Summary
Elon Musk accused former president Joe Biden of stranding NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the ISS “for political reasons,” prompting Danish astronaut Andreas “Andy” Mogensen to label the claim “a lie.”
“What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media,” wrote the 48-year-old European Space Agency astronaut.
Musk called Mogensen “fully removed” and claimed SpaceX could’ve rescued the astronauts months ago, without evidence.
NASA refuted Musk’s abandonment claim, calling it baseless.
They’re TECHNICALLY still up there for political/budget reasons. If they wanted to buy a new capsule to go get them, we could.
But on the same note, ALL of the astronauts are “stuck” up there for budget/political reasons. We’re not going to bring them up and down willy-nilly cause it’s way too expensive. They should have come back months ago, but since they’re original capsule was decided to be too risky, they pushed it back to the next available SpaceX capsule.
Elon is both arguing for an INCREASE in funding to go get them now (which is far too late, we wouldn’t be able to safely prep and send a mission to get them back sooner), but also DECREASE funding for the ISS. Just whatever gets him attention and more numbers in his Forbes ranking.