Butch Wilmore says Elon Musk is "absolutely factual" on Dragon's delayed return

3 points by angelgonzales 4 months ago | 10 comments
  • msie 4 months ago
    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.

    I am so confused.

    • dekhn 4 months ago
      he's saying that musk was correct when he claimed he made an offer to the biden administration to help return the astronauts using SpaceX. I don't think he cares that much about the "and musk was rejected for political reasons, not technical ones" part.
    • manbart 4 months ago
      “Welcome back to Earth. Your fired, GTFO”
      • defrost 4 months ago
        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.

        • almosthere 4 months 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 4 months 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-...

            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 4 months 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 4 months 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".
          • hkpack 4 months ago
            > 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.

            Wow, USA is indeed turning into a caricature of the USSR.

            I was very young then but still almost having a de ja vu reading these lines.

            • skissane 4 months ago
              > Wow, USA is indeed turning into a caricature of the USSR.

              I don't think NASA astronauts 20 years ago would have said anything different.

              Any NASA astronaut is going to talk up their respect for the President, regardless of which party they are from or what they privately think of said President, because it is seen as part of the job description. That was true in the 1960s, it is true today, it has been true every point in-between.

              Even Musk – 20 years ago, if a NASA astronaut had been asked by journalists for their opinion on a senior advisor to the President, or their opinion on the CEO of a major NASA vendor, the expectation would be either they say something positive or find a way to dodge the question

            • 4 months ago