Generally, most of the general public doesn’t seem to pay all that much attention to the crew rotations that happen on the International Space Station (ISS). The space station got its first long-term crew of three in 2000, and has remained continuously occupied for over 24 years since then, right up until the present day, where the station normally houses a crew of seven. This current crew that is returning now and is scheduled to splash down this evening may be the crew that has gotten the most attention in years, largely thanks to a malfunctioning spacecraft and far too much politics.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were the test astronauts for Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft, a new capsule that can potentially carry up to seven and was designed to be another option for getting crew from Earth to the space station and back, along with the four-crew SpaceX Dragon and the tried-and-true Russian three-seat Soyuz spacecraft, which has been in production in various forms since 1967.
Of course, everyone is paying attention to Wilmore and Williams because that Boeing spacecraft rather publicly and hopefully metaphorically shit the bed, when it was found to have some persistent helium leaks in its reaction control system. NASA and Boeing studied the problem, and eventually decided to play it safe and have the craft return to Earth uncrewed, where the issue could then be studied, minimizing risk to the astronauts.
And this is the point where everything seemed to go off the rails, since Williams and Wilmore’s expected eight-to-ten-day trip to the ISS would need to be extended because their original ride home was now gone. This is the point where the “stranded” narrative began, and where everything started to become wildly and absurdly politicized.
For example, back in January, President Trump posted this on his own Twitter-ish platform Truth Social:
“I have just asked Elon Musk and SpaceX to “go get” the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration. Good luck Elon!!!”
The suggestion that the astronauts needed to be rescued or “go gotten” or had been “virtually abandoned” is just untrue, and this isn’t even a question of opinion or point of view, it’s provable. It is policy on the ISS that all the astronauts must have a way to return to Earth at any moment, which is accomplished by keeping the vehicles that brought the crews to the station docked and ready to go in case of an emergency.
When Wilmore and Williams arrived on the ISS in the Starliner capsule, there were already two other craft docked to the station: a Soyuz and a SpaceX Dragon. In a severe emergency, they could have returned in the Dragon with the other four astronauts that craft arrived in, but as the Dragon was only configured for four, some significant improvisation would have been required, and NASA could have decided to send another craft, depending on the nature of the emergency.
By September, though, a new Dragon was launched to the station with a crew of two, leaving two seats free for Wilmore and Williams, who were already integrated into the station’s Expedition 72 crew, with Suni Williams acting as commander. So, even if we concede that between June and September, the two astronauts may have had a less-than-ideal escape plan, absolutely since September, with the docking of their Dragon capsule with the open seats, they have in no way been “stranded,” by any definition.
This also means that in January, when Trump asked Elon Musk to “go get” the two astronauts, the spacecraft that could “rescue” those two astronauts had already been docked to the ISS for about five months. It’s all just politics and theater.
As far as if the astronauts themselves feel stranded, it’s probably best to hear what they have to say about it all:
Cooper: There are some who have suggested here, President Trump, that that you were virtually abandoned by the last administration. Do you feel you've been abandoned? pic.twitter.com/3zCVNEjJrH
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 14, 2025
In case you don’t want to watch the video, here’s what Butch Wilmore said:
“We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck, we don’t feel stranded. We come prepared. We come committed. That is what your human space flight program is. It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those …that’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck – and I get it, we both get it. Help us change the narrative, let’s change it to: prepared and committed despite what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”
That’s some real astronaut talk right there! The whole raison d’etre of an astronaut is to go to space, and that’s just what Wilmore and Williams did. Sure, they didn’t initially plan on this long a stay, but they took to their new roles as members of the ISS crew with aplomb, because that’s what they do. They’re astronauts.
NASA could have brought them home pretty easily at any point since September; but doing so would have left only three people on the ISS, leaving it quite understaffed, and it would have been expensive. Each seat on a SpaceX Dragon costs NASA about $55 million dollars – and that’s a great deal, considering all the other options. So if NASA had decided to bring them back as soon as possible and then launched a new Dragon to replace their capsule, we’re looking at $110 million, minimum.
So, $110 million versus just having the astronauts do their tour on the ISS at a time they didn’t originally plan for, and two other astronauts having their tour on the station rescheduled. I feel for the astronauts who have to wait, but $110 million is $110 million, and you’d think an administration as obsessed with efficiency as this one claims to be would respect that savings.
This wasn’t a political decision made by the Biden Administration or anything like that. This was a reasonable, well-considered choice made to deal with an unfortunate situation in the best way possible, and I think they did.
And I’m not even going to get into how Elon Musk has handled all of this. If you want to roll your eyes in disappointment, feel free to read this thread:
You are fully retarded.
SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago.
I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused.
Return WAS pushed back for political reasons.
Idiot.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025
Ugh. The person Elon just called the r-word is Andreas Mogensen, the ISS commander. This isn’t some internet rando, it’s someone actually up there, in space, who absolutely knows what they’re talking about. And while SpaceX perhaps could have brought them back months ago, sure, NASA decided not to, for the reasons we discussed above, all very valid reasons. Not political ones. The only one politicizing this is Elon himself.
So, as we welcome these astronauts back home to Earth in a couple of hours, I think it’s worth remembering that this isn’t a rescue mission, and suggesting that it is demeans the good work and remarkable resiliency and training these astronauts demonstrated. Besides, Williams and Wilmore coming home on a Dragon allows them both to tie a longstanding record for the most different types of spacecraft an astronaut has traveled on.
The old record was held by John Young, who flew on four different classes of spacecraft: a Gemini capsule, an Apollo Command Module, an Apollo Lander, and the Space Shuttle. Williams and Wilmore will tie this, with both having traveled on a Soyuz capsule and the Space Shuttle to the ISS for previous missions, then the ill-fated Boeing Starliner that took them to the ISS, and now will be returning on a SpaceX Dragon!
I think getting a record like that is a pretty cool capstone, and we should be talking more about that than rehashing an inane “stranded” narrative.
I don’t blame Biden at all, but sounds like they were stranded to me. It was planned to be a 8-10 day trip but their ride home wasn’t reliable. I’m glad there were contingency plans, but turning an 8-10 day trip into 9 months sounds like they were stranded to me. 9 months in space will affect their health far more than 10 days would.
Claustrophobia aside, the only thing I have really wondered about during this whole “ordeal” is how they are paid.
If it’s just a straight salary (which I kinda doubt), then it would have only been a matter of a logistical nightmare to reschedule all sorts of life things we all deal with.
IF they are paid hourly…they have to be rich as shit right about now, lol.
As most astronauts are military pilots, I am sure they are salary based and there’s some extra incentive for time in space. So they likely got paid a decent amount of extra for the time up there, it’s not going to be an insane increase.
Torch is the man. I wish more facts and common sense would find its way to the internet and reporting.
If there is a multiverse we are certainly living in the dumbest reality.
Certainly have wandered down the wrong trouser leg of time.
Then refused to admit or accept that it was the wrong leg, doubled down by just wearing them backwards, proclaimed it to be there history of pants and called everyone that pointed out our pants were on backwards idiots
Proclaimed it to be the greatest innovation in the history of pants I meant to say.
I was very disappointed in Musk and Trump’s comments regarding this.
That said, NASA should stop throwing money at Boeing. $30 billion and counting for SLS, and it’s massively delayed and already obsolete.
The government in general should stop throwing money at Boeing until they get their act together, just a massively incompetent company all around, it’s as if they’re being run by a zombie Roger Smith. Actually, they might even be beyond 1980s GM in dysfunction
At least Starliner was a fixed price contract, so NASA isn’t having to continue to pay for Boeing’s fuckups.
That said, when the contracts were originally handed out, SpaceX got $2.6B while Boeing got $4.2B, and of course so far SpaceX have managed ten (non-demo) flights, to Boeing’s zero, so it’s still been a bad deal for NASA, just not as bad as SLS.
NASA did agree to a contract modification in 2016 to compensate Boeing an additional $287 million over the original cost, to provide partial compensation for some of the delays and overruns, and also agreed to 6 mandatory crewed launches, instead of the original deal of 4 mandatory + 2 options, so that does potentially bring Boeing’s compensation to $863 million above what it otherwise would have been, if NASA had stuck to the original agreement as signed. Boeing is still out the most on it, but NASA has handed them more cash than they were really contractually obligated to. Boeing also got the lion’s share of the development funds in the first place as a means of appeasing a faction within NASA who wanted to dump SpaceX and use Boeing as the sole vendor. Gerstenmaier kept SpaceX in the mix, but compromised by giving them a much smaller portion of the budget
Any time someone mentions how long the ISS has been operating, it blows my mind. We’ve had 24 YEARS of people continuously zipping around above our heads, living in space! Every single damn day! When the ISS gets decommissioned, I know we won’t be losing a lot of practical benefits, but I’ll be bummed to think we’ve ended our quarter century-plus streak of humans living off planet.
There are more important implications of this unexpected 8 month mission that we need to discuss.
Let’s say someone on the mission has irritable bowel syndrome. At what point should the rest of the crew be legally covered if they decide to shoot me- I mean that astronaut into space?
I was happy and relieved, watching them safely splash down off the coast of Florida four hours ago or so.
I can’t imagine how weird it is going to be re-adjusting to gravity. And how happy their families will be to see them again.
Big black eye for Boeing (along with a few others in the last year or two).
But, yeah… the politization around this and pretty much everything else is bonkers.
Yeah but John Young walked on the moon.
…drove on the Moon. And was commander of the first Space Shuttle.
yep, John Young also ran the astronaut office during the shuttle’s early days, true hero! His autobio is a great read if anyone is into these things.
The way this has been sensationalized and misreported has been ridiculous.
Well said!
I can’t imagine that those two, being astronauts, were not actually tickled pink to get to spend all this extra time in orbit.
I am so sick of all the political theatre bullshit. Can we get a one-way ticket to Mars for Musk and his VP Trump? I will gladly triple my tax burden to make that happen. Better yet, how about a Russian-style launch pad explosion with both in close attendance? Much cheaper and more exciting to watch!
If we are lucky the shithead’s rocket will explode on lift off and end this shit show once and for all.
I keep hoping. Musk has outlived his usefulness to civilization. So has Trump, not that he ever had any really.
I misread your first comment.
My bad.
And screwed up my reply.
I have never seen two bigger douche bros.
Both of these walking talking rectal sore need to be removed asap.
Right on, Brother.
Are you telling me, for the low, low price of 55 million dollars we can send a certain person to ISS. Then maybe not exactly rush the return mission. And thus we could all take a much needed break from this person, and this person from the internet? That’s like one quarter for every American!
I have a couple of quarters in my pocket. Take my change and send them both.
Knocker: Knock, knock.
JT: Who’s there?
Knocker: DOGE.
JT: DOGE who?
Knocker: DOGE you write about Elon Musk anymore.
Silence.
Knocker: Mr. Torchinsky. . . ?
Whine of a Changli receding down the street.
“…That’s what they do. They’re astronauts.”
That’s so goddam cool it makes me shiver. Whatever crap humanity is putting us through these days, it’s an awesome world where Astronaut is a job and a calling and they just go out and kick ass and be quietly capable.
I just wish they’d lower the bar to entry low enough I can get over it. How educated to I really need to be to ride a rocket and do what I’m told once I’m there?
Hold out for one of NASA’s occasional “everyman” publicity stunts. Better get yourself an inanimate carbon rod so you’ll be ready!
Sign me up!
I’m not going to get too far into it, but they were coming back on a dragon mission well before Biden left office, I can assure you. Claiming they were stranded and being rescued is political theater.
Agreed it was just the astronauts being asked to put in a little OT. OKAY a lot of OT but considering even now how rare it is to be chosen to go into space I bet the team was psyched. Although I still don’t understand why people are so into the Kardashians but against DT and EM. They basically the same but Kardashians have a better spray tan.
I will stay away from the political implications (about which you and I most likely disagree) and only state that if Donald Trump or Elon Musk (or, worse, both) released a photo of themselves with their bare buttocks in the wind, it would not just break the Internet but the will to live of everyone who saw it.
His head is full of ketamine soup and the former contents of now-dead and exploded neurons.
I remember when relishing in Boeing’s repeated failures was a societal pastime… now it seems like we’d all prefer Boeing… Or at least root for a space company with a less megalomaniacal CEO.
Let’s be honest if you are willing to risk as much as is necessary to create your own space force you have to be a megalomaniac. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the ISS. Anyone remember that made for TV movie then tv show where Andy Griffith played a rich salvage guy who built his own rocket ship from salvage then blasts off into space?
Was that before or after Billy Bob Thornton’s run as The Astronaut Farmer? I don’t remember it at all, but it sounds like a trip.
I have a buddy who works on engines for SpaceX. The bar convos are pretty fun. And because we’re at a bar, we don’t get political. Just nerdy.
Depending on where yall are at, I probably know them. It’s been frosty for the last few months. Used to talk politics all the time, but that’s really drawn down.
Jeez… I wrote SpaceX. He works for arch-rival Blue Origin. (Kent, Washington) Brain fart. Sorry.
Anyway, we mostly talk about F1 and the cool machinery he uses to make parts. Industrial 3-D printers, exotic compounds… that sort of thing.
No worries, most of us in the industry don’t look negatively at other companies. Super cool to see the work others are doing and I have more than a few old coworkers at blue.
Yeah. He doesn’t slag on SpaceX either. He was pretty pumped seeing the Starship booster get caught by the scissors.
That was super cool! Reminded me of sitting in my living room watching the first successful falcon landing in 2015. It’s crazy to see how far the engineers and techs and all the different supporting groups have taken that program since then.
Very well stated Jason. The ISS program and support teams seem to be the last refuge of reason.
Slash Down! All good!
What say we just send him up there alone?
Before anyone gets offended, Musk was just using the “r” word as a generic insult, like if you call someone a pedophile
Or a Nazi or Hitler!
“Just?” Pretty offensive these days. And I think calling someone who’s not actually a child molester a “pedophile” is slanderous, at the very least. And dangerous in some places. Let’s all take it down a couple of notches.
Yet, as I think a bit more about it, it’s still okay to call someone a moron, imbecile or idiot. Those all used to be psychological labels. Probably be best to try to not be insulting.