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The current ArsTechnica headline is (as here on HN): Butch Wilmore says Elon Musk is “absolutely factual” on Dragon’s delayed return The last part of URL is

The current ArsTechnica headline is (as here on HN): Butch Wilmore says Elon Musk is “absolutely factual” on Dragon’s delayed return The last part of URL is butch-and-suni-send-mixed-messages-on-whether-politics-delayed-their-return and Mixed Messages nails it. In the body there is: 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. Q. Did politics influence NASA's decision for you to stay longer in space? 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. In short, Wilmore doesn't believe that politics delayed their return, as was claimed by Musk. The best support from the headline comes from: Q. Elon Musk said he made an offer to bring Butch and Suni home last year, but it was denied by the White House. Is this true? 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. Wilmore believes that Musk is being factual when Musk asserts he made an offer to bring them back. He skirts any comment on why that offer was not taken up, having earlier stated he doesn't believe politics played a part. Musk makes a lot of public offers .. he offered a submarine that wasn't practical, he offered a 420 weed joke for Twitter and got nailed to the mast with it by the SEC. It's likely factual that he offered to bring back this crew early. It likely wasn't practical for any number of reasons.

techpeach 2y ago
I’m not saying that this interview was conducted at gunpoint, but I might make a connection between Wilmore’s views on Trump and Musk? And who has control of Wilmore’s entire future at the moment.
- defrost 2y ago
  It's pretty clear he's responding as any good senior pilot, technician, military operative, coal face "doer" responds almost all the time under any administration or command .. steer clear of politics, stick the to the technical stuff, avoid comment on anything "above pay grade".
almosthere 2y ago
I don't think the equipment to move through an underwater tunnel designed in 5 days has any equivalence to what SpaceX has (and has always been the solution - just delayed). It never made any sense to me since they do missions extremely routinely. What specifically WERE the technical reasons? If no one has them, or they are categorically provably wrong, then someone lied about it being technical.
- defrost 2y ago
  Starliner had issues, the backup plan was for them to join the crew and stay until "no earlier than February 2025" and be picked up by SpaceX on the crew rotation. The early February SpaceX crew rotation has been pushed back by SpaceX to late March. Wilmore and Williams flew Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to the ISS last summer for an eight-day test mission that instead has lasted nearly a year because of problems with the craft’s propulsion system. NASA in August, during Biden’s administration, deemed Starliner too risky to bring them back to Earth and tapped SpaceX to return them on a Crew Dragon spacecraft. That craft is already docked with the space station, having flown there for NASA’s Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission in September with empty seats for Wilmore and Williams. The astronauts’ original February departure date on Crew-9 was delayed to late March because SpaceX needed more time “to complete processing” of a new Crew Dragon capsule that will replace theirs for the Crew-10 mission, NASA said in December. ~ https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/trump-musk-suggest-sped-up-return-nasa-astronauts-details-scarce-2025-01-29/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/trump-musk-suggest-... There's also a timeline recap in this threads submitted Ars Technica article. The political posturing here appears to originate with Musk and recently Trump has attached himself to the story.

techpeach 2y ago

I’m not saying that this interview was conducted at gunpoint, but I might make a connection between Wilmore’s views on Trump and Musk? And who has control of Wilmore’s entire future at the moment.

defrost 2y ago
It's pretty clear he's responding as any good senior pilot, technician, military operative, coal face "doer" responds almost all the time under any administration or command .. steer clear of politics, stick the to the technical stuff, avoid comment on anything "above pay grade".

almosthere 2y ago

I don't think the equipment to move through an underwater tunnel designed in 5 days has any equivalence to what SpaceX has (and has always been the solution - just delayed). It never made any sense to me since they do missions extremely routinely. What specifically WERE the technical reasons? If no one has them, or they are categorically provably wrong, then someone lied about it being technical.

defrost 2y ago
Starliner had issues, the backup plan was for them to join the crew and stay until "no earlier than February 2025" and be picked up by SpaceX on the crew rotation. The early February SpaceX crew rotation has been pushed back by SpaceX to late March. Wilmore and Williams flew Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to the ISS last summer for an eight-day test mission that instead has lasted nearly a year because of problems with the craft’s propulsion system. NASA in August, during Biden’s administration, deemed Starliner too risky to bring them back to Earth and tapped SpaceX to return them on a Crew Dragon spacecraft. That craft is already docked with the space station, having flown there for NASA’s Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission in September with empty seats for Wilmore and Williams. The astronauts’ original February departure date on Crew-9 was delayed to late March because SpaceX needed more time “to complete processing” of a new Crew Dragon capsule that will replace theirs for the Crew-10 mission, NASA said in December. ~ https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/trump-musk-suggest-sped-up-return-nasa-astronauts-details-scarce-2025-01-29/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/trump-musk-suggest-... There's also a timeline recap in this threads submitted Ars Technica article. The political posturing here appears to originate with Musk and recently Trump has attached himself to the story.