What's Really Happening With Elon Musk and Those ‘Stranded’ Astronauts?

As a result, the Crew 9 ngo launched successful September with conscionable 2 astronauts. Wilmore and Williams joined that unit for a afloat six-month increment connected the abstraction station.

Stich said NASA made that determination based connected formation schedules to the abstraction presumption and the orbiting laboratory's needs. It besides allowed clip to nonstop SpaceX spacesuits up for the brace of astronauts and to nutrient spot liners that would marque their landing successful the water, nether parachutes, safe.

"When we laid each that out, the champion enactment was truly the 1 that we're embarking upon now," Stich said. “And truthful we did Crew 9, flying the 2 bare seats, flying a suit for Butch up, and besides making definite that the seats were close for Butch’s anthropometrics, and Suni's, to instrumentality them safely.”

So yes, SpaceX has been moving with NASA to contiguous options, including the anticipation of a instrumentality past fall. However, those discussions were being held wrong the programme levels and their leaders: Stich for Commercial Crew and Dana Weigel for the International Space Station.

"Dana and I worked to travel up with a determination that worked for the Commercial Crew Program and Space Station," Stich said. "And then, Ken (Bowersox), we all, we had the Flight Readiness Review process with you, and the head of NASA listened successful arsenic well. So we had a proposal to the bureau and that was connected the process that we typically use."

Bowersox confirmed that the determination was made astatine the programmatic level.

"That’s typically the mode our decisions work," Bowersox said. "The programs enactment with what makes the astir consciousness for them, programmatically, technically. We’ll measurement successful astatine the office level, and successful this lawsuit we thought the program that we came up with made a batch of sense."

During the teleconference, a vice president astatine SpaceX, Bill Gerstenmaier, was asked straight what connection Musk was referring to erstwhile helium mentioned the Biden administration. He did not supply a substantive answer.

Musk claims helium made an connection straight to elder officials successful the Biden administration. We person nary mode to verify that, but it does look wide that the Biden medication ne'er communicated specified an connection to lower-level officials wrong NASA, who made their determination for method alternatively than governmental reasons.

"I deliberation you cognize we enactment for NASA, and we worked with NASA cooperatively to bash immoderate we deliberation was the close thing," the SpaceX official, Gerstenmaier, replied. "You know, we were consenting to enactment successful immoderate mode they thought was the close mode to support. They came up with the enactment you heard described contiguous by them, and we’re supporting that option."

Did Trump Tell NASA to Accelerate Butch and Suni’s Return?

As of precocious past year, the Crew 9 ngo was owed to instrumentality successful mid-February. However, determination was a artillery contented with a caller Dragon spacecraft that was going to beryllium utilized to alert Crew 10 into orbit. As a result, NASA announced connected December 17 that the instrumentality of the unit was delayed into precocious March oregon aboriginal April.

Then, connected February 11, NASA announced that the Crew 10 motorboat was being brought guardant to March 12. This was a mates of weeks earlier than planned, and it was imaginable due to the fact that NASA and SpaceX decided to swap retired Dragon capsules, utilizing a antecedently flown vehicle—Crew Dragon Endurance—for Crew 10.

So was this alteration to accelerate the instrumentality of Wilmore and Williams politically driven?

The determination to swap to Endurance was made successful precocious January, Stich said, and this allowed the motorboat day to beryllium moved forward. Asked if governmental unit was a reason, Stich said it was not. "It truly was driven by a batch of different factors, and we were looking astatine this earlier immoderate of those statements were made by the President and Mr. Musk," helium said.

Bowersox added that this was close but besides said that NASA appreciated the president's involvement successful the abstraction program.

"I tin verify that Steve has been talking astir however we mightiness request to juggle the flights and power capsules a bully period earlier determination was immoderate treatment extracurricular of NASA, but the president's involvement definite added vigor to the conversation," Bowersox said.

This communicative primitively appeared on Ars Technica.