Berger is an excellent journalist. He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past.
When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.
When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.
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.
>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.
> And still, the lies came.
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"?
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.
[1]https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-sit-on-a-throne-of-lies
>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.
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.
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...