Musk Says US Astronauts Are Stranded On Space Station For ‘Political Reasons’—As They Reject Claim – Forbes
Elon Musk suggested the two U.S. astronauts who have been on the International Space Station since June last year—due to safety issues with their return vessel, the Boeing Starliner—were left abandoned there for “political reasons,” reiterating a claim originally made by President Donald Trump that the astronauts themselves recently denied.Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reiterated unproven claims that the two astronauts were left stranded … [+] on the International Space Station for political reasons.Musk appeared alongside Trump in a Fox News interview hosted by Sean Hannity on Tuesday and asked about the planned “rescue” of the two astronauts, who the Fox News anchor claimed were “abandoned” by the previous administration.The billionaire SpaceX CEO said his company was “accelerating the return of the astronauts” as per Trump’s instructions.Musk then appeared to take a shot at the Biden administration, saying the move was “postponed kind of to a ridiculous degree,” before the president chimed in saying “they got left in space.”When Hannity pointed out the astronauts have been on the ISS for almost 300 days instead of the planned 8 days, Trump simply said “Biden,” before Musk claimed they were “left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”Musk added he doesn’t want to be complacent, but his company has “brought astronauts back from the space station many times before, and always with success.”Musk said the astronauts would return in about four weeks and he now had the “go-ahead” to bring them back because of Trump (that timeline aligns with a March 2025 timeline announced by NASA in December, so it is unclear why the SpaceX CEO suggested that Trump had given him an accelerated go-ahead).Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We’re launching text message alerts so you’ll always know the biggest stories shaping the day’s headlines. Text “Alerts” to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here.After Musk’s comments, Trump claimed without evidence that “They didn’t have the go-ahead with Biden. He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space…He didn’t want the publicity. Can you believe it?” In a post on Truth Social late last month, Trump wrote he had asked Musk and SpaceX “to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.”The two astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper last week. When asked about Trump’s comments, Wilmore said, “We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed.” In an earlier interview with CBS, Williams was also asked about Trump’s claims and said: “I don’t think those words are quite accurate…We are part of something bigger than ourselves, we are part of the International Space Station. So no, we don’t feel abandoned, we feel like we are part of the team and that’s a huge honor.”In December, NASA announced that the SpaceX Crew-9 mission capsule—which is set to bring back Williams, Wilmore, another NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—would return to Earth after the Crew-10 mission capsule arrived at the station. The SpaceX Crew-10 mission will carry four astronauts—two from NASA, one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and one from Russia’s Roscosmos—on board a brand new Crew Dragon spacecraft. In the announcement, NASA said Crew-10 was targeting a launch date “no earlier than late March 2025” to ensure that both NASA and SpaceX’s teams have time to “complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission.”Wilmore and Williams flew to the space station onboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in June last year. Their flight was part of the Boeing Crew Flight Test mission and was supposed to last no more than 10 days. While they were able to dock at the space station successfully, several malfunctions were detected on the spacecraft after arrival, including helium leaks and malfunctioning thrusters. After troubleshooting efforts failed, Starliner craft eventually returned to earth without a crew for safety reasons.SpaceX Launches Ship To Bring Back Astronauts Stranded On International Space Station (Forbes)One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site’s Terms of Service. We’ve summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:So, how can you be a power user?Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site’s Terms of Service.
