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> Kate Tice, an engineer from SpaceX on the webcast, noted that touchdown was imminent. "We're going to stand by for splashdown located in the Gulf of America," she said. Ah, yes. The Gulf of America. This is why we can't have nice things. Haha you got to love the timeline we're living at.
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Berger is not a "one note journalist". He literally wrote the book "Liftoff" which is great telling of the story of SpaceX, and has covered space topics in extensive detail for a long time. The article is important because the narrative told by the administration is clearly not true and in bad faith, and it is right to call it out.
By asking "Can space remain nonpartisan?", as if any government agency was even remotely non-partisan to begin with, or as if that was even a theoretical possibility, betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of how government functions.
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I wasn't very convinced by his arguments - the main one being: Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons. To be a little snarky here - so Senior NASA officials: honest, Musk: liar? If, hypothetically, NASA was pressured for political reasons,…
What about all the other things. For example the crew dragon was docked back in september waiting for return. The last administration could have called for return at any point before the inaguration to claim glory, but didn't because they aren't hacks.
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Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points certainly feels like a line to me.
Eh, the whole space race has its origins in a propaganda war with the USSR staffed by ex-Nazi engineers. It's not more deserving of sacred purity than anything else. On the other hand, the sheer lying about everything is exhaustive and corrosive to the public sphere. (also while dealing with the villain of the week we've forgotten about the previous villain responsible for this situation, Boeing)
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.
Eric Berger has a good summary on the narrative: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...
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.
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.
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When rescuing astronauts stranded on the ISS, one would expect. I can't imagine any other president using that as an opportunity to explicitly bash his predecessor. Can you?
Nobody was stranded.
> Kate Tice, an engineer from SpaceX on the webcast, noted that touchdown was imminent. "We're going to stand by for splashdown located in the Gulf of America," she said. Ah, yes. The Gulf of America. This is why we can't have nice things. Haha you got to love the timeline we're living at.
I would like a different timeline, please.
"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."
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What is this about "planning" stuff? They trained and volunteered as astronauts/cosmonauts, and that still typically entails a military career as well, and military families indeed suffer the absence of loved ones, but that is always part of the collective sacrifice that makes America, well, great... and astronauts are public figures, celebrities, smiling for the camera and making prepared statements at each mileston…
Personally I don't think that's good enough justification. Being stuck in space doesn't make any country look good, if anything, it makes them look bad for their errors. 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".
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Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points certainly feels like a line to me.
Let's not forget that right now it seems that only SpaceX is putting in the "monumental efforts" to advance the "pioneeribg industry", being responsible for the vast majority of launches, the only safe crewed spacecraft, as well as pushing the frontier of space travel with ambitious new projects such as Starship.