281–290 of 712 posts
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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.
What do you mean? The fact that they didn't return the astronauts implies the last administration's integrity?
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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.
Just last year NASA launched the largest ever interplanetary space-craft, and hopefully the first craft to approach and conduct scientific studies on Europa. SpaceX is almost entirely focused on getting humans into space - which is great - but NASA's work is not to be discounted.
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I can’t believe anyone took these claims seriously for even a moment. 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 rig…
In a situation where everyone has an incentive to lie, there's no reason to believe anyone. 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.
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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.
Just last year NASA launched the largest ever interplanetary space-craft, and hopefully the first craft to approach and conduct scientific studies on Europa. SpaceX is almost entirely focused on getting humans into space - which is great - but NASA's work is not to be discounted.
One thing I'm confused by is that we need to do "reporting" to figure out what the truth is here. Can't we just ask the astronauts, or NASA, or something? Why is there no official statement on the matter? 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.
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.
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Per the Polish government, they’re paying $50M per year for Ukraines service. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy87vg38dnpo.amp
if $50m per year enough for the Starlink services needed in Ukraine?
Eric Berger has a good summary on the narrative: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...
One thing I'm confused by is that we need to do "reporting" to figure out what the truth is here. Can't we just ask the astronauts, or NASA, or something? Why is there no official statement on the matter? 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.
> 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...
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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.
Firstly, I understand people will disagree with me on this and that's fine – if you disagree please just explain why. 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 on…
- 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.