One I can't put in print: Rick's rant about how he described Mr. Needful's microscope and its effect. The wordplay is <chef's kiss> but unfortunately it's unrepeatable.
Yes but if they’d used that the remaining astronauts would not have it. Saying they weren’t stuck because there was one life boat is disingenuous, because zero lifeboats for the crew that were to remain is unacceptable.
I remember some discourse saying they were not "trapped" in space (as in physically unable to get to earth safely), they just didn't want there to be only one american crew member on the ISS, or something along those lines. Is anyone on the ISS now, or did they all come home?
Yes, four astronauts arrived on Saturday on Crew 10 and are there now.
edit: They came down on the scheduled Crew 9 craft, which, as the linked caption says, has been docked and waiting at the space station since September.
They were scheduled to stay there for 8 days and had Boeing's vessel proven flight worthy, they would have returned after 8 days. The messaging beyond that was just political in nature. They could have been rescued, but were left on the station until after the election. The situation resulted in significant issues for the next crewing [1] leading to some interesting things like the first time a Russian cosmonaut was in control of an American spacecraft, let alone a rookie cosmonaut with only basic training on the Dragon.
It also led to some interesting improvisations. NASA has a requirement that there be a 'lifeboat' on the ISS for all crew in case of an emergency, but because of the Boeing crew (and the lack of a corresponding vessel), NASA approved a new 'configuration' of the Dragon where up to 3 people could strap themselves to the floor of it, where cargo would normally go, in case of the need of a mass escape from the ISS. [2]
As another fun aside, when the Starliner was returning [autonomously] to Earth it experienced two more errors, unrelated to the ones that left the astronauts stranded on the ISS in the first place. What a vessel.
> They could have been rescued, but were left on the station until after the election
This continues to be silly. There were changes to Crew 9, last summer, when it was decided that it would be logistically easier for two (instead of four) astronauts to go up and the two Boeing crew would come down with them on the Crew 9 craft in February/March 2025 (that would be now). This has always been the plan, the only politics being injected here are people insisting on grandstanding and making drama where there is none.
You can disagree with the decision (though, again, why), but it was a decision. There was no dereliction of duty, no stranding of astronauts since September, and this was not some high-stakes rescue.
I remember this Elon Musk guy who was spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get Trump elected. I hear he's involved in space somehow, imagine if he found out about this and was able to shame the Biden admin with this before the election. He would have gone absolutely wild with it.
There has to be someone on the ISS at all times - unless you want to abandon and decommission it, that is, but nobody (except Elon Musk) is suggesting to do that at this point in time...
It’s a massive difference to SpaceX who were awarded the de-orbit contract and would need a massive amount of extra funding to suddenly bring that project’s timeline forward three years.
Also a large difference to all of NASA’s international partners who might lose out on astronaut slots, scientists with experiments that won’t be ran, dozens of contractor companies supporting ISS, etc.
NASA awarded the deorbit contract to SpaceX during the Biden administration. The ISS is coming down whether you like it or not.
The more you knew about this, the more you'd be okay with it. The station was obsolete before it was even built. NASA likes to justify the space station as a laboratory studying the effects of longterm space flight on humans; the results were in decades ago: it fucks people up. Human bodies begin to deteriorate in microgravity, even one year isn't healthy and there's nothing we can do about it. No exercise regime can fix it, the only possible solution is a station which spins. This was known before the ISS was built, but they didn't build a spin station. They built Mir 2, using the Soviet DOS-8 module. Mir 1 had the DOS-7 module, the previous modules were the Salyut stations. When the Soviets got tooled up to build something they liked to keep building it forever, and that's what happened here. The Salyut stations came from a period in time when space stations actually had a rational purpose; being a platform for humans to take reconnaissance photos of other countries. This role was quickly made obsolete by recon satellites, but the Soviets were tooled up to build them so they kept at it, while the equivalent systems in America were canceled. If you're familiar with Robert Crippen, the computer specialist and nominal pilot of STS-1, you'll know that he was originally training for operation with the Manned Orbital Laboratory before joining NASA. That was America's Soyuz. It was canceled when satellites proved their capabilities. The Soviets started using satellites but kept their station program anyway, due to the wonderful efficiencies of their system.
NASA tried to use space stations as a justification for continuing Apollo levels of funding (Skylab) but that didn't work out for them and American apace station activities ended there. Some Americans were later sent to Mir and found it to be in a horrific state, a veritable death trap that got lucky on numerous occasions.
The only reason America got involved with Mir 2, rechristening it as the ISS, is because America wanted to prop up the Russian space industry to prevent total collapse and a subsequent diaspora of talent to less friendly nations. It is at least not quite as dangerous as Mir 1, but it's still a dead end technology that serves no genuine scientific purpose, with a political justification which is now just as obsolete.
But the science experiments! How could I have forgotten something so important. All kinds of very important pharmaceutical science or something, I am told. So important, that when companies fielding proposals for replacement stations go looking for customers, they come up empty. NASA wants commercial partners for the next station but the whole thing is a slowly unfolding boondoggle.
Edit to add: Starship isn't going to Mars. Its a satellite launcher surrounded by aspirational propaganda to keep young engineers motivated. And Lunar Gateway, originally the "Deep Space Gateway" before Artemis came up, is meant to exist only to give ISS mission control staff new jobs when the ISS is gone. Soviet style pork.
Well, okay, the same arguments can be used to question why we need (crewed) space exploration at all. It's extremely expensive, it doesn't really bring any new scientific data. We've been to the Moon already, and what there is still to know about it can also be learned with robotic probes. Same goes for mining. Exploring Mars can also be done very well without involving humans. Colonization, you say? Maybe fix our problems on Earth first before "infecting" other planets with our species?
See my edit, Mars colonization isn't happening. And if NASA were serious about developing the future of human spaceflight they would be developing spin Hans, not trying to build the same bullshit over and over again.
They should make a movie about this, it was all fun we were going to space for 8 days and stayed for 9 MONTHS STRANDED NO WAY BACK HOME. i felt so bad for them honestly. Glad they’re safe and home now.
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 milestone, and that glory they earned this for this crew was simply following orders and being trained/prepared for all eventualities while the rocket scientists worked out the logistics.
And if you follow JPL robotic missions that far outlast their mission objectives and keep going like Energizer Bunnies, then is it not sort of amazing that the astronauts really suffered no privations or hardships, in terms of food/shelter/clothing/hygiene, by extending their missions and doing useful things up there?
People watch "The Martian" and "Lost in Space" and they can't seem to grasp the careful pre-planning, incident response, resource allocation, and orcestration that goes into everything that's done by space programs.
Space missions include sprawling, branching flow-charts of every contingency they imagined, and they inform the press of mission objectives and a proposed timeline, and then life happens and when glitches come up, they roll with them because they prepared for them. Apollo 13, for example, is categorically different than a space habitation in Earth orbit; as a lone vehicle with limited resources and an isolated path, that Apollo mission ran out of planned contingencies to the point of improvising so many things and returning to fundamentals, preserving human life.
It's the peril of human life that definitely adds drama for us, and the ISS being influenced by geopolitics is categorically different than the nationalist glories of Mercury-Gemini-Apollo vs. the Soviets. But with ISS in Earth orbit, receiving regular resupply missions, being a habitable outpost, it's far different than sending up a vehicle like the Space Shuttle while everyone speculates whether another Saturn V could be constructed in time to rescue the crew because tiles fell off their heat shield.
Speaking of Saturn, I've been peering into Greek/Roman mythology, and learning what Cronus/Saturn did with his children and how Aphrodite/Venus was born, gives new insight into super heavy-lift launch vehicles named after the deity.
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.
> Being stuck in space doesn't make any country look good
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".
Erm they didn't plan to go on some 8 days business trip for some work project.
This is their life and profession. The job is extremely difficult, dangerous and mega mega expensive. Hence they don't get to do it as much as they love. Now they did.
oh I don't know, grueling rehab and moderate health consequences in exchange for getting to spend nine months in space seems like it'd be a deal many would take.
"Another astronaut comments on what the Crew-9 people can expect: "The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight", because the "build-up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision". They may need glasses for the rest of their lives.""
They knew these risks when they signed up, and the queue of people dreaming to be astronauts despite these risks is enormous. Some crew members coming back on this mission had gone multiple times.
If there was any political motivation at all it would simply be to save Boeing's arse. They're one of two commercial airliner manufacturers in the world, so the US clearly has a vested interest in keeping them running.
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
The Ars article is filled with mixed messages.
When Starliner had issues, the already prepared 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 was then pushed back by SpaceX to late March.
All of that was already "in the pipeline" as plans and contingency plans before Wilmore even left Earth.
Any offer by Musk falls more in the PR by Musk bucket side of the equation, and as an out of band out of scope offer it was likely just rejected due to there already being a rotation in the works ... which Musk had to push back in any case, casting doubt on any SpaceX ability to met any early pickup offer by Musk.
It's not mixed messaging if you understand the position the astronauts are in. Modern NASA has become deeply intertwined with politics. Many of the things they do are awful ideas and/or will never come to fruition. For instance Artemis is never going anywhere. Any person reasonably well informed in space, including every single astronaut, could offer countless reasons why. But in public they're required to smile, nod, and cheer its inevitable success on. If they don't - they're never going to fly again.
So astronauts will answer direct factual questions truthfully - but their opinions are not going to be given in earnest, but rather 100% political.
And there was no prepared backup for Starliner. That launch had been delayed for years and by the time it actually got off the ground (which never should have been allowed), it was probably as much a shock to NASA (and Boeing) as to everybody else. The final plan was only decided long after the fact, and caused major issues.
Whether the astronauts are rescued after 8 months or a week doesn't change the issue, as far as Boeing's unreliability in space goes. If anything the delay is even more damaging to Boeing because it's an ongoing issue that received ongoing coverage, constantly painting Boeing in a negative light.
And loved every minute of being up there. They were promised 8 days in space and got 8 months doing awesome science on the ISS. They’re astronauts; they live for this stuff.
They had a way back home if they needed to. They just didn't have a ride up for their replacements for a few months, so they asked them to stay longer to keep the ISS mission going.
Becoming a NASA astronaut is extremely hard. You have to check a ridiculous number of boxes, and you have to really want it. I think anyone who goes through this process would prefer a 6 month stay on the space station over a 2 week stay on the space station, and the 6 month stay is what they got.
NASA kept them safe and fed, I really don't think you can reasonably knock them from this perspective.
I think the only people who can say they'd prefer an unexpected 9 month stay vs a planned 2 week stay are the ones that were "asked" to stay, and no one else.
Feels like they've been put between a wall and a sword: either they abandon the ISS or come back home. I don't know how I'd feel about that.
There is always a way home from the ISS. There are always enough spacecraft, including Soyuz, docked to ISS to save the cosmonauts in case of emergency.
You really, really need to read about the actual situation before commenting. They always had a way of coming home at any point if they needed to. There was a literal whole planning session, all publicly available on Nasa's media channels detailing in great depth the steps that were taken prior to Starliner departing to ensure there was always a guaranteed safe way to get them home, even in the event of an entire station evac.
As I say, it's amazing how effective lying to people has become that you genuinely bought that total load of crap that they were stranded.
See, we can all put stuff in capitals. Doesn't make it true.
Even if you defined "stranded" as being "unable to use the Starliner", then they weren't stranded in September. They could have decided to get in the ship and go home. Not like there's some political officers on board ready to stop them.
maybe not on your lifetime but at the speed of current progress, maybe your son or grandchildren can become space settler to terraform mars in the next generation (that literally coolest thing ever)
It's the coolest thing, but it will be frontier work. It won't be a walk in the park, almost certainly neither fun nor safe, and possibly a one-way ticket for a long time. (Even without the "corp-owned slave town" dystopia scenario that's also a possibility.)
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
- Werner von Braun
Thanks to delayed effects of radiation and such, people are the automatons. Extremely commodity and robust. Humanity, (or to be fair, safety) in my work is cooler, actually. Nothing beats my bed!
The worst political nonsense I get caught in means a phone call. Not an extended stay with potential life-lasting or shortening effects. Rad is different for everyone :)
Captain Paperclip would have encouraged the negative path, yes.
oh yes lets send a spaceship that full of leading edge tech with unskilled human labor, sounds about right
maybe you must see real world first, drinkable water and plant is literally of the most rare thing in the universe surpassing mineral and metal, one of the most abundant things in space
I perfectly understand the metaphor but machine already replace human in factory on earth, why do you think human can work in the 10x times worse condition in space???
also if you born poor in earth, many people would take a chance to do space industry at all in the future despite the risk
We simply have different outlooks. I'm not going to argue it. I see exploitation (in a negative sense) where you're more optimistic. I truly hope you're right!
Before we had machines to put in our factories, we had hordes of dead laborers. Regulations are written in blood. Then we had company towns and truly brutal police enforcement.
Why will humans work there? Partly for the reason you gave: poverty. That makes them particularly expendable, offering themselves to the 'chance' as you say.
edit: My bias is obvious, I work in SRE - not development. I don't create things, I deal with the fallout of creation. It's a lot like that.
wdym exploitation, space company would not having a hard time to pay their employee the same reason oil company do
also human is expensive, if fleet of human slave is cheap then we outsource all of our work to china and india. but that don't happen we build a trillion dollar industry (AI and robotic) to make all of that
When I look at the power dynamics between employee [on a spaceship] and an employer, pay isn't the utmost concern. Not even the trendy replacement, scrip. Nay, performance reviews and how it might relate to oxygen availability.
I don't see a collaborative trip through the cosmos, I see a very unhealthy relationship with danger to boot
This may be all the more reason for robots, but again: humans take no engineering. Just a few minutes and a lot of tries (heh, sex joke). They'll literally pay for themselves.
RE: outsourcing, I don't know what you mean/where you are. That's exactly what's been happening, here. Consistently. For decades. Many ventures can happen.
its more easier to setup 1 billions self replicating robot in space than setups 1 billions human living conditions infrastructure because back to square one turns out water and plant is more rare than metal in space
also human is fragile, weak, costly, too long to make it productive.
it takes 15+ year for human to be any useful at all (and not counting experience)
do you think these space corp would just sit 15+ year revenue of upkeep going to waste only the next day human employee die because some dust near light speed particle hit the station???
nooo, slavery human space is not practical because is not cost effective economy wise
But right now, we don't have working practical self replicating robots, but we do have humans. The cost of the 15+ years is externalized, you can just lure a desperate already-grown human with shiny promises, give them some training, and ship them off.
Yes, you have to ship them oxygen and food, which is expensive, but it's a solution that exists and works with todays technology (minus some well-defined engineering), while the robots aren't ready yet.
we talking about space colonization at this point, jensen huang literally have an wall-e robot now
also space is vast and empty, even with spaceship that has near light speed it still take years to even reach the destination not even counting do extract resources or back go to earth
The machine is great at doing one specific, repetitive task.
Humans are currently much, much better at doing varied, unexpected tasks. We will at some point likely get more universal robotics, but right now I think there's a very good chance we'll get humans to Mars before we get the robots to work.
We’ll see if they fly again or they are done with space for good. There is no way they’ll publicly complain or acknowledge issues. as it will look unprofessional, but actions will tell.
I guess until they retire and leave NASA we may never know. Otherwise it would be quite unprofessional of them to criticize their time there or air out the dirty laundry.
The point is, they are expected to say they enjoyed every minute of it in front of the camera. And if they really didn’t we may not hear about it.
Wasn't this (or rather, the original short mission) expected to likely be the last mission for them anyways, due to age?
I really hope they'll at some point clearly say either "well, of course we missed our families, but really, getting such an opportunity was AWESOME and Boeing's misfortune was a huge lucky event for us" or "Being up there is awesome, but quite honestly, having to do it unexpectedly really sucked".
And I don't think that it is the slightest bit unprofessional to have feelings about where you spent a year of your life, or to talk about those feelings.
> And I don't think that it is the slightest bit unprofessional to have feelings about where you spent a year of your life, or to talk about those feelings.
I think it’s cultural. Astronauts I think are more disciplined and more professional on average than an average Joe. Even if they hated it they probably wouldn’t mention it publicly. Maybe after they retire from NASA completely.
Conversely, I can't imagine them saying they were happy and lucky beyond their dreams, even if they felt that way, because "being in space is more awesome than having a life" would be a view too controversial to voice, and wouldn't be received well by most of society.
I got over it when I learned about the crazy nausea from your inner ears giving your brain conflicting information. Couple that with your body nonstop wasting away in zero gravity, plus the radiation damage. It’s like a never ending hangover, but worse.
Today, being a NASA astronaut is kind of a dud job. There are about 50 active astronauts at the moment, and not very many flights for them. Peak was around 150, in the Shuttle era. With 135 Shuttle flights, with up to eight people aboard, most of them got a chance to go up, usually more than once. Not today.
Another astronaut comments on what the Crew-9 people can expect: "The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight", because the "build-up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision". They may need glasses for the rest of their lives."
Living without gravity seems to be harder on some than others. Valery Polyakov spent 435 days in space, longer than anyone else. He apparently didn't suffer much in the way of after-effects, had a good post-flight career, and died at age 80.
Flights to Mars in about 5 years though! I can't imagine how amazing it would be to be one of the first geologists getting out on foot and exploring those canyons, mountains, lava tubes and caves...
Travel time to Mars is 3-9 months depending on how fast you travel, probably still to early to know where a Space X Starship trip would fall in that range. The 5 years is referencing Musk's latest optimistic prediction for when the first manned flight would occur. Still, re-adapting to gravity on arrival will be an issue.
That particular launch window only occurs once every two years. The Earth and Mars rotate around the Sun at different rates. During some periods Mars is on the other side of the Sun and essentially unreachable with our current level of delta-v.
> latest optimistic prediction
Will that be before or after fully self driving cars? Or electric semis? That drive themselves in road trains? Will those astronauts have neuralink chips in their heads?
> re-adapting to gravity on arrival will be an issue.
It's 1/3 gravity. Then again, you're on a ship with no free return abort trajectory available, I'd worry more about medical emergencies, crew temperament, and actual crimes being committed.
There is no way we would consider a manned flight to Mars outside of the "once per two years" launch window. Anyone following potential manned flights to Mars counts the windows. See https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/dtm5bc/mars_l... from 2019.
Some astronauts are able to walk around in Earth gravity immediately after getting back, though with some difficulty. Valeri Polyakov walked out of his space capsule after his 2 year stint in the Russian space station. And then there's the fact that Mars has only half the gravity. I think gravity won't be a showstopper when arriving at Mars.
The geologists needed for this are currently being fired and loosing their funding. Yes it would be cool, if we valued science, engineering and mutual progress as a soceity. We're rapidly going down the Total Recall / Biff Tanner timeline, so it won't be the fun version of Mars.
That's just weird Trump spin. It doesn't even make sense. What is this theoretical political win? This entire thing has been an embarrassment for months and months. He left them there at political cost because NASA told him that was what was best. He listened to the technical experts at his own political cost like a president should do.
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port
Aboard a Boeing ship
Two astronauts went up that day,
They both were brave and true,
The Starliner delivered them,
To join ISS crew.
...for an eight day station tour.
The testing on the Starliner,
Was thoroughly performed.
Although it probably was safe,
The NASA team were warned.
So the Starliner came home to Earth,
Without its stalwart crew,
The astronauts would stay in space,
An extra month or two.
...an extra month or two.
So join us here each week my friend,
It's such a special place,
With two (not!) stranded astronauts,
Here in Gilligan's space!
Nope! I thought about it, but I just started the first bit and kept going. If I had gotten stuck I would definitely have jumped to AI, but I didn't so here we are.
"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
ChatGPT (emojis are the LLM's):
Here’s a set of alternative lyrics to the Gilligan’s Island theme, capturing the Boeing Starliner astronauts’ unexpectedly extended stay on the ISS:
---
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful flight,
That started from a launchpad base,
And soared into the night.
The crew was only set to stay
For just a week or two,
But Boeing’s ship had other plans,
And stretched it out to new!
(And stretched it out to new!)
The docking worked, they made it there,
The mission seemed on track,
But then they found some little leaks,
And couldn’t make it back!
And couldn’t make it back!
The calendar kept flipping by,
With patches, tests, and checks,
While Houston said, "Just wait a bit,"
"We’re working out the specs!"
So here they stay on the orbiting lab,
For months, not days but more!
With coffee, jokes, and floating sleep,
In zero-g galore!
In zero-g galore!
They’ll one day ride the Starliner home,
If Boeing gets it right,
And finally end this long delay,
From what was just a flight!
(From what was just a flight!)
---
This keeps the original tune and humor while capturing the unexpected (and slightly ridiculous) nature of their extended stay.
"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
Claude:
The Ballad of Starliner
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from Cape Canaveral
Aboard this spaceship.
The crew was two brave astronauts,
The mission just eight days long.
Then several systems failed that day,
The timeline was all wrong, the timeline was all wrong.
The thrusters started leaking fuel,
The schedule lost its way.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew,
They'd be lost in space today, they'd be lost in space today.
They settled in the station then,
For a much extended stay,
With two astronauts, and some cosmonauts too,
Research night and day,
The engineers,
Mission Control,
NASA chiefs,
And Boeing's team, all working hard,
Here on Starliner Isle!
"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
Gemma 3:
Okay, here's a set of alternative lyrics to the Gilligan's Island theme song, tailored to the story of Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams' extended stay aboard the International Space Station due to issues with the Boeing Starliner. I've tried to maintain the original song's meter and rhyme scheme as closely as possible.
(Music: Same as the original Gilligan's Island theme)
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
Of two brave astronauts, set to sail—
To the ISS, a mission planned,
For eight short days, a helping hand.
(Chorus)
Starliner launched, a hopeful flight,
But problems arose, with all their might!
Nine months they stayed, a cosmic spree,
A longer journey than it should be!
The capsule docked, all seemed so fine,
But glitches appeared, a worrying sign.
Repairs were needed, delays took hold,
A story of patience, bravely told.
(Chorus)
Starliner launched, a hopeful flight,
But problems arose, with all their might!
Nine months they stayed, a cosmic spree,
A longer journey than it should be!
They orbited Earth, a watchful crew,
Experiments done, and tasks anew.
While ground control worked, with skill and grace,
To bring them safely back to base.
So listen close, and you will see,
A space adventure, for you and me!
A tale of resilience, strong and true,
Wilmore and Williams, seeing it through!
Notes on Choices & Challenges:
Meter & Rhyme: The original song is very specific in its rhythm and rhyme. I've prioritized that above all else. This meant some compromises in the narrative detail.
Narrative Focus: I focused on the core issue – the extended stay due to Starliner problems – and tried to convey a sense of the situation without getting bogged down in technical details.
Tone: I aimed for the same lighthearted, slightly whimsical tone as the original.
"Sail" vs. "Space": The original uses "sail," which is obviously nautical. I tried to make "flight" work as a parallel.
Keeping it Concise: The original theme is very short. Fitting a complex story into that format is a challenge.
I hope this captures the spirit of the situation while staying true to the iconic song! Let me know if you'd like any adjustments or further refinements.
this whole thing is so politicised that just pointing out that even the astronauts involved have their own motivation for doing or saying what they do is interpreted as if I'm defending Musk.
I'm disgusted by Musk, during the infamous cave rescue comments and by all he's doing and saying now.
That said, astronauts are professionals that have put their lives at stake. They may have died while going up or died while coming back. They know exactly what they signed up for and if the mission has had technical issue and the mission command has deemed necessary for them to stay there they clearly must obey or they won't be seen as fit for the next mission.
Why is our public discourse so degraded that just pointing that out automatically means you're endorsing somebody?
Trump and Musk and their disgusting braggadocio have truly poisoned society in such a way that normal people immediately jump on the defensive. But by reacting like that you all playing into their hand.
I used to think the term «TDS» was hyperbole, but I can see it clearly now. It really is a thing, and it’s mutated into EDS as well. People can’t be positive about anything even tangentially related to Those Who Shall Not Be Named, even a space rescue mission.
It wasn't a rescue as others pointed out. And really its not that Elon personally did anything brave or crazy here (they returned on a scheduled mission) but that Boeing fucked up and we should be shitting on them a substantial amount. I don't see why people are trying to make this about Elon or Donald. Its like, Trump Derangement Syndrome Derangement Syndrome, people cant stop looking to defend those morons even when they aren't injured or even involved.
There was nothing unusual about the SpaceX mission here.
Of course, the very fact that this was so routine is a testament to how far they've come and how safe and efficient the Falcon/Dragon combo is, especially compared to the Boeing Starliner shit show.
As much as people were saying they were not stranded (and honestly they weren't), having your mission jump from a few days to months is a bummer.
Sure, for a carreer astronaut, that's a great experience. But still, well, if I was sent on a professional mission for 3 days and had to stay a couple of months I would be very annoyed, as cool as the mission was.
Especially as it was due to (all the problems that were endlessly discussed already)
Many astronauts get only one chance ever to do this thing which they train for their whole lives. Getting 9 months instead of 8 days seems like a huge deal.
they were not trapped or stranded... they were re-scheduled.
This sort of shit happens a lot. the whole "stranded" wordage is being repeated by the MSM seemingly at the behest of the Trump administration and associated cronies.
Weaponizing language is old news in politics. The US have been doing it since before I was born and so have everyone else. It's pretty much what politics is.
If you find you're suddenly offended by the words of the clown class you're likely to have been massively partisan to the last in-charge circus-troupe
You're over-correcting and understating. "Nothing to see here" is not how we describe 8 days turning into 9 months.
Don't be angry about hype. Everyone has access to what the astronauts say themselves. In this case, their remarks have been ambiguous, probably because they don't want to be drawn into a shit-storm. They didn't want to be "victims" in any way, so they were not "stranded". But their Boeing shuttle did suffer problems, and that isn't nothing, nor is it a "scheduling issue".
End of the day, it was great to see the parachutes open. Health complications can arise for astronauts stuck in space that long. Their return was overdue to the point of being concerning for most people. Fair?
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)
> 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.
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.
I also think that calling von Braun a Nazi isn't necessarily correct. He worked for the Nazi party, but if he didn't it probably wouldn't have worked out very well for him, and I don't think he supported their ideals all that much. He also always wanted to make his rockets, and working at Peenemünde gave him the opportunity to do that, even if it did require PoW labour. Obviously I'm not saying he was a saint, but I don't think he was as "evil" as some people make him out to be, and I don't think many people came out of the war with clean hands. He just really liked making rockets
I'm not the downvoter here, but somehow this made me think of an old play on the title of a biographical film about him: 'I aim at the stars! But sometimes I hit London...'
Don't say that he's hypocritical- say rather that he's apolitical. 'Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down - that's not my department' says Werner Von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown. But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude, like the widows and cripples in old London town who owe their large pension to Wernher von Braun
FWIW I didn't mean to make any accusations about von Braun's character. I was taking "ex-Nazi engineer" to mean someone to had been an engineer in the Nazi regime. In fairness though, he was an NSDAP member.
Sorry, I didn't mean it to come off as disagreeing with you, I think you're right, this is just a topic that's been on my mind recently and I wanted to express my own thoughts on it =) And yeah, he's not perfect, he was directly and indirectly responsible for some bad things happening, but a lot of people on the "good" side were too
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.
Doubt it. Musk only owns something like ~15% of Tesla, and owns about 50% of spacex. He knows tesla is overvalued immensely and wants to deeply integrate himself with government to make sure spacex becomes the de facto space org. for the United States (possibly).
What "blatant lies" though? The question hasn't really been answered. The user wrote:
>Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points
I don't know what this means. When someone tells a blatant lie, it would be easy to quote them for a start. What 'monumental effort' was lied about? If it's about Boeing then I have to say I too think the company is doing a terrible job and if anyone is lying about the effort it's them, there have been numerous whistleblowers who came out and talked about the coverups at Boeing.
I didn't personally use the word "blatant", but when I said "lying" I was referring to claims that:
* The Biden administration either forgot about or deliberately chose to leave astronauts in space for political reasons.
* Trump's request accelerated the decision to bring the astronauts home.
"Monumental efforts" was a more general comment about the space industry, including the activities of both NASA and SpaceX. Bringing astronauts home from space when equipment has gone faulty is a challenge I do not envy whatsoever. For Trump to claim credit in the venture is bordering on obscene.
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.
The Europa Clipper is really cool. I think the Cassini Huygens that launched in 1997 has greater mass though.
SpaceX isn't entirely focused on getting humans to space since they launch the vast majority of satellites thanks to great innovations in reducing the cost of launches, such as reusable rockets. But there are some competitor launch vehicles coming soon that could be interesting as well.
NASA built the probe, but SpaceX launched it. [1] I don't think you were suggesting otherwise, but somebody who did not know as much would probably misunderstand what you're saying.
You're effectively tone policing an article for not being kind enough to the current administration that is lying their ass off about everything they do every step of the way.
I'm not tone policing, I'm saying he sounds condescending like the rest of these types of articles... making it sound like noise, adding to the static.
I didn't say he was wrong in what he was saying, I'm just seeing this as an outsider who immediately gets a sour taste in my mouth.
Tone policing is an ad hominem argument focusing on the tone and not the merit to DISCREDIT the information within, i am not intending to discredit him, i don't dispute his factual claims, just noting that he made it harder to see his side of things from my perspective.
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.
My impression is that Berger is well meaning, but out of his element.
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.
Just noting 'throne of lies' is a subheading and not in the body of the article. I don't know how Ars Technica does things, but in some news outlets a separate editor have control over titles and subheading rather than the author of the article.
IIRC Ars has stated that the story author is the ones that writes the headers/subheaders, but they write multiple and A/B testing picks the one to show.
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, I don't think Senior NASA officials would reveal it to the public anyway. So the fact that they said it's not for political reasons doesn't really prove anything for either side of the argument.
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.
Did they care more about "not manipulating NASA for political points" than about astronauts who were stuck in space for 9 months, with all the harmful effects that it entails?
Standard rotations are about 6 months - Butch and Suni were supposed to be up there for 8 days... Their families, their lives, and everything normal for way longer than planned. Health routines or not, that’s a brutal toll—mentally, emotionally, not just bones and muscles. Stop downplaying it like it’s no big deal
Just because they signed up for it, doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to prevent it. Staying for 9 months in space is not a small deal for people's health.
So NASA did indeed try to prevent it, and weighed it against a multitude of other considerations, and actual experts running actual missions have explicitly and patiently explained the what, the how, and the why.
>All you said are literally in the descriptions of the jobs they signed up for.
Dismissing every exceptional circumstance as "the jobs they signed up for." is absurd. That's like saying the crash of flight 5342 that killed 67 people is what those passengers signed up for, so it's no big deal.
Turns out they were prepared for this circumstance, had a back up plan, and communicated this plan many times.
Just because you don't like this plan doesn't mean it's bad/political/whatever other fantasy you may come up with.
> That's like saying the crash of flight 5342 that killed 67 people is what those passengers signed up for, so it's no big deal.
Nope, it isn't like that at all. None of those passengers trained, rigorously, for an extreme number of extreme situations. Unlike astronauts whose training includes all that, and more.
And risk and exceptional circumstances are absolutely one hundred percent in the job description. Unlike the passengers in the your analogy you pulled out of an unmentionable place.
Having a docked ship is not enough. There must be a docked ship on station at all times for evacuations. The thing that was needed was another ship to take some people back and not everyone (well, all but any Russians, since they have their own ships).
Wrong, they could have packed all 4 astronauts (the 2 that came to the ISS on the dragon and Suni and Butch) into the docked dragon and returned at any point. They only waited for the next dragon (crew 10) so that not only the 3 people using the Soyuz would be left on the ISS. But this would have absolutely been possible. The remaining crew would have used their Soyuz in emergencies anyways, they don’t need the dragon.
There's way more than just them. Thanks to all the delays the 4-man SpaceX Crew-8 [1] stayed on the ISS until October 23rd, becoming the longest Dragon stay ever. And the 3-man crew from Soyuz MS-26 got there on September 11th, and is still there.
In fact reading the Soyuz MS-26 Wiki, one of the many records this whole debacle ended up breaking is that when the MS-26 entered into space, there were more humans in space than ever before, with a total of 19!
Did you read my comment? Currently, there is one Dragon and one Soyuz docked to the ISS. If Crew-9 had left earlier, before the Crew-10 Dragon had arrived, there would have been only the Soyuz left.
Do the Soyuz still touch down in a desert in a place like Kazakhstan or do they touch down on water nowadays? The desert solid ground touch downs seem so brutal.
Soyuz is always landing on ground (except in emergencies, and Soyuz 23 broke through a frozen lake). They do have Retro rockets that are fired shortly before contact and dampened Seats, but from the reports I heard, it's still a very rough landing.
But Crew 10 had also been planned for a while, so the narrative that Trump ordered a new ship to go up "NOW" can't be true. For example, heres a post about NASA moving the launch date to March, in December last year: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2024/12/17/nasa-ad...
This is definitely true. The only questions are: a) could they have gone back home on the retrofitted seats on Crew 8 or b) could there had been a Crew 10 sooner to allow them to go home on Crew 9 sooner. I don't really know what's up with those questions.
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 right?”
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 don’t see much incentive for NASA to lie. Or rather, the incentive goes the other way. The “who cares about the truth” approach would be to curry favor with the new administration by agreeing with their claims.
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.
Imagine you have two friends. Both are known to be the kind of people who eat off of other people’s plates.
You go to dinner with both of them. And while you’re distracted, some food fries disappear from your plate.
At this point, it’s similar. Since both friends steal food, it could be either.
Except, you’ve actually been to dinner many times with both. And you actually know a little more. You know that friend A always takes some of your fries. And friend B has always preferred snatching the croutons from your salad. But right now, you’ve got some missing fries. So… most likely the fry snatcher is at it again.
Coming back to the real world of liars. We’ve observed that trump and and musk stretch the truth to gain the trust/confidence/adoration of others. Braggart style behavior. NASA is less than transparent when it comes to motives behind various pork barrel things. But when it comes to “why’d something not work” they actually have a record of being mind numbing thorough and verbose.
So I personally have no problem pinning the less than desirable behavior around this on Trump and Musk.
It's more like, while you're distracted, your entire plate disappears and friend A tells you that friend C took it. Friend A is known to hate C and frequently makes up completely fabricated accusations about C's behavior. Friend A also frequently fabricates nonsense stories about all sorts of other things. Friend B is known for stealing croutons.
Honestly, the best evidence that Biden did not block a rescue mission is Trump and Musk saying that he did.
The return vessel was docked in September. The return was always planned to be around today, not in September.
Trump and Musk are lying about the astronauts being forgotten. They're lying when they claim Biden abandoned them.
As far as I can tell, NASA didn't delay for political reasons. Nor did they allow the return journey today for political reasons. This was the plan all along (well, once the initial plans had to be scrapped for technical reasons).
Probably cherry picking their c-span interview on March 4:
> Asked about the claims of political motivations for their extended stay, Wilmore said that Musk and Trump may have information “that we are not privy to.”
But then he says:
> But, he said, “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.”
(Note: I don't know anything about the X account. It was just the first result I found.)
Edit: Also it sucks that I can't ask a genuine question on this website without getting downvoted to oblivion. Whatever the answer, it would be nice to get it without being judged.
The astronauts in that clip say they have no information on who said what to whom, so it takes the wind out of the sails of the statement that everything Musk says is factual.
> Also it sucks that I can't ask a genuine question on this website without getting downvoted to oblivion
You asked a question in a confrontational manner, and which had the same misrepresentation as various political operatives have been using. I think you got caught up in looking like you knew the answer but were hoping that readers did not, which is common enough that many people try to discourage it here.
You (and others apparently) applied an incorrect emotion to my unemotional comment. Typical text only communication. The whole point of the "genuinely asking" part was to show I wasn't trying to "gotcha" anyone.
I have barely followed the issue but had heard the astronauts confirmed Musk's side. How else was I supposed to ask about that? What magical wording could I use so that all of you don't try to put me in a belief box?
no idea. However the above comment is easily verifiable. Here is a link saying that the return would be around February 2025 [1]. There seems no reason to believe either trump or Elon forced some sort of rush, or Biden and his administration ignored or caused some sort of slowdown. It looks like a schedule was planned and followed.
> 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. We know what we've lived up here, the ins and outs, and the specifics that they may not be privy to. And I'm sure that they have some issues that they are dealing with, information that they have, that we are not privy to. So when I think about your question, that's part of life, we are on board with it.
> 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.
> 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.
To be honest "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" should register quite highly on anyone's political bullshit meter because "absolutely factual" is a statement that makes a claim that they then say they don't have any facts about.
Anyone who reports those quotes as "comfirming Musk's version" should lose a lot of trust.
And keep in mind that the people saying these things - while doubtless busy for the last three months - have not been locked in isolation. Even the barest hint of recent news would make it clear to them that negative comments about Mr. Trump & Mr. Musk could destroy their own careers, and threaten the programs they have worked on and the lives and careers of their co-workers.
NASA in practice isn't what most people think it is. A lot of stuff they're doing is just a mixture of a terrible idea (SLS) and will never go anywhere (Artemis), amongst others. People in-the-know in space are fully aware of this, including NASA officials.
But they keep cheerleading it all and pretending that everything will just be awesome. The reason is that NASA is basically forced to be political (at least their heads seem to feel that way), or their funding will get cut. And this also trickles all the way down to the astronauts who play politics for the sake of being able to keep flying.
It's become a highly dysfunctional organization, so yeah - "Senior NASA official" is certainly not a reliable source on anything remotely related to politics, and this is hard in that domain.
And how does that relate to this particular issue? Had they been playing political games for the sake of funding, they would've immediately jumped as soon as Musk and Trump barked, right?
Instead they carefully and patiently explained all the issues, and what is going on.
And yet, still, "ah yes, it's NASA that is lying for political clout, not the very public very shameless very serial liars"
Blaming NASA for SLS is something I keep seeing but isn't it entirely congressional pork barrel politics that makes the SLS what it is? What degree of control does NASA itself have to force a project of that scale not to devolve into such a mess despite congressional corruption?
Exactly. If NASA had full control over how and where SLS money got spent, I can guarantee you the thing would've been a success a decade ago or more, and we'd have American boots on lunar ground full-time by now.
It's a mutual affair. Congress dictates the programs and NASA carries them out with substantial discretion. But I think the thing that really makes NASA deserve the blame is that they cheerlead for it all endlessly, and compel their astronauts to do similarly. More or less literally every single interview NASA carries out or does with their astronauts, they'll make sure SLS/Artemis are brought up, and pretend it's all just amazing.
This results a very misled electorate, which are the exact people that could (at least in theory) put pressure on their representatives in Congress to stop wasting tens of billions of dollars that could have easily had us on the Moon, if not Mars, long ago. But even more in general - people are forced into doing stupid things all the time. That's part of life. But the second that you begin praising those things, you are now a part of the problem.
NASA announced last August that the Starliner crew would return on SpaceX Crew-9 in Feb 2025.[1] This was discussed on Hacker News at the time.[2] Crew-9 was launched in September 2024.[3] Crew-9's return was delayed waiting for the launch of Crew-10, originally scheduled for Feb 2025, but pushed back to March. [4] Anyone repeating the claim that Trump and/or Musk "decided" to return the Starliner crew is spreading lies, deliberately or unwittingly.
An earlier article[1] goes into more detail about how the decision was actually made, which provides more perspective about truth vs narrative. It is much more interesting than the one linked by the GP.
- They'll reconfigure Crew-8 for 6 occupants for contingency evac between Starliner undock and Crew-9 arrival.
- Starliner leaving ISS autonomously early September
- Crew 9 launching no later than Sept 24th with 2 crew + 2 empty seats
- Crew 9 coming back down in ~Feb 2025
The advent of Trump and Musk into government seems not to have changed that plan one whit, which makes absolutely no sense if they're telling the truth.
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 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.
The normal process is that you always have at least one US and one Russian Vehicle docked to the ISS. In emergencies, each crewmember uses their spacecraft to return to earth.
The normal rotation is that an additional spacecraft arrives at the ISS (so there are now 3 vehicles docked in total) and then the older spacecraft leaves with its crew. So before the single dragon leaves, a new dragon would arrive.
I think the general idea is to always have at least some Russians and Americans on the ISS at all times (although they are doing swapped missions now so even having only one vehicle left would ensure that most of the time) and to always have crew on the ISS, even if one vehicle needs to return early due to technical problems.
The Crew-10 was not a rescue mission because they just rotated with Crew-9 which carried the Starliner Astronauts back. Crew-9 could be called a rescue mission because they took back the Starliner Astronauts. But Rescue makes it sound more urgent and dedicated than it actually is. They would have flown anyways, just with more crew.
That is exactly what it is. That mission has been scheduled for more than 6 months (though the exact date changed a couple of times for technical reasons).
My understanding is that Crew 9 was always scheduled for a 6 month mission and they couldn't come back before Crew 10 arrived (in March 2025) or else the ISS would be shortstaffed.
The two astronauts in question are simply hitching a ride back on this scheduled mission.
> 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?
Why is anybody actually thinking that? The return of Crew-9 is the culmination of a well orchestrated series of missions to cope with the outage of Starliner Calypso. It may have slipped the attention of some, but space missions are not like buying groceries. These assumptions are basically just betraying a lack of understanding how space travel works. Musk, OTOH, should know this.
Furthermore, there is the long-standing policy of having at least one working capsule at the ISS for emergencies. A lifeboat or escape pod, so to speak. Plus, there are only two docking slots for large-enough capsules, such as Starliners or Dragons, on the ISS. So you have to schedule your trips even more than for normal space missions. You have to coordinate and swap crafts in sequence and deal with the launch windows schedule -- which is exactly what has happened. Again, Musk should know this.
> I 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.
Why would the CEO of a contractor of a US government agency need to speak to the president of the USA to do the job they were hired for? The agency has more capable people to decide on such matters than any White House staff.
It's all a huge charade of grandstanding and chest-thumping. Disappointing.
> I still haven't seen any good reasoning for why NASA would delay the return flight
So many comments spread unsourced assertions on the topic on both sides. Let me change that.
On 24 Aug 2024, NASA stated in a conference published on X[0]:
> NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February.
So the decision sounded like it stemmed from NASA, and the plan a year ago was for a return in the time frame that actually occurred.
On 28 Sept 2024, the spacecraft that would bring Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore was launched. They restated the same plan[1]:
> A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon spacecraft will launch Crew-9 to the space station for about a five-month mission. Hague and Gorbunov will join Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who are already aboard the space station, and all will return to Earth as a crew of four in February 2025.
Thus there was no action after Mr Trump took office that changed the plan.
(Note that the SpaceX article we’re commenting on has a mistake, stating that Mr Grebenkin has come down on 18 March, but Mr Grebenkin came down on 25 Oct; it is indeed Gorbunov that came down.)
On 7 March 2025, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate, stated[2] on the motivation for this:
> When it comes to adding on missions or bringing a capsule home early: those were always options but we ruled them out pretty quickly just based on how much money we've got in our budget and the importance of keeping crews on the International Space Station.
When asked specifically about a request from Mr Musk to have an earlier return:
> Was anyone outside NASA or the White House involved in the decision not to bring Suni and Butch back sooner? — There may have been some conversations that I wasn't part of. When we made the technical decisions about Starliner […] our leadership at NASA was trying to make sure that we considered everything just at a technical level and that's what we did.
I think it’s a hugely complex problem but it basically boils down to a few key things.
- 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.
I think the only question that might be a no is 'was someone willing to pay for all of this.' But I think even that being a 'no' is suggestive of a political motivation, given that the alternative (that "we" ended up going with) was borderline ridiculous in the chaos that it caused. We ended up, for the first time ever, with a Russian cosmonaut was in control of an American spacecraft, and a rookie cosmonaut with only basic training on the Dragon at that.
It also forced NASA to completely change their safety standards. In particular NASA requires there be a 'lifeboat' on on the ISS for all crew in case of an emergency, but because of the Boeing crew (and the lack of a corresponding vessel), NASA approved a new 'configuration' of the Dragon where up to 3 people could strap themselves to the floor of it, where cargo would normally go, in case of the need of a mass escape from the ISS. [2]
There are stories that Musk was willing to foot the bill. Of course thats easy to say after the other decisions have been made, but my guess is my second point was probably the real no—at least not in a timely or safe enough manner to make the overall future mission disruptions worth it from NASA’s POV.
Yeah, instead of evaluating a journalist by looking at over a decade of high-quality work he has done writing about this space, let’s pull up a joke from one article and judge that.
Do you realize that you’re the one behaving like a low-quality Redditor here.
Basically any online article site like ars comes across as a Redditor with reddit-tier takes and a mixture of ChatGPT. If you graduate to something like the NYT then you sound like a lobbyist.
Berger wrote two books on SpaceX in a very positive light generally, portraying Musk as extraordinarily driven and capable though not passing over less admirable traits. Berger is not a hater.
Eric Berger used to be a major standout from them, and has traditionally never delved into the partisan nonsense. I've recommended him, on this account alone, countless times. He was a diamond surrounded by a pile of crap.
It's extremely out of character and the writing on this exact topic is somewhat contradicted by other articles he himself wrote on it, like this [1] one. I have a suspicion he's being pressured to increase engagement/subscriptions, and it's trivial to do that in the age of such extreme political derangement.
“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.”
Read the article I linked above, also written by Eric Berger! Butch confirmed Elon's claim that he made an offer to bring them home last year was accurate. So we know that that offer was made, and must have been rejected. What we don't know is why.
But the real thing here is that Eric Berger has written extensively about the political games NASA plays or (depending on one's perspective) is compelled to play. They support a lot of fundamentally flawed programs that are either a complete waste of money or will never go anywhere, like SLS/Artemis. The reason they do this is because, in NASA's case, their funding depends on it and, in the astronauts' case, because they'll never fly again if they don't play ball.
So you don't simply take things NASA says at face value - again something he has written about ad nauseum. His understanding of the industry, and the games surrounding it, are part of what made (and hopefully in the future continues to make) him such an excellent reporter. But this latest article just dumps all of that and is written with all the insight and worldview of somebody on /r/politics.
That interview doesn't really say much. It is mostly an carefully worded, polite but empty statement made after earlier extemporaneous comments by Suni and Butch seemingly contradicted Musk. The headline claim is basically just Butch saying he has no insight into the decision process but he trusts Musk is telling the truth.
In contrast other articles Eric wrote talking to people who where involved in the decision of how and when to return Butch and Suni, those officials clearly state that the decision was made for technical and programmatic reasons, not political pressure.
I 100% agree he's phrasing things 'politically', but think about how you might also be reading what you want to read. For instance the section where you [reasonably] claim he's contradicting Musk (by claiming the decision was not political) was also not only phrased politically, but even came with a sort of disclaimer starting with "From my standpoint." There were no such disclaimers when stating that Musk made some sort of an offer to return the astronauts.
And again something you can't discount here is that Eric himself has written extensively about NASA frequently carrying out/endorsing poor decisions (SLS/Artemis being the low hanging fruit there) owing much more to political pressure than pragmatic decisions about the best direction for progress. Here [1] is one example, including an interview with a former high level NASA insider (30 years experience, up to deputy administrator) openly and casually talking about such.
It's not a secret whatsoever that NASA is under constant and significant political pressure. It's just a part of the game. And in this case you had a situation where the guy, who had basically become public enemy #2 (from the previous administration's POV), was going to be spearheading a high visibility rescue of a launch that should never have been approved in the first place - undoubtedly while blasting it all to his tens of millions of followers. To imagine this would not have provoked some behind the scenes 'management' just seems unthinkable to me.
How are you possibly parsing "We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went" as "I can confirm that Musk made that offer and it was declined"?
That is a HUGE disclaimer. "no information on that, though, whatsoever" - it doesn't get any bigger than that.
> And again something you can't discount here is that Eric himself has written extensively about NASA frequently carrying out/endorsing poor decisions (SLS/Artemis being the low hanging fruit there) owing much more to political pressure than pragmatic decisions about the best direction for progress.
The reason he was able to write about this was that he had sources within NASA that would tell him the inside story behind the decisions, and how much politics influenced them. Now his sources are telling him that this decision was not political. I don't have any reason to trust his previous sources but not his current ones (especially when many are the same).
No it wasn't. It's based on visible logic, as everybody knows this, well at least everybody within the 'space domain.' People outside of the 'space domain' don't realize how absurdly dysfunctional things like the SLS or Artemis are, and generally have a completely erroneous impression of NASA.
If you want to see this in action search for pretty much any article on SLS or Artemis by him. The one I offered with the former NASA administrator was to clarify to people who might want to claim he was just speculating or whatever. NASA is the posterboy for making bad decisions under political pressure, and not just in contemporary times...
This is the main quote from the Willmore interview you linked, that seems most relevant:
"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."
That has to be a nominee for doublespeak quote of the year -- and that's not a low bar this year.
I think the most likely scenario is that a message made its way up the grapevine to him along the lines of 'We're working with Elon to look at getting you guys brought back home on a Dragon.', nothing more, nothing less. NASA awarded a ~$270k contract to SpaceX on July 14th called "Special Study for Emergency Response." NASA claimed that study had nothing to do with Starliner, but that was probably a typical administrative lie of the sort Eric Berger has regularly pointed out (until this article...):
"NASA said this study was not directly related to Starliner's problems, but two sources told Ars it really was. Although the study entailed work on flying more than four crew members home on Crew Dragon—a scenario related to Frank Rubio and the Soyuz MS-22 leaks—it also allowed SpaceX to study flying Dragon home with six passengers, a regular crew complement in addition to Wilmore and Williams."
Nobody knows the details of exactly what was offered, or why it was rejected, besides Elon and whoever he was talking to in the previous administration. But at this point I think one cannot reasonable argue that no offer was made. And we know because of what happened that it was rejected. So the only question remaining is why.
> Read the article I linked above, also written by Eric Berger! Butch confirmed Elon's claim that he made an offer to bring them home last year was accurate. So we know that that offer was made, and must have been rejected. What we don't know is why.
Read his goddamn quote you're citing. The part where he says "We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went".
Which part of "I believe him despite having no information" do you think is "confirming"?
When you have the owner of the company which provides your space flight lying about spaceflight and nasa, calling the commander of the space station an idiot, and the president making total lies up about the entire process, you can't be apolitical.
I think the author probably made a mistake in using that subheading. For those familiar with the meme[1] it's saying that this isn't that important but read straight it says the opposite. I'm all for playful subheadings, I love when The Economist uses them, but they shouldn't radically alter the meaning when a big fraction of the audience won't get any particular subtle reference and I think that makes this a failure of writing.
Do you think it's easy to be "fair" to someone who continually spouts misinformation, falsehoods, and retweets or reply-boosts such things on an almost daily basis?
Musk's donations to political parties is public (leaving aside SuperPAC and other funding being hidden).
He has NEVER donated more to the Democrats than the Republicans. Like most billionaires he donates to both parties. Historically, he donates ten times more to the Republicans and the Democrats.
Nothing about Musk has ever seemed "liberal". Just convenient. He smokes weed on shows, but if you work for one of his companies you'll be fired if you don't piss clean. Anti-taxes. Anti-regulation/oversight.
How has he ever been democrat-leaning in any meaningful way?
What is your standard of fairness? This seems eminently fair: Musk lied for political reasons and people who care about that whole objective reality thing are criticizing him for it. He’s arguably the second-most powerful man in the world right now and craves attention like few others, so it seems quite unfair to say he shouldn’t be the subject of public criticism when he certainly doesn’t apply that standard to his own behaviour.
The topic is "crew returns to Earth" not arstechnica's routine political spin.
Does arstechnica mention the dolphins even once? Nope. How about Trump? Six times! Meanwhile, sibling comment applauds the writer for his "knowledge of space topics".
I mean, from a certain perspective, it absolutely is.
Where was it manufactured? What were the labor laws where it was manufactured? Was there any environmental impact in its construction? How was it shipped to you, and was there any environmental or safety impact of that transportation? If it broke the day after it arrived, would the manufacturer owe you a replacement, or would you have to replace it at your own cost (caveat emptor)?
These are all decisions that had to be made, and were largely made collectively through a political process. Your chair likely wasn't constructed with slave labor—which was a political choice. If the chair breaks within minutes of arriving, the manufacturer will likely owe you a replacement through its implicit warranty according to the UCC.
So, no, the chair itself doesn't have political opinions. But the chair does have many direct ties to political choices that we've made.
Everything is connected to everything else. Everything anyone does continuously gets tangled with everything else, in a bubble of causality that expands at the speed of light.
That's not a very useful perspective to have, though.
Similarly, everything humans do has some connection to politics. For most things in most contexts, that connection is irrelevant in practice. The only reason one wants to make obviously non-political things political, is to shift the conversation from rational, object-level, reasonable context, to one where truth and objective reality don't matter - and they want to do it, because that bullshit-land is where they live and they have a home-field advantage there.
> I mean, from a certain perspective, it absolutely is.
It's "absolutely" in the same category as running a space race for decades between two superpowers, sacrificing enormous resources including human lives? Ok, then....
What's the design? What's it made of? Where were the materials sourced? Why? Where was it made? Why? Was it supposed to be marked as potentially containing carcinogenics?
What's the design? -Don't know, it's a simple chair.
What's it made of? -Wood and fiber.
Where were the materials sourced? -No idea
Why? -Why what?
Where was it made? -Factory in a town over
Why? -Is it the first "why" or a different one?
Was it supposed to be marked as potentially containing carcinogenics? -Sorry don't follow this one. It's chair to sit on.
I guess you were trying to show that this chair is about just as political as decades running a space race between two world powers? It's a good try but I think we'll need better questions to answer.
Space can be political or it can be political. Response to Spootnik-level event is political. Gaming with expectable difficulties in space exploration, pointing fingers to the previous administration, is political. But those are different kinds of "political".
It sounds to me like you're starting from a position of "a chair is free of politics" and working backwards to justify that position. Without knowing where the materials came from, how can you declare it's free from politics, or perhaps you don't want to admit the possibility of it being imported, surrendering a toehold for an argument for trade and treaties.
What's considered "normal" for a chair in your corner of the world is determined by your history (and therefore politics). There are regulation that impact the materials and processes that go with making the chair, as well as quality
> Where was it made? -Factory in a town over
Why is the chair factory in the next town over and not your own? Is the factory unionized?
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?
The constant in all the news cycles is about how they've been stranded all this time. Which isn't just a bit misleading, its a flat out lie.
Even when starliner departed, they werent standed. There was litterally an emergency plan prepared for how they'd get them home if they had to, and made modifications to the existing crew 8 ship to allow for this. This was all covered in the briefing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc
So once again, nobody was stranded. They could've come home at any point if they needed to.
The definition of stranded is litterally "left without the means to move from somewhere." which is VERY clearly not the case.
You're leaning on some "ackshully technically" definition of stranded. The fact that they had emergency contingencies in place the whole time doesn't invalidate the fact that they were stranded in the common colloquial sense of the term.
If I'm at work and my car breaks down, I'm stranded. I call my buddy to pick me up, and if there is an emergency I can ask a coworker to drive me home, but I'd rather not inconvenience them and so I am stranded until my buddy comes.
The word stranded is almost never used to describe scenarios where literally no contingency exists, because such scenarios almost never happen in modern live. To insist on such pedantry would be to effectively retire the word from common parlance.
If your car breaks down but you decide to wait for the tow truck even though you have a backup car ready to go in case things get bad are you still "stranded"?
This is a really fascinating case of words having a venacular meaning that become fuzzy out of their normal domain. Could the astronauts have gone back to Earth in an emergency? Yes. Did they have the freedom to leave earlier? Sortof but not really. Could NASA have paid SpaceX another $200 million for an extra mission to pick up in December/January? Probably.
If your car breaks down a couple of miles from home and you call a friend and tell him you're stranded, are you lying? What if it's 20 miles away? But uber exists? What if uber is extremely expensive right now at $2000? But there's a guy next to you offering to sell you a bicycle?
In the end, to ask the question "were they stranded?" we have to unpack "stranded" and figure out what is the question we actually want answered. Is it about the feelings of the astronauts? Their preferences? The danger level they're in? Is it about Boeing's culpability? Is it about whether we can safely call Trump a liar? Musk?
This has the same flaw as the other person who replied to me.
Using the car anology only works if you also say you've got another car following you at all times, fully fuled and capable of getting you home, in which case, no, you are not stranded.
Stranded implies they cant get home. Not that it costs more, or is inconvenient. The litteral definition is "left without the means to move from somewhere".
Words mean what people think they mean. People often mean slightly different (or very different!) things when using the same word. Often words are used non-literally. This all seemed too obvious to mention before now.
The point is not the definition of the word stranded. They were up there for much longer than they expected or planned. That involved some amount of hardship. (Missing their families for months, if nothing else.) Bringing them back was not an appropriate opportunity to make it about how bad Trump thinks Biden is.
All the time. Nothing political about the Punch mission, or the current solar maximum spewing out a bunch of flares last year. Actually it's a bit of a shame the Punch mission wasn't launched sooner, so we could see amazing flares in 3D. But that's just me, I like sun stuff.
The point is, if you seek political stuff you'll find it, even a political spin on a recent flare that is being yet again compared to the Carrington Event. I'm here for the sun stuff and other space stuff. I'm here all the time, before and after the dust settles. I'm here for the "boring" stuff. If you have to ask that question, you're a tourist. Sorry if it comes across as gatekeeping. But it really looks like that to me.
Sure the thing's been politically amplified into oblivion by the parties involved. That doesn't mean ranting about the gulf of america and all the other things the author doesn't like about the current political situation in that arstechnica article, is a good suggestion to be bumped into a top comment. Neither is burying exodust's comment which I think has a very good point that I agree with.
Quote from the arstechnica article: "This is why we can't have nice things.". Yes it is. This is exactly it. Guess I'll just have to wait for the tourists to go elsewhere. Anyone who came for political reasons and stayed for the boring stuff is very much welcome, as always.
Again, the topic is "crew returning to Earth." You, Berger, and whoever posted the arstechnica link have brought politics to the party.
I liked how they had a drone circling the recovery activity at the splashdown site. All live-streamed for our informed entertainment. SpaceX is undeniably doing a great job, although the starship explosions in our atmosphere I'm not a fan of, I look forward to that not happening.
What? The parent article is a SpaceX mission post. Meanwhile I note you have contributed 2 posts in this topic and both of them are about Trump. Do you have any thoughts on the actual event that took place? Or is your needle stuck in Trump's groove?
Again, this thread's parent article is a SpaceX mission launch post stating a brief outline and details. And the top comment links to some rubbish tech-wanker article.
I've heard rumors that SpaceX suggested another mission to bring them back earlier, but as it would only have been a couple of months earlier NASA very sensibly declined (not worth >100 million to reduce their time in space by a third).
Because the most recent delay was down to SpaceX. Their new dragon capsule was not ready on time to collect them, so they had to shift and replan for an older one.
no - it's a tiny fraction of the actual cost. so it's not "free" but it's massively subsidized to the point of being nearly free when it's a country paying for it
In a high-development high-capital low-marginal cost it's tricky to determine the "actual cost". The marginal cost is minimal. The opportunity cost is minimal too (not like the satellites over Ukraine could be providing connectivity for other congested areas).
You are going to have to do better than some tweet battle. AFAIU from Wikipedia with decent sources the service is free, but the terminal's not, and that is what Poland paid.
Also, it's not like Ukraine or even Poland has to pay, the can pay if they want, they can also not pay if they want. It's entirely elective. They can stop using any time they want. I heard that Google has a Starlink replacement in the works that is super awesome and I also heard that while Europe has completely killed itself with regulation they are entirely willing to buy things made by China which has absolutely no regulation.
he gets paid for the contracts he already has and for new ones (billions in corporate welfare). some government agencies tried to investigate his companies and contracts (which would cause a loss of handouts from the government), so he bought his way into the government and fired everybody who was investigating his companies.
back in reality, no, they said "address world hunger", not "solve". I know we are in a post-truth phase of the decline, but please, try do do your part.
"Wilmore said he had no reason to doubt Musk’s claims about an offer to bring them home earlier"
"Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said, “I think there may have been some conversations that I wasn’t part of.” But he said the option to fly a separate mission to the space station to retrieve the astronauts was “ruled out pretty quickly.”
So your demonstration they offered to do it and publicly, is two NASA administrators saying there is no record or conversation of such public offer, a tweet, post event, from a pathological liar, capable to even lie, about the death of his own child...
> Wilmore said he had no reason to doubt Musk’s claims about an offer to bring them home earlier, though Wilmore said he was not privy to such an offer.
Which pretty much amounts to "I don't know, but I can't see why Musk would lie."
> I've heard rumors that SpaceX suggested another mission to bring them back earlier, but as it would only have been a couple of months earlier NASA very sensibly declined (not worth >100 million to reduce their time in space by a third).
I guess it came down to money more than politics? But interestingly that part is missing from reporting about this. Which, if true, reporters hiding that yet saying “let’s not make it political” are making it political. Which sadly is also not surprising.
It’s been widely reported since Musk attacked that Dutch astronaut but only in the sense that he claimed something with no evidence that it ever happened.
Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said “I think there may have been some conversations that I wasn’t part of.”
> Musk was clear that the reason was that they didn't want someone pro trump having success so close to the election.
This makes no sense whatsoever. The election was in November. If that was their calculation, they’d just have cosplayed astronaut-saving heroes before Trump had an opportunity to do so, between November and January. Musk is full of it, as usual.
It is not the first time some astronauts stay in space longer than expected and it never was controversial before. The people making noise cannot even find a single reason for Biden to do what they accuse him of doing, much less any proof that he did so.
Tbh i personally thought it was an common sense economic thing: why pay more for SpaceX early return + a direct flight for the other astronaut that were scheduled to work on the ISS, if you can make the ones already there work in the ISS.
> This makes no sense whatsoever. The election was in November. If that was their calculation, they’d just have cosplayed astronaut-saving heroes before Trump had an opportunity to do so, between November and January. Musk is full of it, as usual
Musk offered to bring them back way before the election so HE would have appeared as the saver (and boeing would have looked terrible). Musk is probably exaggerating, but you can't completely ignore the political forces behind all this.
Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces. It's just as grating, and when every other news org is reporting it more measuredly you should be very cautious before calling their summary 'good'. For example, this article claims the political reasons are unspecified, but they were in fact discussed at length (I think Musk even mentioned them on a podcast at the time, though can't remember which one).
The choices were whether to leave them up there longer as the next crew rotation, or let them come home and send up another crew like normal. One would save the government the cost of a new Crew Dragon launch (not insignificant - $100m-150m), and the other would save NASA's valuable astronauts from the long term health effects of a year in space (usually crews are rotated every six months for health reasons, like bone density and muscle mass problems).
NASA reported that the factor keeping them from being brought home was cost, and they didn't have the $100m for a new Dragon launch in the budget. But this was bunk. The next launch was already budgeted for, because this is on a well-planned-for rotation. It could have been because they wanted to keep the $100m, but if they falsely claimed it wasn't budgeted for, then (as Musk postulated) it's a good bet that the real reason is that this would have been a big PR win for Musk, saving America's cherished astronauts from Boeing's massive screwup, and since he had already begun bankrolling Trump's campaign, Biden did not want him to have this PR win.
> Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces.
When Musk wasn't insane, I think a lot of people valued him a bit more. I personally haven't cared for him since pedo guy, but others did.
Reality is he's now batshit crazy, destroying America, and intersecting himself in a bunch of shit nobody wants him close to. Of course that has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
It's not a "shift to the right". I don't care of someone is a bit right or a bit left. This man is dangerous, out there setting America back decades, and sending out some hail Hitlers along the way.
I think trying to fit things into a dichotomy of puff/hit pieces is actually obscuring the truth here. Eric Berger is a space flight enthusiast and so he covered SpaceX positively when they were doing good work there, but now that Musk seems to be interested only in playing political games rather than running his companies, there isn’t much positive to report: it’s not a hit piece, just the truth many SpaceX fans didn’t want to hear. It’s not a left/right thing (do you know how Boeing’s CEO votes?) but rather Musk having fully embraced the post-modern world of right-wing politics where there’s no such thing as truth which contradicts what the party wants to be true.
Fundamentally, it's the "reality has a liberal bias" problem. Accurate reporting is interpreted as a political act because it disagrees with the "alternative facts" being presented by the right wing.
> Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces.
You have to go a long way back to find Ars articles on Musk that aren't derogatory. They were ahead of the curve on this, apart from their rocket articles (usually). I've always found it unprofessional and off-putting.
Just another example of the US government stuffing media and the public and also foreign countries with three outrageous 'things' per day. It's exactly like the quote from a famous movie where Gust Avrakotos says that if you present three scandals in the left hand, you can park an aircraft carrier behind your right hand and nobody will notice.
Claiming the astronauts where stranded by the Biden admin is just one of those things for the left hand. Of course had Kate dared call it the Gulf of Mexico, she'd be in serious trouble only an hour later. Defiantly, without a job two hours later once CEO heard from lower management.
Something any dictator sooner or later gets into serious trouble, because he is only surrounded by obedient people from his bubble. Warping the view of reality. All others fell out a window or best case, got fired.
Their opening paragraph immediately attempts to trigger partisan responses. A bit off putting.
Then this line: "NASA—not the Biden administration, which all of my reporting indicates was not involved in any decision-making—decided the best and safest option"... NASA is part of the executive branch. So yes, it was the Biden administration.
I don't necessarily agree with Musk that the delay was politically motivated, but this article is a political hit piece through and through.
Absolutely, but in the context used here the author is trying to absolve Biden of responsibility. Could/should Biden have done something to bring them back sooner? I don't know, but it is a government organization under his command.
I think it’s downvoted because you seem to be suggesting that Joe Biden could have have overridden the decision making process led by domain experts at NASA. While in theory the President could do that, it would be a silly thing to do.
I'm pretty sure I'm correct, and that you are too: the president could theoretically do that. Or, in the very least, strongly influence decisions made by NASA.
I'm also saying that the NASA _is_ part of President Biden's administration, as the "NASA Administrator" at the time, Bill Nelson, was actually nominated by President Biden.
---
But maybe I'm wrong and the downvoters could elaborate as to how and why?
The President could theoretically muck around with decision making in all kinds of federal agencies. That doesn’t mean that the President’s administration is responsible for every technical decision made by every agency. If the NTSB fails to correctly identify the cause of an air accident, is that the President’s fault because the President nominates the board? Most people wouldn’t think so. They realise that as the President isn’t an expert at investigating air accidents, it doesn’t make sense for the President to interfere directly with the agency that investigates them.
> That doesn’t mean that the President’s administration is responsible for every technical decision made by every agency.
I disagree. There's a known point of view "the buck stops here", meaning the President is the ultimately responsible. Yes, it's hard for President to do that all, even harder - without expertise, but still.
I disagree with the original comment - look, the article this thread is attached to isn't Arstechnica's anymore - because it suggests the article is a political hit piece. I don't think so at all.
Assigning blame and fault are a similar, but still different than being seen as responsible for something, but I'm actually don't care to do either (blame/fault or responsibility).
The point I am making is perhaps just being taken as a semantics issue about the use of the word "administration", but NASA _is_ part of the president's administration, technically and practically. But I can see how someone could think "Biden administration" and only think of him and those involved in "everyday" presidential actions.
The decision to make this political and partisan came from the Trump administration, the response to that is obviously political and it is natural that it would come from someone that is not a Trump supporter.
That DOES seem to be the rule for the right in the USA. Democrats still get kicked out of the club when they do blatant crimes and carry around bags of gold bars.
well for starters, if you're writing for a tech news website, maybe just stick to tech news instead of injecting politics into absolutely every part of our lives. tell me about some new phone or video card and keep the political rants for your twitter.
> They liked the "Artemis Program" created by the Trump administration well enough that they simply kept it.
This cannot be overstated. Prior to Biden there was a long history of new administrations of both parties coming in and wanting to make their mark on NASA. Everyone wanted to be what JFK was to the moon race, which meant that whatever the previous guy came up with obviously had to be canned and replaced, so that the new thing would be their thing. NASA was jerked around for decades. You can't do 15 year projects if they're always cancelled after 8 years.
Biden coming in and simply continuing Trump's plan broke the trend. And yet Trump still needed to find a bone to pick to advance his cult of personality.
The drone footage is absolutely amazing (as compared to any other camera angle from the recovery boat where you would expect to have better quality but was actually awful). I had trouble, for a moment, believing that it was not CGIed.
Is there any information about what drone/camera equipment was used?
Anyone can file a lawsuit against anyone for any reason, doesn't mean they will win or it won't be summarily dismissed. I doubt the Astronauts have enough money to fund such a lawsuit while becoming some of the most hated people in America.
> 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 wish it need not have happened in my time" said Frodo.
"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."
> "The name of the Gulf of Mexico became a subject of dispute in 2025, when U.S. president Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14172, directing the U.S. interior secretary to change its name to the "Gulf of America" within the U.S. federal government. As of February 2025, the majority of Americans oppose the change.[1] The gulf has been known as the Gulf of Mexico since the 1550s,[2] having derived its name from Mexica, the Nahuatl term for the Aztecs.[3]"
While running his other two companies (Tesla, X), being in charge of DOGE, and making political statements on stages everywhere, AND taking care of his 14 children ... I don't think he was actually involved in this. Or maybe he was there in the mission control room, physically, just for kicks, and annoying the hell out of the engineers. Now that I find somewhat likely.
Yeah must be all of his companies have good employees and all his competitors companies have terrible employees.
Nothing to do with the CEO or the company culture. Sort of like Apple, Jobs was probably just annoying his engineers all the time and contributed nothing.
Before he took his recent (regrettable) turn he did pour his heart and soul (and personal fortune) into SpaceX for over a decade. If it weren't for SpaceX we'd be relying on the incompetent monstrosities of Boeing or ULA.
> I think the republican position is more nuanced than that. To summarize: 'all children are special and important but any life changing decisions like joining the army or getting a tattoo are best left for later in life.
I didn't realise republicans were against genital mutilation.
> It's quiet amusingy that up ubtill recently in the usa it was easier to get surgery to turn you to your 'real' gender compared to buying yourself some alcohol.
That's not true at all. Kids can't just get surgery on their own. They need parental consent at the very least. Interestingly, one survey indicated that 97% of minors receiving breast reduction surgery were not transgender kids, but cis male kids with gynecomastia. In your hand-wringing about life-changing decisions, would you deny these boys the treatment they need and instead force them to keep their breast growth all throughout adolescence?
And it's certainly easier to get parental consent to consume alcohol than it is to get elective gender-affirming surgery. The total number of people getting GAS in the USA in one year has never exceeded ~13,000. That's for all ages. Meanwhile about 10 million young people under 21 per year drink alcohol, of whom about 10% were able to obtain it from their own home, which in some states is perfectly legal.
Not starting transition is also a life changing decision. Testosterone never stops permanently mutilating the bodies that it poisons until it's removed from the body.
If Elon recognized that he had the social skills of an NPC and had hired a PR team, we would probably all still adore him and likely he would still just be doing engineering company stuff.
Take heed, if you have money, power, and poor social skills, hire people to manage it for you.
Not as sad as a world in which Billionaires actively and shamelessly use their power to rebuild the government on their favor and spread misinformation, populism and hate globally their own media platforms.
He could, however, not give a fuck about whether he is liked or not, which is certainly what I would do if I had 400,000,000,000$ of fuck you money. But being what would in rude terms would be described as an "attention whore", he instead spends his time making insane tweets and pretending to be good at videogames in order to impress a bunch of adolescent boys. It's almost sad.
I don't, but I expect a powerful person to have the foresight to have not just Yes men around them and listen to advice/voices that give them counter points to what they want to blurb out before they blurb it out.
It's not merely about "likability" but more about carefully controlling the messaging, and avoiding controversies or really bad missteps.
A defendant or plaintiff can choose to remain totally silent in a court of law and speak through their attorney. The attorney filters what their client has to say, recasts it in legal terminology, and everything the attorney says and does should protect the interests of the client and the court, in opposition to the other side.
It's also about a division of labor: for God's sake, what CEO/politician/bishop wants to open all his own mail when a secretary can filter it? What CEO is going to read social media all day and respond to their DMs? Waste of a salary! Does Mr. Musk or President Trump really write all the covfefe on his own, or does he employ ghost writers? How would we know?
A PR firm likewise has a fiduciary and legal duty to protect the interests of an entity, to keep them out of litigous entanglements, and yes, to put on the best public face that they can in order to 'be liked'. Unless the org has some weird reason to play the villain or adversary in some way, and likability is not an ultimate goal, such as a gangsta rapper with a public beef, I suppose. They still use social media to sell music.
For me all he had to do was not openly be a genocidal white supremacist. Maybe he needs a crew to help him with that, but I think there's something about that that's a bit more than "poor social skills" and I'm sick of pretending that me not knowing what to say to people at funerals is the same as him delivering multiple Nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration.
Elon Musk is the head of the republican party and won the election? Or do you just ctrl+f for "white supremacist" and throw the same shit at every wall you find to see where it will stick?
The temerity of the whole TDS bullshit is the most obvious proof of an astounding lack of self-awareness on the right. Here the people obsessed with Obama around baseless internet memes for 8 years, who were clutching their pearls over Clinton having an affair, who stuck stickers of Biden on gas pumps for years, who now have latched onto "domestic terrorism" as their new favorite phrase, think dislike of Trump is some unique thing affecting just the "other team."
All you have to do is listen to Trump speak to realize he's fairly unique in quickly-obviouly-un-American ways among recent US Presidents.
It's not a lack of self-awareness, it's a purposeful muddying of the waters. It's making being angry at a nazi salute the same as being angry at a tan suit: meaningless. These people aren't stupid. You can tell because what they do works.
I believe he has pretty good social skills, he managed to fly under the radar as a public figure for long enough, until he was powerful enough to no longer need to give a fuck.
It's only regrettable through the lens of partisan politics. DOGE is undeniably a good concept.
You will notice governments around the world copying the method. That is, launching initiatives to audit everything, cut wasteful spending, expose corrupt spending, and trim bureaucratic inefficiency via external oversight. It would be regrettable not to undertake the task.
Audit committees have been around forever, because people think they are a good concept. A large fraction of the (time) cost in government (or dealing with the government) is dealing with initiatives to audit everything, and cut wasteful spending.
Not to say that eliminating waste isn't a good concept, but do not conflate the _idea_ of eliminating waste with any one particular implementation.
There are no audits, there are no reports, there is little to no transparency with DOGE. They're gutting first, thinking later and it's costing us a ton. How can you trust an administration to expose corrupt spending when they freeze the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?
Anyway, we have a Government Accounting Office already which is highly critical of waste. If anyone was earnest, they'd send them more resources.
On the other hand, if someone wanted to cripple every infrastructure, institution, and agency across the board in order to cause chaos, without transparency, accountability, and compliance, then DOGE is super effective!
The types of waste, fraud, and abuse matter as much as the scale. Even just a "little" (5%-10%) corruption is a moral stain on the whole thing.
As it is, that "small" corruption is funding an extensive network of NGOs, nonprofits run by the families of people in government, media, etc. -- all to (a) keep a ton of money flowing to people in Washington DC and (b) protect that status quo.
Politics aside, widespread corruption in the US capitol should be taken very seriously.
Presidential administrations have been repeatedly trying to deal with the sheer behemoth bureaucracy, the growing power of unelected officials, and all the associated corruption since the early 1960s and so far have been defeated every time (see JFK's comments on the CIA for one example; there are also videos of Obama and Biden trying to address it during Obama's presidency). Each time it wins again, it grows stronger and more entrenched.
Our partisan attitude is understandable: our tribal wiring seems to make us gravitate towards "us/them" thinking and to cheer when "their" side loses. But doesn't the DC bureaucracy represent a common enemy to those on either side who value democracy?
The constitution doesn't mention anything about any federal agencies. The Department of State didn't even exist until a 1789 law signed by George Washington.
USAID was established by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Its express purpose is to fund U.S. foreign economic and humanitarian assistance programs.
If the majority of USAID money is going towards things that do not align with the law that governs it, would you say that fits somewhere under the umbrella of "waste, fraud, and abuse"?
Congress controls the budget, it really is that simple.
If I believe USAID is full of waste, fraud, and abuse, I’m free to express that at the ballot box where I vote for a congressperson who wishes to vote on the next budget accordingly.
The executive has many dimensions of freedom with regard to federal agencies. “Existence of” and “funding of” are not among those dimensions of freedom.
> The executive has many dimensions of freedom with regard to federal agencies. “Existence of” and “funding of” are not among those dimensions of freedom.
I don't think the current administration actually abolished USAID or its funding; it just froze outgoing transfers from it. Some of the verbage used by Musk & others is exaggerated. They're playing to their voter base, unfortunately. It doesn't accurately describe what is technically or legally happening.
Elected officials lying about what they are doing seems bad, by your line of thought about fraud and accountability and all.
Unelected ones - worse still?
The unsurprisingly-ignored central sin of the Trump administration for those who voted for it for reasons of "free speech" or "reducing government corruption" or "accountability" is that Trump and his circle do not actually believe in any of those things and are not acting in ways consistent with any of those priciples. Those are just the things they say to get votes so they can grab all the power they can.
Anyone opposed to government waste or corruption should be beating down the door to get Republicans to impeach Trump because he's trying to create a whole hell of a lot of corruption-and-waste-enabling precedents.
Yeah, I hate that. Their talk is closer to WWE guys in the ring (at least on X) than the thoughtful orators whose pictures line the oval office. There's no thoughtful, careful, wise poise about it. There are many others like me who also dislike how things are said, but we look back at the actions taken (not words said) and are a lot more happy with them than we are with Biden's actions (or lack thereof).
> whole hell of a lot of corruption-and-waste-enabling precedents
Could you elaborate? I'm curious to know specifics you'd call out as examples.
here we just call for impeachment of judges who rule against us https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-federal-judges-impea... - “at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.” - what else you got in mind, exactly, Donald?
and obviously there's the whole impoundment thing we've just been talking about - the executive blatantly ignoring a law that restricted that. should be trivial to imagine ways THAT could be misused.
Musk's entire role is pretty suspect - where was the Senate confirmation hearing or law authorizing the delegation of power to him? where is the authority over departments headed by actual cabinet members beyond "Trump said so"?
another big flashing warning sign is RFK and the CDC re-opening the vaccines/autism thing. wouldn't it be curious if suddenly a new study contradicts decades of research there? seems a bit wasteful to re-litigate unless you have reason to believe you'll get the result you want, not the one the numbers have been pointing to...
What are the good actions? Laying people off to save pennies off the budget? Promising tax cuts to enlarge the national deficit? Renaming shit?
(EDIT: another big corruption-enablement thing would be deciding the FCC is the "let's police speech i don't like" department.)
> and obviously there's the whole impoundment thing we've just been talking about - the executive blatantly ignoring a law that restricted that
The law didn't restrict it, the Constitution prohibits it without law allowing it. The Impoundment Control Act provided a limited allowance for impoundment, rather than actually curtailing it.
> Presidential administrations have been repeatedly trying to deal with the sheer behemoth bureaucracy, the growing power of unelected officials, and all the associated corruption since the early 1960s and so far have been defeated every time
Clinton cut the size of the government considerably – 400k federal workers! – but you probably didn’t hear a lot about it because it was a thoughtful process designed not to impact the ability of the government, and because it undercuts the narrative that Democrats increase spending which is popular in right-wing propaganda. What DOGE is doing locks in as much cost and disruption as possible while minimizing benefits because that’s not the actual goal (scoring political points against what’s perceived as a democratic stronghold).
How much fraud and abuse has to occur before it's able to be labeled as "corruption"?
Fraud literally means intentional lying in accounting or other financial representations, for the purpose of improperly benefiting someone. If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.
> If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.
Yup, that endpoint is fine and can be agreed with.
People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though. And if a few percent of the money their program spends is wasted or benefits other people through fraud-- that's not corruption either.
And the blanket cuts, layoffs, offers for voluntary separation /early retirement, and contract cancellations don't seem to be aimed at the thing we agree is corruption.
> People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though
I didn't say anything about that; I don't think I know enough yet to have a fully formed opinion.
But I do think that the overly powerful DC bureaucracy, DC NGOs, and corruption that holds it together is a worthy common enemy for all of us - that's what I'm trying to point out.
I'm actually amazed at Democrats' position on this. I grew up in a Democratic family... We used to be the anti-establishment party! JFK was a Democrat - and he's the one who was apparently taken out by the CIA because he said he was going to destroy it. It used to be Republicans who wanted to keep the institutional status quo in DC.
Either way, I think a pro-Democracy attitude will oppose growing power of unelected officials, regardless of political leanings.
DOGE headed by Elon Musk was one of Trump's foremost campaign promises.
In terms of democracy, that is about as direct of an electoral mandate as possible.
> not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now
How about having been duly elected in the ballot boxes? Being pro-democracy means accepting and implementing the will of the people.
(Trump disputed the election results in 2020 because he believed there was widespread election fraud. That may be evidence he was deluded, but I don't think it's necessarily evidence of being anti-democracy in his leanings.)
It was a sideways reference to an old line from a detective movie.
I'm trying to say that the emperor is nude, and you are arguing that the threads might be so small as to not see them - or, rather, that the Media said he was naked, so while the president claims that he is wearing clothes, and that might be evidence he is deluded, his open ass in the wind not evidence of his pro-nudity leanings.
(This ignores the fact that he rose from the republican party, one that has been operating in full defiance of open democracy since bush v. gore. Republcans don't want "the will of the people", otherwise they wouldn't push so hard for voter suppression.)
It's a claim so baffling that it makes me assume you aren't operating in good faith.
Moreover, where do people think corruption comes from?
The human desire to be richer and the power to make it happen.
Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer?
And worse, that the poorly-vetted people who have attached themselves to this administration don't?
The idea that getting rid of fraud in a chaotic fashion is going to lead to less fraud is laughable, unless the assumption is also 'All of the people who are doing this are altruistic and moral.'
If you create chaos at scale, you simply end up with different fraud.
And you can quote me on this in 6 years when investigations begin to lead to trials...
(Which, naturally, Republicans will claim are politically-motivated? But you know who complains loudest about the rule of law? People who do illegal things.)
Musk has talked explicitly about unwinding portions of NASA and replacing it with SpaceX to "improve efficiency."
Which honestly should happen to some extent (I'm not a fan of SLS). But we shouldn't become beholden to one vendor, and it's sure looking a lot more like removing options for the future and competition than a play for efficiency.
And anyone doing this for their own companies in the past would be a textbook example of corruption.
People forget that Boeing space was an excellent engineering company at one point.
One of the things that fucked it up was decades of cost-plus government work.
Companies become the most profitable versions of themselves the market allows them to be... which without competition usually doesn't bode well for excellence.
>Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer?
FYI, lots of dumb people actually DO believe that. "Oh they have so much money already" they say. They don't even attempt to square that with collecting more resources than some Gods, for, reasons.
Others have asked, and I'm going to ask: Prove the fraud. That is a specific charge, with a specific meaning - as you point out yourself in your comment.
Pointing to money that was spent differently than you think it should be is not fraud, no matter how much you want to claim it.
Pointing to money being spent in suboptimal ways is not fraud. Maybe it's waste - but often it's what the law calls for (aka definitionally the opposite of fraud).
Yelling very loudly about how it's all fraud and waste is not proof. It doesn't matter how loudly you yell.
Repeating "there's so much fraud, omg, fraud everywhere, soooo much fraud" over and over is not proof. Even if your repetitions would make an animated gif jealous.
Actually prove the fraud: Show that the money was spent in a way different than proscribed by law, that the people authorizing the spending were lying, and there was direct enrichment of someone via those lies and misspending. It's not hard if of it around.
> Show that the money was spent in a way different than proscribed by law
When people find loopholes in the law to obtain grants, do you defend their actions because technically it didn't break the law?
DOGE is apparently exposing a system of dubious and questionable spending at scale. If "wasteful" is an understatement, don't be surprised when taxpayers use "fraud" to describe the decisions made to blow their money.
Even if a court finds that funding that "drag show in Ecuador" was lawful, doesn't take the sting out. It doesn't take the fact away that someone benefited who probably shouldn't have, relative to the government's broader budget purposes. It might enrage people even more that it was a systemic abuse of grant money.
> When people find loopholes in the law to obtain grants, do you defend their actions because technically it didn't break the law?
I don't defend their actions as moral. I think the loophole should be closed. I also think that they didn't commit fraud, as a loophole is by definition legal.
As for all your nonsense about money being spent different than you would like: I get it, you're very upset. As I covered before: money being spend different than you would like it to be spent is not fraud, no matter how much you rant and hate.
I'm not an American and I'm not expressing my likes or dislikes in this matter. I'm interested in seeing a healthy America. I'm interested in the details, drama, action, science and politics which trickles down or across to the rest of us in the world.
You mention morality, but then say my "likes" are nonsense. You've even pushed me into the "rant" and "hate" zone! I'm trying to have a civil discussion about curious things. Insinuating I'm ranting and hating doesn't help.
Maybe we differ on the morality point. In my mind, anything immoral is a problem worth solving.
The law sometimes trails behind what the community needs. In my country Australia, the law sometimes doesn't protect the community from harm (bail laws, police strip-search powers, weak foreign investment review boards, lack of industry oversight allowing criminal gangs to infiltrate construction industry including major government contracts - yes these are real and recent examples.) We don't want the law to fail. We like "the law", and because we like it, when it does fail we need to face it, name it, and deal with it.
The post I originally replied to accused fraud. There is a legal definition of fraud - so prove it.
Everything you're going on about has nothing to do with fraud, and is 100% irrelevant since its not about evidence of fraud.
I mentioned morality of loopholes because to me your question looked like some sort of end-run around providing evidence of fraud. That's also why I clearly stated the difference between my opinions and the legal factuality.
Prove the claimed fraud.
If you want the law changed, that's fine - convince congress to do it. Even if the law changes, fraud must be proved under the laws that were relevant when the allegedly fraudulent event occurred.
So again - prove fraud (hint, i doubt you can no matter what your feelings are).
This is a forum not a court of law. You're hung up on "fraud" and lost sight of the discussion.
Sometimes "fraud" is, for the time being, billowing black smoke. There's a small chance it's a harmless smoke machine, not a fire. Some will cling to that hope, but many others will yell fire.
The process with DOGE is unfolding, so hang tight! Surely you agree "efficiency" would be a good outcome. They're aiming for a tight ship not a cash-haemorrhaging behemoth.
Let Musk work on it for a bit. Heckle later if he doesn't get results. I'll join you in heckling, but for now it's great what they're doing. Shocking that Teslas are burning.
You originally replied to someone who asked "How much fraud and abuse...", so they weren't tethered to only "fraud", they were talking about the generally alarming and wasteful spending of the public's money.
They keep saying “fraud” without proof of anything other than just spending they disagree with. Spending, I might add, which was previously duly authorized by Congress.
The use of the word “fraud” is a smoke screen. To unquestioningly accept it is to be complicit in their lies. And that’s what they’re doing: lying.
If there really is fraud, let’s see it prosecuted via due process, like it should be. The fact that that isn’t happening speaks volumes.
No one can "prove" anything without a clear goalpost that doesn't move :) That being said, there is evidence I can present from the past. Here are a couple of cases:
Also, not exactly "fraud" in the accounting sense, but there is a slew of NGOs that purport to support foreign aid, but most of the money is paid to people in DC. Only about $5B/yr actually went from USAID to directly meet needs in other countries: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/opinion/us-foreign-aid.ht...
Someone makes concrete allegations of massive fraud and then uses those allegations as justification for huge funding cuts. Folks ask for evidence of the fraud justifying these cuts. They are instead given evidence of the existence of some different fraud that occurred some point in the past.
If you don't see how problematic that is, then why not just avoid the discussion in the first place?
> uses those allegations as justification for huge funding cuts
I am personally not calling for that. What I do want is for the flow of money to this network of DC-based NGOs to get cleaned up.
Have you ever heard of a grant "poem"? That's an inside term for the fancy language that is written when an NGO or university requests funding from a US federal agency. It has to sound quasi-legitimate, even erudite. But the purpose is to secure more money, and for NGOs, the actual funds are almost entirely used to enrich the people in the NGO, and often to fund things that keep the left in power (like local protests, far-left media, "grassroots" left-wing campaign organizations, etc). Grant poems to enrich NGOs constitute fraud -- maybe not in an accounting sense, but it very much is a defrauding of the citizens who pay taxes.
Also, DOGE has so far found 14 "magic money" computers located in various agencies, including the department of the treasury. When a particular API call comes in, these computers will transfer money from nothing, essentially creating new money out of thin air. That is the worst form of fraud.
> If you don't see how problematic that is, then why not just avoid the discussion in the first place?
Because the faithlessness of the federal bureaucracy and its network of NGOs, combined with its sheer magnitude and entrenched power, is a very real problem. I guess I'm not articulate enough to engage productively with folks like yourself who inexplicably seem to think it's really great...
Modern democratic governments ought to implement the will of the people, not subvert it to enrich themselves and stay in power. Do you disagree?
---
In summary, Trump will be gone in 4 years, Elon Musk is rapidly losing his money and influence. The wheel of fortune turns rapidly for elected officials and their administrations. But by default, these lifetime Washington DC residents (and their WEF allies) who exert enormous power over the populace will only be more rich and powerful with each passing election season. They hate the USA and those who love it, precisely because the freedoms and stipulations of the Constitution, and the hardy "free settlers of the frontier" ethos, threaten their power.
(I don't mean every, or even most of the residents of DC. I mean those who are the most personally enriched and who wield the most political power without being elected or appointed by someone who is elected. Most of these people are in the vast NGO network.)
Agreed, and in addition, DOGE is also on the path to be guilty of mass murder, given than historians widely consider Mao guilty of the famine from the Great Leap Forward, and projected deaths from their policies are beginning to be tabulated.
I would suggest reading the links. You can question the scale but suddenly disrupting food and medical aid is profoundly disruptive and will have generational impacts if it’s not reversed or others don't step in to fill the gap.
Yes, it is wild to me to see how PEPFAR was for years held up as the Republican’s flagship foreign program but so few were willing to speak up to defend it.
Yes, of course it's a good concept. The problem is then giving the execution of the concept to arrogant people who are completely ignorant of what they're cutting. Then when they ignore the law, to double-down and keep pushing. The partisan politics come in when people cheer for wanton destruction because it's their side doing it.
If your goal is cutting waste in the government, DOGE is absolutely the worst possible way to do it.
The idea of bringing in a bunch of "whiz kids" who know absolutely nothing about the departments they're auditing [1], axing people arbitrarily (i.e., firing seemingly everybody who is "probationary"), and cutting programs seemingly purely by Ctrl-F'ing for keywords without even bothering to figure out if the keyword even means what you're looking for in context is absolute clown shoes for good governance.
The fact that they're breaking all sorts of laws in the process makes it even worse; and to top it off, they can't even bring themselves to be honest to the courts about who is responsible for their actions.
No, DOGE is undeniably a rotten concept from inception to practice.
[1] Seemingly flummoxed by the existence of things like sentinel values in databases for "we don't know," based on some of the "fraud" they've very loudly proclaimed.
> Congress doesnt seem to be exposing the waste that DOGE is. A rose by any other name is just as sweet
So you aren't actually opposed to waste or corruption? Since corruption in the purpose of getting rid of things you personally find wasteful is fine with you? You just want the big bad scary government to employ less people? But the ones the executive does employ should be able to do whatever they want, laws be damned?
> You will notice governments around the world copying the method. That is, launching initiatives to audit everything,
Which is it? Are they copying DOGE or are they auditing things, because what DOGE is doing is not auditing. Auditing involves bringing in people who understand what they are looking at.
SpaceX is and always has been funded by NASA. Congress simply doesn't allow NASA to do its own missions any more so it's been forced to add a middle man where it pays private companies to use its technology, infrastructure, and money to do the work it wishes it could do itself
As you said they're incompetent so it would be Russia more like. Imagine the bizarre situation that the US would be in while fighting a proxy war against them at the same time.
Also in that alternative timeline, I wonder what that would do to Americans psychologically. If China and Russia had already beat the US in space, the decline would be extremely obvious. To the rest of the world as well.
ULA is not a "incompetent monstrosity" (Boeing yes sadly). The company is making good progress with Vulcan and if they were given the funds/time to design a reusable rocket they're probably one of the few companies that has the talent/experience to pull it off. Tony Bruno is maybe the only CEO of a large space company that is a hardcore engineer and has a passion for space. Would have been cool to see BO/ULA get combined under Tony's leadership but wasn't meant to be.
He had everything to do with it. If you can't tell by now, he wants to be involved in everything. Recognizing good ideas from bad ones and empowering the right engineers to do it is everything. Look at any of SpaceX's competitors or even other countries space programs to see what poor leadership looks like.
In general, we selectively credit the engineers when a musk company has a success, then blame musk when there's a failure. So when Teslas have quality issues, we don't blame the manufacturing engineers and technicians; instead, we blame Musk who hand assembled every Tesla out there, right?
We know Tesla has the engineers needed to produce quality designs, but it is management that decided to cheap out on both production and quality control, and doesn't make parts easily available for repairs, which is part of the decision and policies Musk is in charge of.
With SpaceX it could go on both sides just because the engineering for spacecraft designs and rockets is not really a solved problem unlike 95% of automobile design, but management could still be the biggest problem with SpaceX. Of course that is going to be hard to see or quantify without being part of SpaceX management.
Those were just two random examples. You're neglecting all of the good things about Tesla. The global charger network and plug standard, the push for automation. You think Musk had no part in those?
If you want to see bad management in rocketry, look at SpaceX's competitors.
Compared to the very first test, everything worked better and looked greased. From the HD drone footage (via Starlink I presume), to the fast arriving boats, quick hypergolic fuel leak checks, roping up, loading onto ship, retrieving crew, going home.
Only thing missing really is landing on land and crew offboarding just like that by themselves.
Yes in some sense, but they did provide additional rides to cover Boeing's shortfall on a short timeline.
The ability to ramp up services on short notice is not flexibility traditional space companies offer. Ex, if NASA begged Boeing for an extra SLS launch this year, they simply could not do it.
SpaceX doesn't exist without NASA. And without SpaceX NASA would be still stuck in the 90s. It is a mutually beneficial relationship and clearly benefits the US.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 306 ms ] threadMy second favorite quote from the show.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/13/science/boeing-starliner-astr...
What a joke of an article.
Yes, four astronauts arrived on Saturday on Crew 10 and are there now.
edit: They came down on the scheduled Crew 9 craft, which, as the linked caption says, has been docked and waiting at the space station since September.
It also led to some interesting improvisations. NASA has a requirement that there be a 'lifeboat' on the ISS for all crew in case of an emergency, but because of the Boeing crew (and the lack of a corresponding vessel), NASA approved a new 'configuration' of the Dragon where up to 3 people could strap themselves to the floor of it, where cargo would normally go, in case of the need of a mass escape from the ISS. [2]
As another fun aside, when the Starliner was returning [autonomously] to Earth it experienced two more errors, unrelated to the ones that left the astronauts stranded on the ISS in the first place. What a vessel.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Crew_Flight_Test#Uncrew...
This continues to be silly. There were changes to Crew 9, last summer, when it was decided that it would be logistically easier for two (instead of four) astronauts to go up and the two Boeing crew would come down with them on the Crew 9 craft in February/March 2025 (that would be now). This has always been the plan, the only politics being injected here are people insisting on grandstanding and making drama where there is none.
You can disagree with the decision (though, again, why), but it was a decision. There was no dereliction of duty, no stranding of astronauts since September, and this was not some high-stakes rescue.
It's a simple, parsimonious explanation for everything that has happened since. Nonetheless, we apparently have to talk about it.
I wonder how many people expressing strong opinions don't even understand that there were intentionally empty seats.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39474840 NASA will retire the ISS soon (npr.org) Feb 22, 2024
Also a large difference to all of NASA’s international partners who might lose out on astronaut slots, scientists with experiments that won’t be ran, dozens of contractor companies supporting ISS, etc.
The more you knew about this, the more you'd be okay with it. The station was obsolete before it was even built. NASA likes to justify the space station as a laboratory studying the effects of longterm space flight on humans; the results were in decades ago: it fucks people up. Human bodies begin to deteriorate in microgravity, even one year isn't healthy and there's nothing we can do about it. No exercise regime can fix it, the only possible solution is a station which spins. This was known before the ISS was built, but they didn't build a spin station. They built Mir 2, using the Soviet DOS-8 module. Mir 1 had the DOS-7 module, the previous modules were the Salyut stations. When the Soviets got tooled up to build something they liked to keep building it forever, and that's what happened here. The Salyut stations came from a period in time when space stations actually had a rational purpose; being a platform for humans to take reconnaissance photos of other countries. This role was quickly made obsolete by recon satellites, but the Soviets were tooled up to build them so they kept at it, while the equivalent systems in America were canceled. If you're familiar with Robert Crippen, the computer specialist and nominal pilot of STS-1, you'll know that he was originally training for operation with the Manned Orbital Laboratory before joining NASA. That was America's Soyuz. It was canceled when satellites proved their capabilities. The Soviets started using satellites but kept their station program anyway, due to the wonderful efficiencies of their system.
NASA tried to use space stations as a justification for continuing Apollo levels of funding (Skylab) but that didn't work out for them and American apace station activities ended there. Some Americans were later sent to Mir and found it to be in a horrific state, a veritable death trap that got lucky on numerous occasions.
The only reason America got involved with Mir 2, rechristening it as the ISS, is because America wanted to prop up the Russian space industry to prevent total collapse and a subsequent diaspora of talent to less friendly nations. It is at least not quite as dangerous as Mir 1, but it's still a dead end technology that serves no genuine scientific purpose, with a political justification which is now just as obsolete.
But the science experiments! How could I have forgotten something so important. All kinds of very important pharmaceutical science or something, I am told. So important, that when companies fielding proposals for replacement stations go looking for customers, they come up empty. NASA wants commercial partners for the next station but the whole thing is a slowly unfolding boondoggle.
Edit to add: Starship isn't going to Mars. Its a satellite launcher surrounded by aspirational propaganda to keep young engineers motivated. And Lunar Gateway, originally the "Deep Space Gateway" before Artemis came up, is meant to exist only to give ISS mission control staff new jobs when the ISS is gone. Soviet style pork.
Especially when you’re separated from your family and other loved ones.
And if you follow JPL robotic missions that far outlast their mission objectives and keep going like Energizer Bunnies, then is it not sort of amazing that the astronauts really suffered no privations or hardships, in terms of food/shelter/clothing/hygiene, by extending their missions and doing useful things up there?
People watch "The Martian" and "Lost in Space" and they can't seem to grasp the careful pre-planning, incident response, resource allocation, and orcestration that goes into everything that's done by space programs.
Space missions include sprawling, branching flow-charts of every contingency they imagined, and they inform the press of mission objectives and a proposed timeline, and then life happens and when glitches come up, they roll with them because they prepared for them. Apollo 13, for example, is categorically different than a space habitation in Earth orbit; as a lone vehicle with limited resources and an isolated path, that Apollo mission ran out of planned contingencies to the point of improvising so many things and returning to fundamentals, preserving human life.
It's the peril of human life that definitely adds drama for us, and the ISS being influenced by geopolitics is categorically different than the nationalist glories of Mercury-Gemini-Apollo vs. the Soviets. But with ISS in Earth orbit, receiving regular resupply missions, being a habitable outpost, it's far different than sending up a vehicle like the Space Shuttle while everyone speculates whether another Saturn V could be constructed in time to rescue the crew because tiles fell off their heat shield.
Speaking of Saturn, I've been peering into Greek/Roman mythology, and learning what Cronus/Saturn did with his children and how Aphrodite/Venus was born, gives new insight into super heavy-lift launch vehicles named after the deity.
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".
This is their life and profession. The job is extremely difficult, dangerous and mega mega expensive. Hence they don't get to do it as much as they love. Now they did.
"Another astronaut comments on what the Crew-9 people can expect: "The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight", because the "build-up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision". They may need glasses for the rest of their lives.""
When Starliner had issues, the already prepared 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 was then pushed back by SpaceX to late March.
All of that was already "in the pipeline" as plans and contingency plans before Wilmore even left Earth.
Any offer by Musk falls more in the PR by Musk bucket side of the equation, and as an out of band out of scope offer it was likely just rejected due to there already being a rotation in the works ... which Musk had to push back in any case, casting doubt on any SpaceX ability to met any early pickup offer by Musk.
So astronauts will answer direct factual questions truthfully - but their opinions are not going to be given in earnest, but rather 100% political.
And there was no prepared backup for Starliner. That launch had been delayed for years and by the time it actually got off the ground (which never should have been allowed), it was probably as much a shock to NASA (and Boeing) as to everybody else. The final plan was only decided long after the fact, and caused major issues.
It is, to be fair, part of their job to put on a happy face.
Becoming a NASA astronaut is extremely hard. You have to check a ridiculous number of boxes, and you have to really want it. I think anyone who goes through this process would prefer a 6 month stay on the space station over a 2 week stay on the space station, and the 6 month stay is what they got.
NASA kept them safe and fed, I really don't think you can reasonably knock them from this perspective.
Feels like they've been put between a wall and a sword: either they abandon the ISS or come back home. I don't know how I'd feel about that.
There is always a way home from the ISS. There are always enough spacecraft, including Soyuz, docked to ISS to save the cosmonauts in case of emergency.
As I say, it's amazing how effective lying to people has become that you genuinely bought that total load of crap that they were stranded.
See, we can all put stuff in capitals. Doesn't make it true.
Even if you defined "stranded" as being "unable to use the Starliner", then they weren't stranded in September. They could have decided to get in the ship and go home. Not like there's some political officers on board ready to stop them.
Contributing to bringing Earth to a state where it will have to be "terraformed" itself: not so cool
in space human slave is literally most expensive labor you can choose, automatons is the way
The worst political nonsense I get caught in means a phone call. Not an extended stay with potential life-lasting or shortening effects. Rad is different for everyone :)
Captain Paperclip would have encouraged the negative path, yes.
maybe you must see real world first, drinkable water and plant is literally of the most rare thing in the universe surpassing mineral and metal, one of the most abundant things in space
also if you born poor in earth, many people would take a chance to do space industry at all in the future despite the risk
Before we had machines to put in our factories, we had hordes of dead laborers. Regulations are written in blood. Then we had company towns and truly brutal police enforcement.
Why will humans work there? Partly for the reason you gave: poverty. That makes them particularly expendable, offering themselves to the 'chance' as you say.
edit: My bias is obvious, I work in SRE - not development. I don't create things, I deal with the fallout of creation. It's a lot like that.
also human is expensive, if fleet of human slave is cheap then we outsource all of our work to china and india. but that don't happen we build a trillion dollar industry (AI and robotic) to make all of that
I don't see a collaborative trip through the cosmos, I see a very unhealthy relationship with danger to boot
This may be all the more reason for robots, but again: humans take no engineering. Just a few minutes and a lot of tries (heh, sex joke). They'll literally pay for themselves.
RE: outsourcing, I don't know what you mean/where you are. That's exactly what's been happening, here. Consistently. For decades. Many ventures can happen.
also human is fragile, weak, costly, too long to make it productive. it takes 15+ year for human to be any useful at all (and not counting experience)
do you think these space corp would just sit 15+ year revenue of upkeep going to waste only the next day human employee die because some dust near light speed particle hit the station???
nooo, slavery human space is not practical because is not cost effective economy wise
But right now, we don't have working practical self replicating robots, but we do have humans. The cost of the 15+ years is externalized, you can just lure a desperate already-grown human with shiny promises, give them some training, and ship them off.
Yes, you have to ship them oxygen and food, which is expensive, but it's a solution that exists and works with todays technology (minus some well-defined engineering), while the robots aren't ready yet.
also space is vast and empty, even with spaceship that has near light speed it still take years to even reach the destination not even counting do extract resources or back go to earth
human literally CAN'T do that
Humans are currently much, much better at doing varied, unexpected tasks. We will at some point likely get more universal robotics, but right now I think there's a very good chance we'll get humans to Mars before we get the robots to work.
Yeah that's why we build trillion dollar industry to make it 'think'
The point is, they are expected to say they enjoyed every minute of it in front of the camera. And if they really didn’t we may not hear about it.
I really hope they'll at some point clearly say either "well, of course we missed our families, but really, getting such an opportunity was AWESOME and Boeing's misfortune was a huge lucky event for us" or "Being up there is awesome, but quite honestly, having to do it unexpectedly really sucked".
And I don't think that it is the slightest bit unprofessional to have feelings about where you spent a year of your life, or to talk about those feelings.
I think it’s cultural. Astronauts I think are more disciplined and more professional on average than an average Joe. Even if they hated it they probably wouldn’t mention it publicly. Maybe after they retire from NASA completely.
All astronauts are military service members. I'd expect nothing less.
Another astronaut comments on what the Crew-9 people can expect: "The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight", because the "build-up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision". They may need glasses for the rest of their lives."
Living without gravity seems to be harder on some than others. Valery Polyakov spent 435 days in space, longer than anyone else. He apparently didn't suffer much in the way of after-effects, had a good post-flight career, and died at age 80.
That particular launch window only occurs once every two years. The Earth and Mars rotate around the Sun at different rates. During some periods Mars is on the other side of the Sun and essentially unreachable with our current level of delta-v.
> latest optimistic prediction
Will that be before or after fully self driving cars? Or electric semis? That drive themselves in road trains? Will those astronauts have neuralink chips in their heads?
> re-adapting to gravity on arrival will be an issue.
It's 1/3 gravity. Then again, you're on a ship with no free return abort trajectory available, I'd worry more about medical emergencies, crew temperament, and actual crimes being committed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfSLuEj99d0
"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
ChatGPT (emojis are the LLM's):
Here’s a set of alternative lyrics to the Gilligan’s Island theme, capturing the Boeing Starliner astronauts’ unexpectedly extended stay on the ISS:
---
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful flight, That started from a launchpad base, And soared into the night.
The crew was only set to stay For just a week or two, But Boeing’s ship had other plans, And stretched it out to new!
(And stretched it out to new!)
The docking worked, they made it there, The mission seemed on track, But then they found some little leaks, And couldn’t make it back!
And couldn’t make it back!
The calendar kept flipping by, With patches, tests, and checks, While Houston said, "Just wait a bit," "We’re working out the specs!"
So here they stay on the orbiting lab, For months, not days but more! With coffee, jokes, and floating sleep, In zero-g galore!
In zero-g galore!
They’ll one day ride the Starliner home, If Boeing gets it right, And finally end this long delay, From what was just a flight!
(From what was just a flight!)
---
This keeps the original tune and humor while capturing the unexpected (and slightly ridiculous) nature of their extended stay.
"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
Claude:
The Ballad of Starliner
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful trip, That started from Cape Canaveral Aboard this spaceship.
The crew was two brave astronauts, The mission just eight days long. Then several systems failed that day, The timeline was all wrong, the timeline was all wrong.
The thrusters started leaking fuel, The schedule lost its way. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, They'd be lost in space today, they'd be lost in space today.
They settled in the station then, For a much extended stay, With two astronauts, and some cosmonauts too, Research night and day, The engineers, Mission Control, NASA chiefs, And Boeing's team, all working hard, Here on Starliner Isle!
"Write a set of alternative lyrics to the theme for Gilligan's Island based on the two astronauts that went up in the Boeing Starliner and were supposed to spend about 8 days in the ISS but ended up spending about 9 months. It's important to follow the meter and rhyme pattern."
Gemma 3:
Okay, here's a set of alternative lyrics to the Gilligan's Island theme song, tailored to the story of Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams' extended stay aboard the International Space Station due to issues with the Boeing Starliner. I've tried to maintain the original song's meter and rhyme scheme as closely as possible.
(Music: Same as the original Gilligan's Island theme)
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, Of two brave astronauts, set to sail— To the ISS, a mission planned, For eight short days, a helping hand.
(Chorus) Starliner launched, a hopeful flight, But problems arose, with all their might! Nine months they stayed, a cosmic spree, A longer journey than it should be!
The capsule docked, all seemed so fine, But glitches appeared, a worrying sign. Repairs were needed, delays took hold, A story of patience, bravely told.
(Chorus) Starliner launched, a hopeful flight, But problems arose, with all their might! Nine months they stayed, a cosmic spree, A longer journey than it should be!
They orbited Earth, a watchful crew, Experiments done, and tasks anew. While ground control worked, with skill and grace, To bring them safely back to base.
So listen close, and you will see, A space adventure, for you and me! A tale of resilience, strong and true, Wilmore and Williams, seeing it through!
Notes on Choices & Challenges:
Meter & Rhyme: The original song is very specific in its rhythm and rhyme. I've prioritized that above all else. This meant some compromises in the narrative detail. Narrative Focus: I focused on the core issue – the extended stay due to Starliner problems – and tried to convey a sense of the situation without getting bogged down in technical details. Tone: I aimed for the same lighthearted, slightly whimsical tone as the original. "Sail" vs. "Space": The original uses "sail," which is obviously nautical. I tried to make "flight" work as a parallel. Keeping it Concise: The original theme is very short. Fitting a complex story into that format is a challenge. I hope this captures the spirit of the situation while staying true to the iconic song! Let me know if you'd like any adjustments or further refinements.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/13/science/boeing-starliner-astr...
This is all clearly over politicized
Rescues have more of an urgency vibe, don’t you think?
Remember the kids stuck in the cave?
That was a rescue.
this whole thing is so politicised that just pointing out that even the astronauts involved have their own motivation for doing or saying what they do is interpreted as if I'm defending Musk.
I'm disgusted by Musk, during the infamous cave rescue comments and by all he's doing and saying now.
That said, astronauts are professionals that have put their lives at stake. They may have died while going up or died while coming back. They know exactly what they signed up for and if the mission has had technical issue and the mission command has deemed necessary for them to stay there they clearly must obey or they won't be seen as fit for the next mission.
Why is our public discourse so degraded that just pointing that out automatically means you're endorsing somebody?
Trump and Musk and their disgusting braggadocio have truly poisoned society in such a way that normal people immediately jump on the defensive. But by reacting like that you all playing into their hand.
It’s honestly just sad to observe.
Of course, the very fact that this was so routine is a testament to how far they've come and how safe and efficient the Falcon/Dragon combo is, especially compared to the Boeing Starliner shit show.
As much as people were saying they were not stranded (and honestly they weren't), having your mission jump from a few days to months is a bummer.
Sure, for a carreer astronaut, that's a great experience. But still, well, if I was sent on a professional mission for 3 days and had to stay a couple of months I would be very annoyed, as cool as the mission was.
Especially as it was due to (all the problems that were endlessly discussed already)
they were not trapped or stranded... they were re-scheduled.
This sort of shit happens a lot. the whole "stranded" wordage is being repeated by the MSM seemingly at the behest of the Trump administration and associated cronies.
Being a savior is fine, just do it fucking quietly please.
If you find you're suddenly offended by the words of the clown class you're likely to have been massively partisan to the last in-charge circus-troupe
You're over-correcting and understating. "Nothing to see here" is not how we describe 8 days turning into 9 months.
Don't be angry about hype. Everyone has access to what the astronauts say themselves. In this case, their remarks have been ambiguous, probably because they don't want to be drawn into a shit-storm. They didn't want to be "victims" in any way, so they were not "stranded". But their Boeing shuttle did suffer problems, and that isn't nothing, nor is it a "scheduling issue".
End of the day, it was great to see the parachutes open. Health complications can arise for astronauts stuck in space that long. Their return was overdue to the point of being concerning for most people. Fair?
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...
When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.
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.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown. But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude, like the widows and cripples in old London town who owe their large pension to Wernher von Braun
Tom Leher, "Werner Von Braun"
>Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points
I don't know what this means. When someone tells a blatant lie, it would be easy to quote them for a start. What 'monumental effort' was lied about? If it's about Boeing then I have to say I too think the company is doing a terrible job and if anyone is lying about the effort it's them, there have been numerous whistleblowers who came out and talked about the coverups at Boeing.
* The Biden administration either forgot about or deliberately chose to leave astronauts in space for political reasons.
* Trump's request accelerated the decision to bring the astronauts home.
"Monumental efforts" was a more general comment about the space industry, including the activities of both NASA and SpaceX. Bringing astronauts home from space when equipment has gone faulty is a challenge I do not envy whatsoever. For Trump to claim credit in the venture is bordering on obscene.
SpaceX isn't entirely focused on getting humans to space since they launch the vast majority of satellites thanks to great innovations in reducing the cost of launches, such as reusable rockets. But there are some competitor launch vehicles coming soon that could be interesting as well.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper#Launch_2
There is also Rocket Lab, Stoke Space and Blue Origin.
I didn't say he was wrong in what he was saying, I'm just seeing this as an outsider who immediately gets a sour taste in my mouth.
Tone policing is an ad hominem argument focusing on the tone and not the merit to DISCREDIT the information within, i am not intending to discredit him, i don't dispute his factual claims, just noting that he made it harder to see his side of things from my perspective.
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.
I agree the rhetoric hasn't been great, I'm just tired of seeing this polarizing language from both sides and it's, as i said, tiring and just noise.
If you sound like everyone else, how is anyone supposed to hear you?
> And still, the lies came.
If, hypothetically, NASA was pressured for political reasons, I don't think Senior NASA officials would reveal it to the public anyway. So the fact that they said it's not for political reasons doesn't really prove anything for either side of the argument.
Did they care more about "not manipulating NASA for political points" than about astronauts who were stuck in space for 9 months, with all the harmful effects that it entails?
They literally train for multiple gruesome death scenarios as part of their training. Not just "well, your 8-day stay has now become several months"
Dismissing every exceptional circumstance as "the jobs they signed up for." is absurd. That's like saying the crash of flight 5342 that killed 67 people is what those passengers signed up for, so it's no big deal.
Just because you don't like this plan doesn't mean it's bad/political/whatever other fantasy you may come up with.
> That's like saying the crash of flight 5342 that killed 67 people is what those passengers signed up for, so it's no big deal.
Nope, it isn't like that at all. None of those passengers trained, rigorously, for an extreme number of extreme situations. Unlike astronauts whose training includes all that, and more.
And risk and exceptional circumstances are absolutely one hundred percent in the job description. Unlike the passengers in the your analogy you pulled out of an unmentionable place.
In fact reading the Soyuz MS-26 Wiki, one of the many records this whole debacle ended up breaking is that when the MS-26 entered into space, there were more humans in space than ever before, with a total of 19!
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-8
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-26
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 right?”
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.
Imagine you have two friends. Both are known to be the kind of people who eat off of other people’s plates.
You go to dinner with both of them. And while you’re distracted, some food fries disappear from your plate.
At this point, it’s similar. Since both friends steal food, it could be either.
Except, you’ve actually been to dinner many times with both. And you actually know a little more. You know that friend A always takes some of your fries. And friend B has always preferred snatching the croutons from your salad. But right now, you’ve got some missing fries. So… most likely the fry snatcher is at it again.
Coming back to the real world of liars. We’ve observed that trump and and musk stretch the truth to gain the trust/confidence/adoration of others. Braggart style behavior. NASA is less than transparent when it comes to motives behind various pork barrel things. But when it comes to “why’d something not work” they actually have a record of being mind numbing thorough and verbose.
So I personally have no problem pinning the less than desirable behavior around this on Trump and Musk.
Honestly, the best evidence that Biden did not block a rescue mission is Trump and Musk saying that he did.
There is only one side with an incentive to lie, and that is only because they started lying and now they cannot stop without losing face.
The return vessel was docked in September. The return was always planned to be around today, not in September.
Trump and Musk are lying about the astronauts being forgotten. They're lying when they claim Biden abandoned them.
As far as I can tell, NASA didn't delay for political reasons. Nor did they allow the return journey today for political reasons. This was the plan all along (well, once the initial plans had to be scrapped for technical reasons).
> Asked about the claims of political motivations for their extended stay, Wilmore said that Musk and Trump may have information “that we are not privy to.”
But then he says:
> But, he said, “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.”
The fact check article is pretty comprehensive: https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delay...
(Note: I don't know anything about the X account. It was just the first result I found.)
Edit: Also it sucks that I can't ask a genuine question on this website without getting downvoted to oblivion. Whatever the answer, it would be nice to get it without being judged.
You asked a question in a confrontational manner, and which had the same misrepresentation as various political operatives have been using. I think you got caught up in looking like you knew the answer but were hoping that readers did not, which is common enough that many people try to discourage it here.
I have barely followed the issue but had heard the astronauts confirmed Musk's side. How else was I supposed to ask about that? What magical wording could I use so that all of you don't try to put me in a belief box?
1. https://nitter.net/NASA/status/1827393397939634503
> 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. We know what we've lived up here, the ins and outs, and the specifics that they may not be privy to. And I'm sure that they have some issues that they are dealing with, information that they have, that we are not privy to. So when I think about your question, that's part of life, we are on board with it.
> 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.
> 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.
To be honest "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" should register quite highly on anyone's political bullshit meter because "absolutely factual" is a statement that makes a claim that they then say they don't have any facts about.
Anyone who reports those quotes as "comfirming Musk's version" should lose a lot of trust.
Where did Musk show his proof it was political?
Given how often Musk and Trump tell BS, bend the truth and even lie I tend to believe NASA officials
I thought this was sarcasm when I first read it.
We know for a fact that Musk a serial liar with a very tenuous grasp of truth.
Can you say the same about the Senior NASA official?
Also, the burden of proof lies on Musk, not on NASA which literally has contingencies upon contingencies for such situations.
But they keep cheerleading it all and pretending that everything will just be awesome. The reason is that NASA is basically forced to be political (at least their heads seem to feel that way), or their funding will get cut. And this also trickles all the way down to the astronauts who play politics for the sake of being able to keep flying.
It's become a highly dysfunctional organization, so yeah - "Senior NASA official" is certainly not a reliable source on anything remotely related to politics, and this is hard in that domain.
Instead they carefully and patiently explained all the issues, and what is going on.
And yet, still, "ah yes, it's NASA that is lying for political clout, not the very public very shameless very serial liars"
This results a very misled electorate, which are the exact people that could (at least in theory) put pressure on their representatives in Congress to stop wasting tens of billions of dollars that could have easily had us on the Moon, if not Mars, long ago. But even more in general - people are forced into doing stupid things all the time. That's part of life. But the second that you begin praising those things, you are now a part of the problem.
1. https://nitter.net/NASA/status/1827393397939634503 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41339667 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-10
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/nasa-officials-undermi...
Hacker News comment from 6 months ago, you know, during the Biden administration. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41339804:
- They'll reconfigure Crew-8 for 6 occupants for contingency evac between Starliner undock and Crew-9 arrival.
- Starliner leaving ISS autonomously early September
- Crew 9 launching no later than Sept 24th with 2 crew + 2 empty seats
- Crew 9 coming back down in ~Feb 2025
The advent of Trump and Musk into government seems not to have changed that plan one whit, which makes absolutely no sense if they're telling the truth.
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.
I think the general idea is to always have at least some Russians and Americans on the ISS at all times (although they are doing swapped missions now so even having only one vehicle left would ensure that most of the time) and to always have crew on the ISS, even if one vehicle needs to return early due to technical problems.
The two astronauts in question are simply hitching a ride back on this scheduled mission.
Why is anybody actually thinking that? The return of Crew-9 is the culmination of a well orchestrated series of missions to cope with the outage of Starliner Calypso. It may have slipped the attention of some, but space missions are not like buying groceries. These assumptions are basically just betraying a lack of understanding how space travel works. Musk, OTOH, should know this.
Furthermore, there is the long-standing policy of having at least one working capsule at the ISS for emergencies. A lifeboat or escape pod, so to speak. Plus, there are only two docking slots for large-enough capsules, such as Starliners or Dragons, on the ISS. So you have to schedule your trips even more than for normal space missions. You have to coordinate and swap crafts in sequence and deal with the launch windows schedule -- which is exactly what has happened. Again, Musk should know this.
> I 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.
Why would the CEO of a contractor of a US government agency need to speak to the president of the USA to do the job they were hired for? The agency has more capable people to decide on such matters than any White House staff.
It's all a huge charade of grandstanding and chest-thumping. Disappointing.
So many comments spread unsourced assertions on the topic on both sides. Let me change that.
On 24 Aug 2024, NASA stated in a conference published on X[0]:
> NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February.
So the decision sounded like it stemmed from NASA, and the plan a year ago was for a return in the time frame that actually occurred.
On 28 Sept 2024, the spacecraft that would bring Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore was launched. They restated the same plan[1]:
> A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon spacecraft will launch Crew-9 to the space station for about a five-month mission. Hague and Gorbunov will join Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who are already aboard the space station, and all will return to Earth as a crew of four in February 2025.
Thus there was no action after Mr Trump took office that changed the plan. (Note that the SpaceX article we’re commenting on has a mistake, stating that Mr Grebenkin has come down on 18 March, but Mr Grebenkin came down on 25 Oct; it is indeed Gorbunov that came down.)
On 7 March 2025, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate, stated[2] on the motivation for this:
> When it comes to adding on missions or bringing a capsule home early: those were always options but we ruled them out pretty quickly just based on how much money we've got in our budget and the importance of keeping crews on the International Space Station.
When asked specifically about a request from Mr Musk to have an earlier return:
> Was anyone outside NASA or the White House involved in the decision not to bring Suni and Butch back sooner? — There may have been some conversations that I wasn't part of. When we made the technical decisions about Starliner […] our leadership at NASA was trying to make sure that we considered everything just at a technical level and that's what we did.
[0]: https://x.com/NASA/status/1827396382702878966
[1]: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2024/09/28/nasas-s...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/live/Xq5CH-d4IuU?si=-q-J65i7G_d6Mcxs...
- 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.
It also forced NASA to completely change their safety standards. In particular NASA requires there be a 'lifeboat' on on the ISS for all crew in case of an emergency, but because of the Boeing crew (and the lack of a corresponding vessel), NASA approved a new 'configuration' of the Dragon where up to 3 people could strap themselves to the floor of it, where cargo would normally go, in case of the need of a mass escape from the ISS. [2]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Crew_Flight_Test#Uncrew...
>Ah, yes. The Gulf of America.
>This is why we can't have nice things.
That doesn't sound like an "excellent journalist". It sounds like a Redditor.
Do you realize that you’re the one behaving like a low-quality Redditor here.
We're not talking about their >decade of work. We're talking about this work, and this work sounds like a Redditor.
Once a favorable celebrity wears the Red or ventures near the Orange the script is rewritten.
Liftoff was published January 3, 2023
Reentry was published September 2024
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger?v...
https://benbellabooks.com/shop/reentry/
What is the complaint? You don't like the style of rebuking this ridiculous behavior?
I'm curious if you were complaining when Barack Obama renamed Mt. McKinley.
#1 It wasn't just the President, it was literally the state of Alaska that had made the request for four decades. #2 This is within US borders.
It's extremely out of character and the writing on this exact topic is somewhat contradicted by other articles he himself wrote on it, like this [1] one. I have a suspicion he's being pressured to increase engagement/subscriptions, and it's trivial to do that in the age of such extreme political derangement.
Countdown to Substack.
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/butch-and-suni-send-mi...
“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.”
But the real thing here is that Eric Berger has written extensively about the political games NASA plays or (depending on one's perspective) is compelled to play. They support a lot of fundamentally flawed programs that are either a complete waste of money or will never go anywhere, like SLS/Artemis. The reason they do this is because, in NASA's case, their funding depends on it and, in the astronauts' case, because they'll never fly again if they don't play ball.
So you don't simply take things NASA says at face value - again something he has written about ad nauseum. His understanding of the industry, and the games surrounding it, are part of what made (and hopefully in the future continues to make) him such an excellent reporter. But this latest article just dumps all of that and is written with all the insight and worldview of somebody on /r/politics.
In contrast other articles Eric wrote talking to people who where involved in the decision of how and when to return Butch and Suni, those officials clearly state that the decision was made for technical and programmatic reasons, not political pressure.
And again something you can't discount here is that Eric himself has written extensively about NASA frequently carrying out/endorsing poor decisions (SLS/Artemis being the low hanging fruit there) owing much more to political pressure than pragmatic decisions about the best direction for progress. Here [1] is one example, including an interview with a former high level NASA insider (30 years experience, up to deputy administrator) openly and casually talking about such.
It's not a secret whatsoever that NASA is under constant and significant political pressure. It's just a part of the game. And in this case you had a situation where the guy, who had basically become public enemy #2 (from the previous administration's POV), was going to be spearheading a high visibility rescue of a launch that should never have been approved in the first place - undoubtedly while blasting it all to his tens of millions of followers. To imagine this would not have provoked some behind the scenes 'management' just seems unthinkable to me.
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/former-nasa-official...
That is a HUGE disclaimer. "no information on that, though, whatsoever" - it doesn't get any bigger than that.
The reason he was able to write about this was that he had sources within NASA that would tell him the inside story behind the decisions, and how much politics influenced them. Now his sources are telling him that this decision was not political. I don't have any reason to trust his previous sources but not his current ones (especially when many are the same).
If you want to see this in action search for pretty much any article on SLS or Artemis by him. The one I offered with the former NASA administrator was to clarify to people who might want to claim he was just speculating or whatever. NASA is the posterboy for making bad decisions under political pressure, and not just in contemporary times...
"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."
That has to be a nominee for doublespeak quote of the year -- and that's not a low bar this year.
"NASA said this study was not directly related to Starliner's problems, but two sources told Ars it really was. Although the study entailed work on flying more than four crew members home on Crew Dragon—a scenario related to Frank Rubio and the Soyuz MS-22 leaks—it also allowed SpaceX to study flying Dragon home with six passengers, a regular crew complement in addition to Wilmore and Williams."
Nobody knows the details of exactly what was offered, or why it was rejected, besides Elon and whoever he was talking to in the previous administration. But at this point I think one cannot reasonable argue that no offer was made. And we know because of what happened that it was rejected. So the only question remaining is why.
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/yes-nasa-really-could-...
Read his goddamn quote you're citing. The part where he says "We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went".
Which part of "I believe him despite having no information" do you think is "confirming"?
>They got left in space
And Musk >They were left up there for political reasons
There was the line already crossed, because those statements are untrue and they know.
In other words they lied.
[1]https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-sit-on-a-throne-of-lies
None of the writers of Ars Technica are anything like fair to Musk.
He has NEVER donated more to the Democrats than the Republicans. Like most billionaires he donates to both parties. Historically, he donates ten times more to the Republicans and the Democrats.
Nothing about Musk has ever seemed "liberal". Just convenient. He smokes weed on shows, but if you work for one of his companies you'll be fired if you don't piss clean. Anti-taxes. Anti-regulation/oversight.
How has he ever been democrat-leaning in any meaningful way?
True. For some reason they keep minimising the damage he is doing to both science and democracy.
Does arstechnica mention the dolphins even once? Nope. How about Trump? Six times! Meanwhile, sibling comment applauds the writer for his "knowledge of space topics".
Where was it manufactured? What were the labor laws where it was manufactured? Was there any environmental impact in its construction? How was it shipped to you, and was there any environmental or safety impact of that transportation? If it broke the day after it arrived, would the manufacturer owe you a replacement, or would you have to replace it at your own cost (caveat emptor)?
These are all decisions that had to be made, and were largely made collectively through a political process. Your chair likely wasn't constructed with slave labor—which was a political choice. If the chair breaks within minutes of arriving, the manufacturer will likely owe you a replacement through its implicit warranty according to the UCC.
So, no, the chair itself doesn't have political opinions. But the chair does have many direct ties to political choices that we've made.
That's not a very useful perspective to have, though.
Similarly, everything humans do has some connection to politics. For most things in most contexts, that connection is irrelevant in practice. The only reason one wants to make obviously non-political things political, is to shift the conversation from rational, object-level, reasonable context, to one where truth and objective reality don't matter - and they want to do it, because that bullshit-land is where they live and they have a home-field advantage there.
That why asking "When was space not political?" is not very useful either.
It's "absolutely" in the same category as running a space race for decades between two superpowers, sacrificing enormous resources including human lives? Ok, then....
What's it made of? -Wood and fiber.
Where were the materials sourced? -No idea
Why? -Why what?
Where was it made? -Factory in a town over
Why? -Is it the first "why" or a different one?
Was it supposed to be marked as potentially containing carcinogenics? -Sorry don't follow this one. It's chair to sit on.
I guess you were trying to show that this chair is about just as political as decades running a space race between two world powers? It's a good try but I think we'll need better questions to answer.
What's considered "normal" for a chair in your corner of the world is determined by your history (and therefore politics). There are regulation that impact the materials and processes that go with making the chair, as well as quality
> Where was it made? -Factory in a town over
Why is the chair factory in the next town over and not your own? Is the factory unionized?
The constant in all the news cycles is about how they've been stranded all this time. Which isn't just a bit misleading, its a flat out lie.
Even when starliner departed, they werent standed. There was litterally an emergency plan prepared for how they'd get them home if they had to, and made modifications to the existing crew 8 ship to allow for this. This was all covered in the briefing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc
So once again, nobody was stranded. They could've come home at any point if they needed to.
The definition of stranded is litterally "left without the means to move from somewhere." which is VERY clearly not the case.
If I'm at work and my car breaks down, I'm stranded. I call my buddy to pick me up, and if there is an emergency I can ask a coworker to drive me home, but I'd rather not inconvenience them and so I am stranded until my buddy comes.
The word stranded is almost never used to describe scenarios where literally no contingency exists, because such scenarios almost never happen in modern live. To insist on such pedantry would be to effectively retire the word from common parlance.
If your car breaks down a couple of miles from home and you call a friend and tell him you're stranded, are you lying? What if it's 20 miles away? But uber exists? What if uber is extremely expensive right now at $2000? But there's a guy next to you offering to sell you a bicycle?
In the end, to ask the question "were they stranded?" we have to unpack "stranded" and figure out what is the question we actually want answered. Is it about the feelings of the astronauts? Their preferences? The danger level they're in? Is it about Boeing's culpability? Is it about whether we can safely call Trump a liar? Musk?
The classic: https://www.readthesequences.com/Disguised-Queries
Using the car anology only works if you also say you've got another car following you at all times, fully fuled and capable of getting you home, in which case, no, you are not stranded.
Stranded implies they cant get home. Not that it costs more, or is inconvenient. The litteral definition is "left without the means to move from somewhere".
In fact, I'd be surprised if even 1 in 100 actual uses of the word in, say, 2023 matched the definition you've given.
"Left by your friends in an empty car park? Well, there's technically an unlocked bicycle over there..."
The point is, if you seek political stuff you'll find it, even a political spin on a recent flare that is being yet again compared to the Carrington Event. I'm here for the sun stuff and other space stuff. I'm here all the time, before and after the dust settles. I'm here for the "boring" stuff. If you have to ask that question, you're a tourist. Sorry if it comes across as gatekeeping. But it really looks like that to me.
Sure the thing's been politically amplified into oblivion by the parties involved. That doesn't mean ranting about the gulf of america and all the other things the author doesn't like about the current political situation in that arstechnica article, is a good suggestion to be bumped into a top comment. Neither is burying exodust's comment which I think has a very good point that I agree with.
Quote from the arstechnica article: "This is why we can't have nice things.". Yes it is. This is exactly it. Guess I'll just have to wait for the tourists to go elsewhere. Anyone who came for political reasons and stayed for the boring stuff is very much welcome, as always.
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
I liked how they had a drone circling the recovery activity at the splashdown site. All live-streamed for our informed entertainment. SpaceX is undeniably doing a great job, although the starship explosions in our atmosphere I'm not a fan of, I look forward to that not happening.
Trump is stirring shit with lies to sway the public.
2. Oh look cute dolphins came to watch
…are they dead now?
Know if there's anything to that?
Might explain some of the odd rhetoric.
Because the most recent delay was down to SpaceX. Their new dragon capsule was not ready on time to collect them, so they had to shift and replan for an older one.
Elon Musk offers a lot of things for free, and then turns out you have to pay anyway.
Edit: italicized
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy87vg38dnpo.amp
Also, it's not like Ukraine or even Poland has to pay, the can pay if they want, they can also not pay if they want. It's entirely elective. They can stop using any time they want. I heard that Google has a Starlink replacement in the works that is super awesome and I also heard that while Europe has completely killed itself with regulation they are entirely willing to buy things made by China which has absolutely no regulation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...
even if they pay, he can supply it if he wants, or he can cut them off if it threatens to inconvenience Russia.
I hope you read it carefully and we can have some intelligent conversation about the contents.
does that help?
As a response to this: https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/04/26/elon-musk-hunger/
Spoiler alert, they could not show him how.
Check the errata at the bottom.
"The Facts Behind the Delayed Return of U.S. Astronauts" - https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delay...
"SpaceX offered to do it for free. Publicly."
It will be kinder for you, to think you’re lying, than to suspect a deficit in judgment...
"Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said, “I think there may have been some conversations that I wasn’t part of.” But he said the option to fly a separate mission to the space station to retrieve the astronauts was “ruled out pretty quickly.”
First hand sources: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1892617681796264436 https://www.youtube.com/live/rCiNtismqg8?si=M8ZfF79yK9pwYJ1o
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1dxlopw/elo...
And an interview with the astronauts where no such offer is mentioned except by a Fox news presenter?
Uhau, just uhau....
I trust an actual Astronaut and an actual Engineer in Aerospace Engineering, and the first first pilot of a US spacecraft who was not a US citizen
https://x.com/Astro_Andreas/status/1892517170384392664
> Wilmore said he had no reason to doubt Musk’s claims about an offer to bring them home earlier, though Wilmore said he was not privy to such an offer.
Which pretty much amounts to "I don't know, but I can't see why Musk would lie."
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...
I guess it came down to money more than politics? But interestingly that part is missing from reporting about this. Which, if true, reporters hiding that yet saying “let’s not make it political” are making it political. Which sadly is also not surprising.
Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said “I think there may have been some conversations that I wasn’t part of.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/04/starliner...
https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/nasa-spacex-c...
Maybe one of the downvoters can explain?
Bullshit. Musk was clear that the reason was that they didn't want someone pro trump having success so close to the election.
This makes no sense whatsoever. The election was in November. If that was their calculation, they’d just have cosplayed astronaut-saving heroes before Trump had an opportunity to do so, between November and January. Musk is full of it, as usual.
It is not the first time some astronauts stay in space longer than expected and it never was controversial before. The people making noise cannot even find a single reason for Biden to do what they accuse him of doing, much less any proof that he did so.
You started this response by explicitly ignoring that reason.
> it never was controversial before
It was also never the case that the US was launching ~two rockets per week.
> This makes no sense whatsoever. The election was in November. If that was their calculation, they’d just have cosplayed astronaut-saving heroes before Trump had an opportunity to do so, between November and January. Musk is full of it, as usual
Musk offered to bring them back way before the election so HE would have appeared as the saver (and boeing would have looked terrible). Musk is probably exaggerating, but you can't completely ignore the political forces behind all this.
The choices were whether to leave them up there longer as the next crew rotation, or let them come home and send up another crew like normal. One would save the government the cost of a new Crew Dragon launch (not insignificant - $100m-150m), and the other would save NASA's valuable astronauts from the long term health effects of a year in space (usually crews are rotated every six months for health reasons, like bone density and muscle mass problems).
NASA reported that the factor keeping them from being brought home was cost, and they didn't have the $100m for a new Dragon launch in the budget. But this was bunk. The next launch was already budgeted for, because this is on a well-planned-for rotation. It could have been because they wanted to keep the $100m, but if they falsely claimed it wasn't budgeted for, then (as Musk postulated) it's a good bet that the real reason is that this would have been a big PR win for Musk, saving America's cherished astronauts from Boeing's massive screwup, and since he had already begun bankrolling Trump's campaign, Biden did not want him to have this PR win.
When Musk wasn't insane, I think a lot of people valued him a bit more. I personally haven't cared for him since pedo guy, but others did.
Reality is he's now batshit crazy, destroying America, and intersecting himself in a bunch of shit nobody wants him close to. Of course that has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
It's not a "shift to the right". I don't care of someone is a bit right or a bit left. This man is dangerous, out there setting America back decades, and sending out some hail Hitlers along the way.
Shift right... Come on.
If you can write a one sentence definition of liberalism, and examine policies from first principles, you might be surprised.
You have to go a long way back to find Ars articles on Musk that aren't derogatory. They were ahead of the curve on this, apart from their rocket articles (usually). I've always found it unprofessional and off-putting.
Claiming the astronauts where stranded by the Biden admin is just one of those things for the left hand. Of course had Kate dared call it the Gulf of Mexico, she'd be in serious trouble only an hour later. Defiantly, without a job two hours later once CEO heard from lower management.
Something any dictator sooner or later gets into serious trouble, because he is only surrounded by obedient people from his bubble. Warping the view of reality. All others fell out a window or best case, got fired.
Then this line: "NASA—not the Biden administration, which all of my reporting indicates was not involved in any decision-making—decided the best and safest option"... NASA is part of the executive branch. So yes, it was the Biden administration.
I don't necessarily agree with Musk that the delay was politically motivated, but this article is a political hit piece through and through.
I'm pretty sure I'm correct, and that you are too: the president could theoretically do that. Or, in the very least, strongly influence decisions made by NASA.
I'm also saying that the NASA _is_ part of President Biden's administration, as the "NASA Administrator" at the time, Bill Nelson, was actually nominated by President Biden.
---
But maybe I'm wrong and the downvoters could elaborate as to how and why?
I disagree. There's a known point of view "the buck stops here", meaning the President is the ultimately responsible. Yes, it's hard for President to do that all, even harder - without expertise, but still.
I disagree with the original comment - look, the article this thread is attached to isn't Arstechnica's anymore - because it suggests the article is a political hit piece. I don't think so at all.
The point I am making is perhaps just being taken as a semantics issue about the use of the word "administration", but NASA _is_ part of the president's administration, technically and practically. But I can see how someone could think "Biden administration" and only think of him and those involved in "everyday" presidential actions.
What would you have preferred they said?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43411627
This cannot be overstated. Prior to Biden there was a long history of new administrations of both parties coming in and wanting to make their mark on NASA. Everyone wanted to be what JFK was to the moon race, which meant that whatever the previous guy came up with obviously had to be canned and replaced, so that the new thing would be their thing. NASA was jerked around for decades. You can't do 15 year projects if they're always cancelled after 8 years.
Biden coming in and simply continuing Trump's plan broke the trend. And yet Trump still needed to find a bone to pick to advance his cult of personality.
Is there any information about what drone/camera equipment was used?
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1902026377685295527
It seems to me that Boeing might be happy to be forgotten at this time.
As an outsider and a cynic to boot, seems to me that corporate profits might trump Trump and his rhetoric.
Haha you got to love the timeline we're living at.
"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."
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/history-is-weird
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Mexico%E2%80%93Ameri...
Nothing to do with the CEO or the company culture. Sort of like Apple, Jobs was probably just annoying his engineers all the time and contributed nothing.
/s
After that he started getting more and more unhinged, leading through to buying twitter, then trying to get out of it, then doubling down.
I didn't realise republicans were against genital mutilation.
That's not true at all. Kids can't just get surgery on their own. They need parental consent at the very least. Interestingly, one survey indicated that 97% of minors receiving breast reduction surgery were not transgender kids, but cis male kids with gynecomastia. In your hand-wringing about life-changing decisions, would you deny these boys the treatment they need and instead force them to keep their breast growth all throughout adolescence?
And it's certainly easier to get parental consent to consume alcohol than it is to get elective gender-affirming surgery. The total number of people getting GAS in the USA in one year has never exceeded ~13,000. That's for all ages. Meanwhile about 10 million young people under 21 per year drink alcohol, of whom about 10% were able to obtain it from their own home, which in some states is perfectly legal.
Take heed, if you have money, power, and poor social skills, hire people to manage it for you.
What was the genre of that film again?
Musk is DESPERATE to be adored and DESPERATE for influence and power outside the scope of his success.
Those are personal failings, not the failings of society.
It's not merely about "likability" but more about carefully controlling the messaging, and avoiding controversies or really bad missteps.
A defendant or plaintiff can choose to remain totally silent in a court of law and speak through their attorney. The attorney filters what their client has to say, recasts it in legal terminology, and everything the attorney says and does should protect the interests of the client and the court, in opposition to the other side.
It's also about a division of labor: for God's sake, what CEO/politician/bishop wants to open all his own mail when a secretary can filter it? What CEO is going to read social media all day and respond to their DMs? Waste of a salary! Does Mr. Musk or President Trump really write all the covfefe on his own, or does he employ ghost writers? How would we know?
A PR firm likewise has a fiduciary and legal duty to protect the interests of an entity, to keep them out of litigous entanglements, and yes, to put on the best public face that they can in order to 'be liked'. Unless the org has some weird reason to play the villain or adversary in some way, and likability is not an ultimate goal, such as a gangsta rapper with a public beef, I suppose. They still use social media to sell music.
Oh, here we were believing Trump when we are told Musk isn't in charge of anything, either administratively or politically.
All you have to do is listen to Trump speak to realize he's fairly unique in quickly-obviouly-un-American ways among recent US Presidents.
If he'd had better social skills, he wouldn't have been fired from x.com and made even more money from PayPal.
If you read the Isaacson biography of him, it seems like he's always been like this.
It's only regrettable through the lens of partisan politics. DOGE is undeniably a good concept.
You will notice governments around the world copying the method. That is, launching initiatives to audit everything, cut wasteful spending, expose corrupt spending, and trim bureaucratic inefficiency via external oversight. It would be regrettable not to undertake the task.
Cut wasteful spending -> things Musk doesn’t like? Or people responsible for safely handling nuclear waste?
Expose corrupt spending -> would be nice to get a report of this
Trim bureaucratic inefficiency -> like firing people and then having to hire them back?
I can get behind the concept of DOGE. But that’s not what DOGE is actually doing.
Audit committees have been around forever, because people think they are a good concept. A large fraction of the (time) cost in government (or dealing with the government) is dealing with initiatives to audit everything, and cut wasteful spending.
Not to say that eliminating waste isn't a good concept, but do not conflate the _idea_ of eliminating waste with any one particular implementation.
Of the $6.8T budget, $55B (or whatever is the truth) would amount to less than 0.9% of spending. https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everythin...
Anyway, we have a Government Accounting Office already which is highly critical of waste. If anyone was earnest, they'd send them more resources.
On the other hand, if someone wanted to cripple every infrastructure, institution, and agency across the board in order to cause chaos, without transparency, accountability, and compliance, then DOGE is super effective!
As it is, that "small" corruption is funding an extensive network of NGOs, nonprofits run by the families of people in government, media, etc. -- all to (a) keep a ton of money flowing to people in Washington DC and (b) protect that status quo.
Politics aside, widespread corruption in the US capitol should be taken very seriously.
Presidential administrations have been repeatedly trying to deal with the sheer behemoth bureaucracy, the growing power of unelected officials, and all the associated corruption since the early 1960s and so far have been defeated every time (see JFK's comments on the CIA for one example; there are also videos of Obama and Biden trying to address it during Obama's presidency). Each time it wins again, it grows stronger and more entrenched.
Our partisan attitude is understandable: our tribal wiring seems to make us gravitate towards "us/them" thinking and to cheer when "their" side loses. But doesn't the DC bureaucracy represent a common enemy to those on either side who value democracy?
Timeless: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
How about let's solve problems practically instead of having trillion dollar decisions made in the name of virtue signaling about "moral purity."
> But doesn't the DC bureaucracy represent a common enemy to those on either side who value democracy?
Uh, no. USAID etc. have money because our elected representatives gave it money, as prescribed by the Constitution which governs our country.
The constitution doesn't mention anything about any federal agencies. The Department of State didn't even exist until a 1789 law signed by George Washington.
USAID was established by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Its express purpose is to fund U.S. foreign economic and humanitarian assistance programs.
If the majority of USAID money is going towards things that do not align with the law that governs it, would you say that fits somewhere under the umbrella of "waste, fraud, and abuse"?
If I believe USAID is full of waste, fraud, and abuse, I’m free to express that at the ballot box where I vote for a congressperson who wishes to vote on the next budget accordingly.
The executive has many dimensions of freedom with regard to federal agencies. “Existence of” and “funding of” are not among those dimensions of freedom.
I don't think the current administration actually abolished USAID or its funding; it just froze outgoing transfers from it. Some of the verbage used by Musk & others is exaggerated. They're playing to their voter base, unfortunately. It doesn't accurately describe what is technically or legally happening.
Unelected ones - worse still?
The unsurprisingly-ignored central sin of the Trump administration for those who voted for it for reasons of "free speech" or "reducing government corruption" or "accountability" is that Trump and his circle do not actually believe in any of those things and are not acting in ways consistent with any of those priciples. Those are just the things they say to get votes so they can grab all the power they can.
Anyone opposed to government waste or corruption should be beating down the door to get Republicans to impeach Trump because he's trying to create a whole hell of a lot of corruption-and-waste-enabling precedents.
Yeah, I hate that. Their talk is closer to WWE guys in the ring (at least on X) than the thoughtful orators whose pictures line the oval office. There's no thoughtful, careful, wise poise about it. There are many others like me who also dislike how things are said, but we look back at the actions taken (not words said) and are a lot more happy with them than we are with Biden's actions (or lack thereof).
> whole hell of a lot of corruption-and-waste-enabling precedents
Could you elaborate? I'm curious to know specifics you'd call out as examples.
from this week, lawyerballing on reasons to ignore judicial decisions they don't like https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-hear-arguments-trump-adminis...
here we just call for impeachment of judges who rule against us https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-federal-judges-impea... - “at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.” - what else you got in mind, exactly, Donald?
and obviously there's the whole impoundment thing we've just been talking about - the executive blatantly ignoring a law that restricted that. should be trivial to imagine ways THAT could be misused.
Musk's entire role is pretty suspect - where was the Senate confirmation hearing or law authorizing the delegation of power to him? where is the authority over departments headed by actual cabinet members beyond "Trump said so"?
another big flashing warning sign is RFK and the CDC re-opening the vaccines/autism thing. wouldn't it be curious if suddenly a new study contradicts decades of research there? seems a bit wasteful to re-litigate unless you have reason to believe you'll get the result you want, not the one the numbers have been pointing to...
What are the good actions? Laying people off to save pennies off the budget? Promising tax cuts to enlarge the national deficit? Renaming shit?
(EDIT: another big corruption-enablement thing would be deciding the FCC is the "let's police speech i don't like" department.)
The law didn't restrict it, the Constitution prohibits it without law allowing it. The Impoundment Control Act provided a limited allowance for impoundment, rather than actually curtailing it.
They impounded funding. That’s exactly what they’re doing and it’s exactly what’s illegal.
Glad you don’t dispute Congress’s Constitutional role though!
Clinton cut the size of the government considerably – 400k federal workers! – but you probably didn’t hear a lot about it because it was a thoughtful process designed not to impact the ability of the government, and because it undercuts the narrative that Democrats increase spending which is popular in right-wing propaganda. What DOGE is doing locks in as much cost and disruption as possible while minimizing benefits because that’s not the actual goal (scoring political points against what’s perceived as a democratic stronghold).
Fraud literally means intentional lying in accounting or other financial representations, for the purpose of improperly benefiting someone. If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.
> If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.
Yup, that endpoint is fine and can be agreed with.
People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though. And if a few percent of the money their program spends is wasted or benefits other people through fraud-- that's not corruption either.
And the blanket cuts, layoffs, offers for voluntary separation /early retirement, and contract cancellations don't seem to be aimed at the thing we agree is corruption.
I didn't say anything about that; I don't think I know enough yet to have a fully formed opinion.
But I do think that the overly powerful DC bureaucracy, DC NGOs, and corruption that holds it together is a worthy common enemy for all of us - that's what I'm trying to point out.
I'm actually amazed at Democrats' position on this. I grew up in a Democratic family... We used to be the anti-establishment party! JFK was a Democrat - and he's the one who was apparently taken out by the CIA because he said he was going to destroy it. It used to be Republicans who wanted to keep the institutional status quo in DC.
Either way, I think a pro-Democracy attitude will oppose growing power of unelected officials, regardless of political leanings.
DOGE is headed by an unelected official, from a party with not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now.
In terms of democracy, that is about as direct of an electoral mandate as possible.
> not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now
How about having been duly elected in the ballot boxes? Being pro-democracy means accepting and implementing the will of the people.
(Trump disputed the election results in 2020 because he believed there was widespread election fraud. That may be evidence he was deluded, but I don't think it's necessarily evidence of being anti-democracy in his leanings.)
> How about having been duly elected by a landslide majority in ballot boxes?
How is 49.8% a "landslide majority"?
This is either willful ignorance or something else.
I'm trying to say that the emperor is nude, and you are arguing that the threads might be so small as to not see them - or, rather, that the Media said he was naked, so while the president claims that he is wearing clothes, and that might be evidence he is deluded, his open ass in the wind not evidence of his pro-nudity leanings.
(This ignores the fact that he rose from the republican party, one that has been operating in full defiance of open democracy since bush v. gore. Republcans don't want "the will of the people", otherwise they wouldn't push so hard for voter suppression.)
It's a claim so baffling that it makes me assume you aren't operating in good faith.
The human desire to be richer and the power to make it happen.
Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer?
And worse, that the poorly-vetted people who have attached themselves to this administration don't?
The idea that getting rid of fraud in a chaotic fashion is going to lead to less fraud is laughable, unless the assumption is also 'All of the people who are doing this are altruistic and moral.'
If you create chaos at scale, you simply end up with different fraud.
And you can quote me on this in 6 years when investigations begin to lead to trials...
(Which, naturally, Republicans will claim are politically-motivated? But you know who complains loudest about the rule of law? People who do illegal things.)
Which honestly should happen to some extent (I'm not a fan of SLS). But we shouldn't become beholden to one vendor, and it's sure looking a lot more like removing options for the future and competition than a play for efficiency.
And anyone doing this for their own companies in the past would be a textbook example of corruption.
One of the things that fucked it up was decades of cost-plus government work.
Companies become the most profitable versions of themselves the market allows them to be... which without competition usually doesn't bode well for excellence.
FYI, lots of dumb people actually DO believe that. "Oh they have so much money already" they say. They don't even attempt to square that with collecting more resources than some Gods, for, reasons.
Pointing to money that was spent differently than you think it should be is not fraud, no matter how much you want to claim it.
Pointing to money being spent in suboptimal ways is not fraud. Maybe it's waste - but often it's what the law calls for (aka definitionally the opposite of fraud).
Yelling very loudly about how it's all fraud and waste is not proof. It doesn't matter how loudly you yell.
Repeating "there's so much fraud, omg, fraud everywhere, soooo much fraud" over and over is not proof. Even if your repetitions would make an animated gif jealous.
Actually prove the fraud: Show that the money was spent in a way different than proscribed by law, that the people authorizing the spending were lying, and there was direct enrichment of someone via those lies and misspending. It's not hard if of it around.
When people find loopholes in the law to obtain grants, do you defend their actions because technically it didn't break the law?
DOGE is apparently exposing a system of dubious and questionable spending at scale. If "wasteful" is an understatement, don't be surprised when taxpayers use "fraud" to describe the decisions made to blow their money.
Even if a court finds that funding that "drag show in Ecuador" was lawful, doesn't take the sting out. It doesn't take the fact away that someone benefited who probably shouldn't have, relative to the government's broader budget purposes. It might enrage people even more that it was a systemic abuse of grant money.
I don't defend their actions as moral. I think the loophole should be closed. I also think that they didn't commit fraud, as a loophole is by definition legal.
As for all your nonsense about money being spent different than you would like: I get it, you're very upset. As I covered before: money being spend different than you would like it to be spent is not fraud, no matter how much you rant and hate.
You mention morality, but then say my "likes" are nonsense. You've even pushed me into the "rant" and "hate" zone! I'm trying to have a civil discussion about curious things. Insinuating I'm ranting and hating doesn't help.
Maybe we differ on the morality point. In my mind, anything immoral is a problem worth solving.
The law sometimes trails behind what the community needs. In my country Australia, the law sometimes doesn't protect the community from harm (bail laws, police strip-search powers, weak foreign investment review boards, lack of industry oversight allowing criminal gangs to infiltrate construction industry including major government contracts - yes these are real and recent examples.) We don't want the law to fail. We like "the law", and because we like it, when it does fail we need to face it, name it, and deal with it.
Prove fraud.
The post I originally replied to accused fraud. There is a legal definition of fraud - so prove it.
Everything you're going on about has nothing to do with fraud, and is 100% irrelevant since its not about evidence of fraud.
I mentioned morality of loopholes because to me your question looked like some sort of end-run around providing evidence of fraud. That's also why I clearly stated the difference between my opinions and the legal factuality.
Prove the claimed fraud.
If you want the law changed, that's fine - convince congress to do it. Even if the law changes, fraud must be proved under the laws that were relevant when the allegedly fraudulent event occurred.
So again - prove fraud (hint, i doubt you can no matter what your feelings are).
This is a forum not a court of law. You're hung up on "fraud" and lost sight of the discussion.
Sometimes "fraud" is, for the time being, billowing black smoke. There's a small chance it's a harmless smoke machine, not a fire. Some will cling to that hope, but many others will yell fire.
The process with DOGE is unfolding, so hang tight! Surely you agree "efficiency" would be a good outcome. They're aiming for a tight ship not a cash-haemorrhaging behemoth.
Let Musk work on it for a bit. Heckle later if he doesn't get results. I'll join you in heckling, but for now it's great what they're doing. Shocking that Teslas are burning.
You originally replied to someone who asked "How much fraud and abuse...", so they weren't tethered to only "fraud", they were talking about the generally alarming and wasteful spending of the public's money.
Prove it.
They keep saying “fraud” without proof of anything other than just spending they disagree with. Spending, I might add, which was previously duly authorized by Congress.
The use of the word “fraud” is a smoke screen. To unquestioningly accept it is to be complicit in their lies. And that’s what they’re doing: lying.
If there really is fraud, let’s see it prosecuted via due process, like it should be. The fact that that isn’t happening speaks volumes.
No one can "prove" anything without a clear goalpost that doesn't move :) That being said, there is evidence I can present from the past. Here are a couple of cases:
- https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/chemonics-internatio...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/usaid-suspends...
Also, not exactly "fraud" in the accounting sense, but there is a slew of NGOs that purport to support foreign aid, but most of the money is paid to people in DC. Only about $5B/yr actually went from USAID to directly meet needs in other countries: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/opinion/us-foreign-aid.ht...
If you don't see how problematic that is, then why not just avoid the discussion in the first place?
I am personally not calling for that. What I do want is for the flow of money to this network of DC-based NGOs to get cleaned up.
Have you ever heard of a grant "poem"? That's an inside term for the fancy language that is written when an NGO or university requests funding from a US federal agency. It has to sound quasi-legitimate, even erudite. But the purpose is to secure more money, and for NGOs, the actual funds are almost entirely used to enrich the people in the NGO, and often to fund things that keep the left in power (like local protests, far-left media, "grassroots" left-wing campaign organizations, etc). Grant poems to enrich NGOs constitute fraud -- maybe not in an accounting sense, but it very much is a defrauding of the citizens who pay taxes.
Also, DOGE has so far found 14 "magic money" computers located in various agencies, including the department of the treasury. When a particular API call comes in, these computers will transfer money from nothing, essentially creating new money out of thin air. That is the worst form of fraud.
> If you don't see how problematic that is, then why not just avoid the discussion in the first place?
Because the faithlessness of the federal bureaucracy and its network of NGOs, combined with its sheer magnitude and entrenched power, is a very real problem. I guess I'm not articulate enough to engage productively with folks like yourself who inexplicably seem to think it's really great...
Modern democratic governments ought to implement the will of the people, not subvert it to enrich themselves and stay in power. Do you disagree?
---
In summary, Trump will be gone in 4 years, Elon Musk is rapidly losing his money and influence. The wheel of fortune turns rapidly for elected officials and their administrations. But by default, these lifetime Washington DC residents (and their WEF allies) who exert enormous power over the populace will only be more rich and powerful with each passing election season. They hate the USA and those who love it, precisely because the freedoms and stipulations of the Constitution, and the hardy "free settlers of the frontier" ethos, threaten their power.
(I don't mean every, or even most of the residents of DC. I mean those who are the most personally enriched and who wield the most political power without being elected or appointed by someone who is elected. Most of these people are in the vast NGO network.)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/15/opinion/forei...
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-rubio-usaid-mu...
I think the Republican party nowadays is proof that most of them are chickenshit and care more about their job than doing the right thing.
Props those who made the hard choices. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_trial_of_...
On paper.
I'm all for audits, reducing waste, transparency, etc., not wanton firing and publicity stunts.
The idea of bringing in a bunch of "whiz kids" who know absolutely nothing about the departments they're auditing [1], axing people arbitrarily (i.e., firing seemingly everybody who is "probationary"), and cutting programs seemingly purely by Ctrl-F'ing for keywords without even bothering to figure out if the keyword even means what you're looking for in context is absolute clown shoes for good governance.
The fact that they're breaking all sorts of laws in the process makes it even worse; and to top it off, they can't even bring themselves to be honest to the courts about who is responsible for their actions.
No, DOGE is undeniably a rotten concept from inception to practice.
[1] Seemingly flummoxed by the existence of things like sentinel values in databases for "we don't know," based on some of the "fraud" they've very loudly proclaimed.
So you aren't actually opposed to waste or corruption? Since corruption in the purpose of getting rid of things you personally find wasteful is fine with you? You just want the big bad scary government to employ less people? But the ones the executive does employ should be able to do whatever they want, laws be damned?
Where do you REALLY think that ends?
Which is it? Are they copying DOGE or are they auditing things, because what DOGE is doing is not auditing. Auditing involves bringing in people who understand what they are looking at.
I'm actually a fan of that too. His issue is that he causes controversy where none is needed.
And you have this knowledge, how?
> (and personal fortune) into SpaceX for over a decade.
Using paypal money to chase government contract money.
> If it weren't for SpaceX we'd be relying on the incompetent monstrosities of Boeing or ULA.
That does not automatically follow. It's entirely possible that a company better than all of them might now exist if SpaceX didn't.
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX [1]
Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age [2]
[0] https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/
[1] https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger?v...
[2] https://benbellabooks.com/shop/reentry/
Also in that alternative timeline, I wonder what that would do to Americans psychologically. If China and Russia had already beat the US in space, the decline would be extremely obvious. To the rest of the world as well.
With SpaceX it could go on both sides just because the engineering for spacecraft designs and rockets is not really a solved problem unlike 95% of automobile design, but management could still be the biggest problem with SpaceX. Of course that is going to be hard to see or quantify without being part of SpaceX management.
If you want to see bad management in rocketry, look at SpaceX's competitors.
Only thing missing really is landing on land and crew offboarding just like that by themselves.
Under no circumstances will I agree that "Elon rescued" anyone or anything. The guy has a fetish to be seen as a rescuer. It's unseemly.
> SpaceX did awesome Job.
Fulfilling a contract they've executed several times before? slow clap
More than you can say for the Boeing launch that took the astronauts up last summer.
The ability to ramp up services on short notice is not flexibility traditional space companies offer. Ex, if NASA begged Boeing for an extra SLS launch this year, they simply could not do it.