunts.
The idea of bringing in a bunch of "whiz kids" who know absolutely nothing about the departments they're auditing [1], axing people arbitrarily (i.e., firing seemingly everybody who is "probationary"), and cutting programs seemingly purely by Ctrl-F'ing for keywords without even bothering to figure out if the keyword even means what you're looking for in context is absolute clown shoes for good governance.
The fact that they're breaking all sorts of laws in the process makes it even worse; and to top it off, they can't even bring themselves to be honest to the courts about who is responsible for their actions.
No, DOGE is undeniably a rotten concept from inception to practice.
[1] Seemingly flummoxed by the existence of things like sentinel values in databases for "we don't know," based on some of the "fraud" they've very loudly proclaimed.
So you aren't actually opposed to waste or corruption? Since corruption in the purpose of getting rid of things you personally find wasteful is fine with you? You just want the big bad scary government to employ less people? But the ones the executive does employ should be able to do whatever they want, laws be damned?
Where do you REALLY think that ends?
Which is it? Are they copying DOGE or are they auditing things, because what DOGE is doing is not auditing. Auditing involves bringing in people who understand what they are looking at.
I'm actually a fan of that too. His issue is that he causes controversy where none is needed.
And you have this knowledge, how?
> (and personal fortune) into SpaceX for over a decade.
Using paypal money to chase government contract money.
> If it weren't for SpaceX we'd be relying on the incompetent monstrosities of Boeing or ULA.
That does not automatically follow. It's entirely possible that a company better than all of them might now exist if SpaceX didn't.
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX [1]
Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age [2]
[0] https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/
[1] https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger?v...
Also in that alternative timeline, I wonder what that would do to Americans psychologically. If China and Russia had already beat the US in space, the decline would be extremely obvious. To the rest of the world as well.
With SpaceX it could go on both sides just because the engineering for spacecraft designs and rockets is not really a solved problem unlike 95% of automobile design, but management could still be the biggest problem with SpaceX. Of course that is going to be hard to see or quantify without being part of SpaceX management.
If you want to see bad management in rocketry, look at SpaceX's competitors.
Only thing missing really is landing on land and crew offboarding just like that by themselves.
Under no circumstances will I agree that "Elon rescued" anyone or anything. The guy has a fetish to be seen as a rescuer. It's unseemly.
> SpaceX did awesome Job.
Fulfilling a contract they've executed several times before? slow clap
More than you can say for the Boeing launch that took the astronauts up last summer.
The ability to ramp up services on short notice is not flexibility traditional space companies offer. Ex, if NASA begged Boeing for an extra SLS launch this year, they simply could not do it.
There's actually a video of Butch, from the station, saying Musk's description was "entirely factual" - although he then sort of backtracked that. Seems like no one wants to outright explain what happened.
Nobody wants to get fired and get death threats just for speaking plainly, so most people don't. Every once in awhile someone will decide it's worth the cost, but most people most of the time will decide it isn't.
There was an election. Someone won. Someone lost. HN is not a place for baseless conspiracy theories. You’ve been here long enough to know better.
(It's true that many authoritarian regimes seek to eliminate or corrupt elections, but being fairly elected is compatible with being authoritarian.)
My concern is that many won't.
Is Trump somehow different here?
In what ways is Elon ruining lives and critically endangering health?
What makes you think I'd prefer that he not speak plainly?
I'd certainly prefer that he:
1. Not break a bunch of laws while running the government (while having a totally unclear official role?).
2. Not use his control of twitter's algorithm to push his own political priorities.
3. Not use his wealth and bully pulpit to intimidate people (like judges) who don't just bow to whatever he wants.
But beyond that, I have absolutely no issue with him speaking plainly. And I think death threats are bad, always.
> Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025. They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Starliner is expected to depart from the space station and make a safe, controlled autonomous re-entry and landing in early September.
The only change in plan was that Crew 10 was pushed back by a month because of delays at SpaceX and a swap to an existing dragon rather than the new one as planned.
> There's actually a video of Butch, from the station, saying Musk's description was "entirely factual"
His entire career hinges on keeping musk and trump happy
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-decides-to-bring-star...
1 Ship broken and delay announced until 2025
2 Musk offers his ship for return before 2025
3 Offer not accepted,
4 Pro-Musk claims the refusal was for political reasons, anti-Musk crowd claims it's not for political reasons but simply to comply with the original plan
Is that correct? If so, both groups agree with your comment, right?
Get on the ground, then tell the truth. The moment Trump politicized those astronauts they became political hostages.
I'd read the Butch quote very carefully:
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.
He makes it absolutely clear that he can't answer the question because he doesn't have any of the information. But he believes Musk and that what Musk says is "Absolutely factual".
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...
When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.
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)
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.
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
Tom Leher, "Werner Von Braun"
>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.
* 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.
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.
There is also Rocket Lab, Stoke Space and Blue Origin.
> And still, the lies came.
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.
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.
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?
They literally train for multiple gruesome death scenarios as part of their training. Not just "well, your 8-day stay has now become several months"
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.
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.
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!
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?”
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.
I see no reason to trust either of them.
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.
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.
Honestly, the best evidence that Biden did not block a rescue mission is Trump and Musk saying that he did.
There is only one side with an incentive to lie, and that is only because they started lying and now they cannot stop without losing face.
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).
> 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.”
The fact check article is pretty comprehensive: https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delay...
(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.
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.
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.
Where did Musk show his proof it was political?
Given how often Musk and Trump tell BS, bend the truth and even lie I tend to believe NASA officials
I thought this was sarcasm when I first read it.
We know for a fact that Musk a serial liar with a very tenuous grasp of truth.
Can you say the same about the Senior NASA official?
Also, the burden of proof lies on Musk, not on NASA which literally has contingencies upon contingencies for such situations.
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.
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"
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.
1. https://nitter.net/NASA/status/1827393397939634503 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41339667 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-10
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/nasa-officials-undermi...
Hacker News comment from 6 months ago, you know, during the Biden administration. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41339804:
- 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.
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.
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 two astronauts in question are simply hitching a ride back on this scheduled mission.
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.
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.
[0]: https://x.com/NASA/status/1827396382702878966
[1]: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2024/09/28/nasas-s...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/live/Xq5CH-d4IuU?si=-q-J65i7G_d6Mcxs...
- 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.
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]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Crew_Flight_Test#Uncrew...
>Ah, yes. The Gulf of America.
>This is why we can't have nice things.
That doesn't sound like an "excellent journalist". It sounds like a Redditor.
Do you realize that you’re the one behaving like a low-quality Redditor here.
We're not talking about their >decade of work. We're talking about this work, and this work sounds like a Redditor.
Once a favorable celebrity wears the Red or ventures near the Orange the script is rewritten.
Liftoff was published January 3, 2023
Reentry was published September 2024
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger?v...
What is the complaint? You don't like the style of rebuking this ridiculous behavior?
I'm curious if you were complaining when Barack Obama renamed Mt. McKinley.
#1 It wasn't just the President, it was literally the state of Alaska that had made the request for four decades. #2 This is within US borders.
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.
Countdown to Substack.
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/butch-and-suni-send-mi...
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/former-nasa-official...
That is a HUGE disclaimer. "no information on that, though, whatsoever" - it doesn't get any bigger than that.
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).
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...
"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.
"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.
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/yes-nasa-really-could-...
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"?
>They got left in space
And Musk >They were left up there for political reasons
There was the line already crossed, because those statements are untrue and they know.
In other words they lied.
[1]https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-sit-on-a-throne-of-lies
None of the writers of Ars Technica are anything like fair to Musk.
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?
True. For some reason they keep minimising the damage he is doing to both science and democracy.
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".
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.
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.
That why asking "When was space not political?" is not very useful either.
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....
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
The classic: https://www.readthesequences.com/Disguised-Queries
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".
In fact, I'd be surprised if even 1 in 100 actual uses of the word in, say, 2023 matched the definition you've given.
"Left by your friends in an empty car park? Well, there's technically an unlocked bicycle over there..."
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.
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.
Trump is stirring shit with lies to sway the public.
2. Oh look cute dolphins came to watch
…are they dead now?
Know if there's anything to that?
Might explain some of the odd rhetoric.
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.
Elon Musk offers a lot of things for free, and then turns out you have to pay anyway.
Edit: italicized
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...
even if they pay, he can supply it if he wants, or he can cut them off if it threatens to inconvenience Russia.
I hope you read it carefully and we can have some intelligent conversation about the contents.
does that help?
As a response to this: https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/04/26/elon-musk-hunger/
Spoiler alert, they could not show him how.
Check the errata at the bottom.
"The Facts Behind the Delayed Return of U.S. Astronauts" - https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delay...
"SpaceX offered to do it for free. Publicly."
It will be kinder for you, to think you’re lying, than to suspect a deficit in judgment...
"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.”
First hand sources: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1892617681796264436 https://www.youtube.com/live/rCiNtismqg8?si=M8ZfF79yK9pwYJ1o
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1dxlopw/elo...
And an interview with the astronauts where no such offer is mentioned except by a Fox news presenter?
Uhau, just uhau....
I trust an actual Astronaut and an actual Engineer in Aerospace Engineering, and the first first pilot of a US spacecraft who was not a US citizen
> 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."
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...
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.
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://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/04/starliner...
https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/nasa-spacex-c...
Maybe one of the downvoters can explain?
Bullshit. 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.
You started this response by explicitly ignoring that reason.
> it never was controversial before
It was also never the case that the US was launching ~two rockets per week.
> 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 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.
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.
Shift right... Come on.
If you can write a one sentence definition of liberalism, and examine policies from first principles, you might be surprised.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
What would you have preferred they said?
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.
Contributing to bringing Earth to a state where it will have to be "terraformed" itself: not so cool
in space human slave is literally most expensive labor you can choose, automatons is the way
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
- Werner von Braun
The worst political nonsense I get caught in means a phone call. Not an extended stay with potential life-lasting or shortening effects. Rad is different for everyone :)
Captain Paperclip would have encouraged the negative path, yes.
maybe you must see real world first, drinkable water and plant is literally of the most rare thing in the universe surpassing mineral and metal, one of the most abundant things in space
also if you born poor in earth, many people would take a chance to do space industry at all in the future despite the risk
Before we had machines to put in our factories, we had hordes of dead laborers. Regulations are written in blood. Then we had company towns and truly brutal police enforcement.
Why will humans work there? Partly for the reason you gave: poverty. That makes them particularly expendable, offering themselves to the 'chance' as you say.
edit: My bias is obvious, I work in SRE - not development. I don't create things, I deal with the fallout of creation. It's a lot like that.
also human is expensive, if fleet of human slave is cheap then we outsource all of our work to china and india. but that don't happen we build a trillion dollar industry (AI and robotic) to make all of that
I don't see a collaborative trip through the cosmos, I see a very unhealthy relationship with danger to boot
This may be all the more reason for robots, but again: humans take no engineering. Just a few minutes and a lot of tries (heh, sex joke). They'll literally pay for themselves.
RE: outsourcing, I don't know what you mean/where you are. That's exactly what's been happening, here. Consistently. For decades. Many ventures can happen.
also human is fragile, weak, costly, too long to make it productive. it takes 15+ year for human to be any useful at all (and not counting experience)
do you think these space corp would just sit 15+ year revenue of upkeep going to waste only the next day human employee die because some dust near light speed particle hit the station???
nooo, slavery human space is not practical because is not cost effective economy wise
But right now, we don't have working practical self replicating robots, but we do have humans. The cost of the 15+ years is externalized, you can just lure a desperate already-grown human with shiny promises, give them some training, and ship them off.
Yes, you have to ship them oxygen and food, which is expensive, but it's a solution that exists and works with todays technology (minus some well-defined engineering), while the robots aren't ready yet.
also space is vast and empty, even with spaceship that has near light speed it still take years to even reach the destination not even counting do extract resources or back go to earth
human literally CAN'T do that
Humans are currently much, much better at doing varied, unexpected tasks. We will at some point likely get more universal robotics, but right now I think there's a very good chance we'll get humans to Mars before we get the robots to work.
Yeah that's why we build trillion dollar industry to make it 'think'
The point is, they are expected to say they enjoyed every minute of it in front of the camera. And if they really didn’t we may not hear about it.
I really hope they'll at some point clearly say either "well, of course we missed our families, but really, getting such an opportunity was AWESOME and Boeing's misfortune was a huge lucky event for us" or "Being up there is awesome, but quite honestly, having to do it unexpectedly really sucked".
And I don't think that it is the slightest bit unprofessional to have feelings about where you spent a year of your life, or to talk about those feelings.
I think it’s cultural. Astronauts I think are more disciplined and more professional on average than an average Joe. Even if they hated it they probably wouldn’t mention it publicly. Maybe after they retire from NASA completely.
All astronauts are military service members. I'd expect nothing less.
Another astronaut comments on what the Crew-9 people can expect: "The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight", because the "build-up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision". They may need glasses for the rest of their lives."
Living without gravity seems to be harder on some than others. Valery Polyakov spent 435 days in space, longer than anyone else. He apparently didn't suffer much in the way of after-effects, had a good post-flight career, and died at age 80.
That particular launch window only occurs once every two years. The Earth and Mars rotate around the Sun at different rates. During some periods Mars is on the other side of the Sun and essentially unreachable with our current level of delta-v.
> latest optimistic prediction
Will that be before or after fully self driving cars? Or electric semis? That drive themselves in road trains? Will those astronauts have neuralink chips in their heads?
> re-adapting to gravity on arrival will be an issue.
It's 1/3 gravity. Then again, you're on a ship with no free return abort trajectory available, I'd worry more about medical emergencies, crew temperament, and actual crimes being committed.
Especially when you’re separated from your family and other loved ones.
And if you follow JPL robotic missions that far outlast their mission objectives and keep going like Energizer Bunnies, then is it not sort of amazing that the astronauts really suffered no privations or hardships, in terms of food/shelter/clothing/hygiene, by extending their missions and doing useful things up there?
People watch "The Martian" and "Lost in Space" and they can't seem to grasp the careful pre-planning, incident response, resource allocation, and orcestration that goes into everything that's done by space programs.
Space missions include sprawling, branching flow-charts of every contingency they imagined, and they inform the press of mission objectives and a proposed timeline, and then life happens and when glitches come up, they roll with them because they prepared for them. Apollo 13, for example, is categorically different than a space habitation in Earth orbit; as a lone vehicle with limited resources and an isolated path, that Apollo mission ran out of planned contingencies to the point of improvising so many things and returning to fundamentals, preserving human life.
It's the peril of human life that definitely adds drama for us, and the ISS being influenced by geopolitics is categorically different than the nationalist glories of Mercury-Gemini-Apollo vs. the Soviets. But with ISS in Earth orbit, receiving regular resupply missions, being a habitable outpost, it's far different than sending up a vehicle like the Space Shuttle while everyone speculates whether another Saturn V could be constructed in time to rescue the crew because tiles fell off their heat shield.
Speaking of Saturn, I've been peering into Greek/Roman mythology, and learning what Cronus/Saturn did with his children and how Aphrodite/Venus was born, gives new insight into super heavy-lift launch vehicles named after the deity.
But the only people that can actually say this was bad or good are the astronauts themselves, only they know how much they love their work to turn the word "stranded" into something else positive.
They were not stuck in space
> But the only people that can actually say this was bad or good are the astronauts themselves
Multiple people that actually ran this mission have said multiple times that they were not stuck, and explained all the reasons for the extension. And yet you keep ignoring everything except the narrative of "stuck" and "stranded".
This is their life and profession. The job is extremely difficult, dangerous and mega mega expensive. Hence they don't get to do it as much as they love. Now they did.
"Another astronaut comments on what the Crew-9 people can expect: "The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight", because the "build-up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision". They may need glasses for the rest of their lives.""
It is, to be fair, part of their job to put on a happy face.
Becoming a NASA astronaut is extremely hard. You have to check a ridiculous number of boxes, and you have to really want it. I think anyone who goes through this process would prefer a 6 month stay on the space station over a 2 week stay on the space station, and the 6 month stay is what they got.
NASA kept them safe and fed, I really don't think you can reasonably knock them from this perspective.
Feels like they've been put between a wall and a sword: either they abandon the ISS or come back home. I don't know how I'd feel about that.
There is always a way home from the ISS. There are always enough spacecraft, including Soyuz, docked to ISS to save the cosmonauts in case of emergency.
As I say, it's amazing how effective lying to people has become that you genuinely bought that total load of crap that they were stranded.
See, we can all put stuff in capitals. Doesn't make it true.
Even if you defined "stranded" as being "unable to use the Starliner", then they weren't stranded in September. They could have decided to get in the ship and go home. Not like there's some political officers on board ready to stop them.
Are you suggesting Trump, like Reagan, may have interfered to delay the release of citizens held up in unusual circumstances--for personal political gain?
Space exploration was full of misinformation (or corporate BS, if you want to call it that way) for decades.
Take out politics and the story is nothing special. These guys are astronauts, their mission just took longer than expected because people considered it was safer that way. A movie about it would as boring as a movie about people working in space can be.
But political figures and the media took the story as an opportunity to do what they do best in creating "engagement", i.e. flame wars.
Yes, four astronauts arrived on Saturday on Crew 10 and are there now.
edit: They came down on the scheduled Crew 9 craft, which, as the linked caption says, has been docked and waiting at the space station since September.
It also led to some interesting improvisations. NASA has a requirement that there be a 'lifeboat' 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]
As another fun aside, when the Starliner was returning [autonomously] to Earth it experienced two more errors, unrelated to the ones that left the astronauts stranded on the ISS in the first place. What a vessel.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Crew_Flight_Test#Uncrew...
This continues to be silly. There were changes to Crew 9, last summer, when it was decided that it would be logistically easier for two (instead of four) astronauts to go up and the two Boeing crew would come down with them on the Crew 9 craft in February/March 2025 (that would be now). This has always been the plan, the only politics being injected here are people insisting on grandstanding and making drama where there is none.
You can disagree with the decision (though, again, why), but it was a decision. There was no dereliction of duty, no stranding of astronauts since September, and this was not some high-stakes rescue.
It's a simple, parsimonious explanation for everything that has happened since. Nonetheless, we apparently have to talk about it.
I wonder how many people expressing strong opinions don't even understand that there were intentionally empty seats.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39474840 NASA will retire the ISS soon (npr.org) Feb 22, 2024
Also a large difference to all of NASA’s international partners who might lose out on astronaut slots, scientists with experiments that won’t be ran, dozens of contractor companies supporting ISS, etc.
The more you knew about this, the more you'd be okay with it. The station was obsolete before it was even built. NASA likes to justify the space station as a laboratory studying the effects of longterm space flight on humans; the results were in decades ago: it fucks people up. Human bodies begin to deteriorate in microgravity, even one year isn't healthy and there's nothing we can do about it. No exercise regime can fix it, the only possible solution is a station which spins. This was known before the ISS was built, but they didn't build a spin station. They built Mir 2, using the Soviet DOS-8 module. Mir 1 had the DOS-7 module, the previous modules were the Salyut stations. When the Soviets got tooled up to build something they liked to keep building it forever, and that's what happened here. The Salyut stations came from a period in time when space stations actually had a rational purpose; being a platform for humans to take reconnaissance photos of other countries. This role was quickly made obsolete by recon satellites, but the Soviets were tooled up to build them so they kept at it, while the equivalent systems in America were canceled. If you're familiar with Robert Crippen, the computer specialist and nominal pilot of STS-1, you'll know that he was originally training for operation with the Manned Orbital Laboratory before joining NASA. That was America's Soyuz. It was canceled when satellites proved their capabilities. The Soviets started using satellites but kept their station program anyway, due to the wonderful efficiencies of their system.
NASA tried to use space stations as a justification for continuing Apollo levels of funding (Skylab) but that didn't work out for them and American apace station activities ended there. Some Americans were later sent to Mir and found it to be in a horrific state, a veritable death trap that got lucky on numerous occasions.
The only reason America got involved with Mir 2, rechristening it as the ISS, is because America wanted to prop up the Russian space industry to prevent total collapse and a subsequent diaspora of talent to less friendly nations. It is at least not quite as dangerous as Mir 1, but it's still a dead end technology that serves no genuine scientific purpose, with a political justification which is now just as obsolete.
But the science experiments! How could I have forgotten something so important. All kinds of very important pharmaceutical science or something, I am told. So important, that when companies fielding proposals for replacement stations go looking for customers, they come up empty. NASA wants commercial partners for the next station but the whole thing is a slowly unfolding boondoggle.
Edit to add: Starship isn't going to Mars. Its a satellite launcher surrounded by aspirational propaganda to keep young engineers motivated. And Lunar Gateway, originally the "Deep Space Gateway" before Artemis came up, is meant to exist only to give ISS mission control staff new jobs when the ISS is gone. Soviet style pork.
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port
Aboard a Boeing ship
Two astronauts went up that day,
They both were brave and true,
The Starliner delivered them,
To join ISS crew.
...for an eight day station tour.
The testing on the Starliner,
Was thoroughly performed.
Although it probably was safe,
The NASA team were warned.
So the Starliner came home to Earth,
Without its stalwart crew,
The astronauts would stay in space,
An extra month or two.
...an extra month or two.
So join us here each week my friend,
It's such a special place,
With two (not!) stranded astronauts,
Here in Gilligan's space!"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
ChatGPT (emojis are the LLM's):
Here’s a set of alternative lyrics to the Gilligan’s Island theme, capturing the Boeing Starliner astronauts’ unexpectedly extended stay on the ISS:
---
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful flight, That started from a launchpad base, And soared into the night.
The crew was only set to stay For just a week or two, But Boeing’s ship had other plans, And stretched it out to new!
(And stretched it out to new!)
The docking worked, they made it there, The mission seemed on track, But then they found some little leaks, And couldn’t make it back!
And couldn’t make it back!
The calendar kept flipping by, With patches, tests, and checks, While Houston said, "Just wait a bit," "We’re working out the specs!"
So here they stay on the orbiting lab, For months, not days but more! With coffee, jokes, and floating sleep, In zero-g galore!
In zero-g galore!
They’ll one day ride the Starliner home, If Boeing gets it right, And finally end this long delay, From what was just a flight!
(From what was just a flight!)
---
This keeps the original tune and humor while capturing the unexpected (and slightly ridiculous) nature of their extended stay.
"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
Claude:
The Ballad of Starliner
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful trip, That started from Cape Canaveral Aboard this spaceship.
The crew was two brave astronauts, The mission just eight days long. Then several systems failed that day, The timeline was all wrong, the timeline was all wrong.
The thrusters started leaking fuel, The schedule lost its way. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, They'd be lost in space today, they'd be lost in space today.
They settled in the station then, For a much extended stay, With two astronauts, and some cosmonauts too, Research night and day, The engineers, Mission Control, NASA chiefs, And Boeing's team, all working hard, Here on Starliner Isle!
"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
Gemma 3:
Okay, here's a set of alternative lyrics to the Gilligan's Island theme song, tailored to the story of Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams' extended stay aboard the International Space Station due to issues with the Boeing Starliner. I've tried to maintain the original song's meter and rhyme scheme as closely as possible.
(Music: Same as the original Gilligan's Island theme)
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, Of two brave astronauts, set to sail— To the ISS, a mission planned, For eight short days, a helping hand.
(Chorus) Starliner launched, a hopeful flight, But problems arose, with all their might! Nine months they stayed, a cosmic spree, A longer journey than it should be!
The capsule docked, all seemed so fine, But glitches appeared, a worrying sign. Repairs were needed, delays took hold, A story of patience, bravely told.
(Chorus) Starliner launched, a hopeful flight, But problems arose, with all their might! Nine months they stayed, a cosmic spree, A longer journey than it should be!
They orbited Earth, a watchful crew, Experiments done, and tasks anew. While ground control worked, with skill and grace, To bring them safely back to base.
So listen close, and you will see, A space adventure, for you and me! A tale of resilience, strong and true, Wilmore and Williams, seeing it through!
Notes on Choices & Challenges:
Meter & Rhyme: The original song is very specific in its rhythm and rhyme. I've prioritized that above all else. This meant some compromises in the narrative detail. Narrative Focus: I focused on the core issue – the extended stay due to Starliner problems – and tried to convey a sense of the situation without getting bogged down in technical details. Tone: I aimed for the same lighthearted, slightly whimsical tone as the original. "Sail" vs. "Space": The original uses "sail," which is obviously nautical. I tried to make "flight" work as a parallel. Keeping it Concise: The original theme is very short. Fitting a complex story into that format is a challenge. I hope this captures the spirit of the situation while staying true to the iconic song! Let me know if you'd like any adjustments or further refinements.
Or is it all now copyright and privatized?
Public funding production should mean public domain technology and product.
Not just space stuff, publicly funded medicine too.
Reading through today's discussion, I wondered if one might be of assistance.
Then, sometime after that date, Musk stranded them. Considering his working relationship with Trump, one can assume that Trump decided that this was acceptable. So, President Trump and Musk stranded them. We know this is true because President Trump and Musk said they were stranded. If they said they were stranded, it meant that the plan in place had been pulled, and the only people that could do that were Trump and Musk.
Sometime after that, they elected to rescue them again.
If you take President Trump and Musk's word, they abandoned the astronauts at some point. The only way this is not true is if they were lying to the American people.
Turning 8 days into 9 months seems bad. Really really bad.
> my comment is accurate
Not really. You mentioned Musk stranded them after Jan 20.
They came down less than 2 months after that date. That seems fast for a space trip. Faster than the other 6 months...
As much as people were saying they were not stranded (and honestly they weren't), having your mission jump from a few days to months is a bummer.
Sure, for a carreer astronaut, that's a great experience. But still, well, if I was sent on a professional mission for 3 days and had to stay a couple of months I would be very annoyed, as cool as the mission was.
Especially as it was due to (all the problems that were endlessly discussed already)
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1141790813395...
And say oh, yes, it's the people with TDS/EDS trying to set the record straight that have the problem.
If contract had instead been given to only Boeing, there would be a decent chance Butch and Suni would have needed to come home on a Soyuz.
To people who have watched this saga from the grounding of shuttle until today, the number of administrations and administrators this has passed though, it's just totally bizarre that instead of just a PR boost for the reliability of SpaceX and Crew Dragon (and the failures of Boeing) this has been made into a political issue.
When the parade ends at the stadium, we'll be treated to Musk and Trump on the jumbotron thanking them and wild 'U-S-A' chants as the astronauts circle the track! Confetti and flags!!
Who here still wants a ticker tape parade to cheer on our brave, heroic astronauts?!?
That depends on if the astronauts' return mission was delayed by the previous regime that controlled NASA. It seems like a pretty rational (if unethical) move for Biden's team to attempt to delay things to avoid giving his political rivals a big PR victory. Honestly though, any conversation to that effect would have happened behind closed doors and I doubt that even Musk knows exactly why they decided to delay things.
As far as I know the political regime of the USA was a democratic one last year.
The PR victory of a returning two astronauts (one of which called space her "happy place"[1]) who didn't take the ride home on a leaky capsule is rather minute and not worth a movie like the Apollo 13 mission. When them staying up longer NASA actually might have gotten more stuff done than if they didn't, even with Crew 10 starting with two empty seats in September.
The whole thing isn't as bad as Trump ordering the release of water in Northern California, but once more it shows that he wants to things purely for show with no regards to the consequences.
It seems to me that Boeing might be happy to be forgotten at this time.
As an outsider and a cynic to boot, seems to me that corporate profits might trump Trump and his rhetoric.
they were not trapped or stranded... they were re-scheduled.
This sort of shit happens a lot. the whole "stranded" wordage is being repeated by the MSM seemingly at the behest of the Trump administration and associated cronies.
Being a savior is fine, just do it fucking quietly please.
If you find you're suddenly offended by the words of the clown class you're likely to have been massively partisan to the last in-charge circus-troupe
You're over-correcting and understating. "Nothing to see here" is not how we describe 8 days turning into 9 months.
Don't be angry about hype. Everyone has access to what the astronauts say themselves. In this case, their remarks have been ambiguous, probably because they don't want to be drawn into a shit-storm. They didn't want to be "victims" in any way, so they were not "stranded". But their Boeing shuttle did suffer problems, and that isn't nothing, nor is it a "scheduling issue".
End of the day, it was great to see the parachutes open. Health complications can arise for astronauts stuck in space that long. Their return was overdue to the point of being concerning for most people. Fair?
Haha you got to love the timeline we're living at.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Mexico%E2%80%93Ameri...
The mental gymnastics on display in this thread reminds me of the Narcissists Prayer.
The astronauts weren't stranded in space for 9 months.
And if they were, they were lucky and enjoyed their extended vacation.
And if they didn't, it's not a big deal it comes with the job.
And if it is a big deal, it's not Nasa's/Boeings fault.
And if it was, it's not political.
And if it is, Elon shouldn't be credited for SpaceX bringing them back.
And if he should, he doesn't deserve it.
So let's keep in mind the risk and sacrifices these people make throughout their lives, only to have Elon at any moment accusing them of being traitors.[0]
[0]https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/elon-musk-calls-ma...
Is any astronaut who stays longer than planned "stranded"? Did Elon strand Crew-9 when SpaceX missed their deadline on building the Crew-10 Dragon?
Or is it just if you can't go home whenever you want? Are Crew-10 stranded right now?!?! Elon please help!!!!!
If you're on a cruise ship that loses power on high seas, just because you can get into the the emergency life boats doesn't mean you aren't stranded until something more reasonable and accommodating arrives.
That's the way the word is used in casual conversation.
What's so wrong about calling the crew stranded? Their planned means of travel was "grounded" due to safety issues. Sure, lifeboats existed, but those are for emergencies. This wasn't an emergency. So, they're just regular "stranded" until another vehicle can come and do an unscheduled pickup. Which is what happened here.
This isn't rocket science people. Wait, actually it is :)
> "The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so. Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long." -Musk
> "I have just asked Elon Musk and SpaceX to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration" -Trump
To say these things and then continue with the exact plan that has already been in place since September is absurd regardless of the accuracy of the wording.
If the reason they're staying longer than planned is they can't use their planned return spacecraft, then yes they are stranded.
What am I missing here?
I take that guy over those that killed 500 people by trying to save money on a sensor.
As such, he has many skills and many faults. This is something true of all humans.
It seems that two of Elon's skills are: hire rocket scientists and not insert him self too much in the process of rocket science to cause catastrophe.
Elon also has faults, and those are fair game to shit on.
An egotistical blowhard that lies about being good at video games like a third grader desperate for friends on the the playground can also be good at hiring rocket scientists. They are orthogonal facts and can both exist at the same time.
The fact that many believe all these companies thrive despite the leadership is fascinating. I've heard this same take over and over.
One can't keep hiring the right people and make the right decisions without understanding how things work. Bezos is an extremely skilled manager yet his space company, which has actually been around longer than SpaceX as well, amounted to nothing like it. We could write it off to pure luck maybe, if Musk weren't a serial entrepreneur.
There must be some sort of psychological phenomenon explaining this irrational way of viewing his achievements. I feel like that often when people talk about Musk they aren't even talking about him but some sort of fictional character that seems to exist purely in the imagination of certain people. And it's never those who actually worked with him.
A common failure mode of leaders is to get too down into the trenches and insert themselves into places that would be better left alone. Even very technical leaders in an area of their expertise - they can demoralize a team by telling them to do it better and belittling them, they can be too excited and change plans too often for the boring but necessary work to get done right, they can just be over-bearing and take on a pile of work they hired others to do (to "do it right myself") and fail from the load/burnout. It's a genuine skill to not over-insert oneself.
My literal message was Elon Musk is a human, with good and bad traits - then I listed some of each.
> I feel like that often when people talk about Musk they aren't even talking about him but some sort of fictional character that seems to exist purely in the imagination of certain people.
I know this psychological phenomenon its called projection - I'm not worshiping a fictional engineering and management god called Elon Musk, so when I call out bad things he's done you take your fictionalization and assume I'm doing the same sort of thing.