Posted on 02/23/2025 3:57:19 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
A public blame-game has erupted over who's responsible for leaving two NASA astronauts stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) for over eight months.
Last week, Elon Musk blamed NASA's choice to extend Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore's ISS mission on 'political reasons' during a FOX News joint interview with President Donald Trump, who added that Biden was going to 'leave them in space.'
Rudy Ridolfi, a respected former Space System Commander in the US military, told DailyMail.com that 'the Biden administration's vitriolic hate for Elon' may have influenced how NASA handled the situation.
Williams and Wilmore embarked on what was supposed to be an eight-day ISS mission aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft last June. But their capsule was plagued by thruster issues and helium leaks before, during and after the launch.
These numerous technical issues drove NASA to postpone the astronauts' return flight, but the agency still entertained the possibility of using Starliner to bring them home and gave Boeing more than 12 weeks to try and fix the issues from the ground.
In late August, NASA officials decided there was still too much uncertainty about Starliner's performance and tapped SpaceX to bring Williams and Wilmore home instead, sending Starliner home uncrewed the following month.
But 'Elon coming to the rescue was not in the cards,' Ridolfi said. He suggested the reason NASA did not tap SpaceX sooner may have been due to the Biden administration's contentious relationship with its CEO, Musk.
'The Biden Administration relying on SpaceX to return the astronauts would put its decisions on Starliner into question,' he said. 'In their world, Boeing was the leading space company.'
Since that August decision, Williams and Wilmore's return date has been changed multiple times. Currently, NASA is aiming to bring them home around March 19 or 20.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Interestingly enough, while I’m not quite a space nerd, I read a lot about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects. They show what government can accomplish when it actually truly wants to do something.
Anyway, I read with some interest that Starliner has problems with the thrusters.
Specifically, overheating. Teflon seals start to swell, and form an obstruction. Testing on the ground doesn’t really work, it has to be done in a vacuum chamber. Something about the fault triggered my memory.
NASA has an Oral History Project - where they interview Astronauts, Engineers, Flight controllers, everybody involved. One interview was with a guy from Marquardt, who had the contract for the thrusters in the early 1960s. They had a lot of problems with them. You’ll never guess what it was!
Overheating, teflon seals swelling, and causing obstruction in the flow.
To me it just shows how shortsighted our politicians were in killing the space program. They allocated and spent the money 60 years ago, taking a “clearly leading role” - and threw it all away. Here we are - Starliner is 7 years behind schedule, it’s possible it won’t fly again! And what is their current goal? Well 7 years ago, they were supposed to go into orbit around the Moon.
Something America already did, in 1968
If the return can be sabotaged to make Musk look bad, I believe it will. I think these two are in grave danger. Something smells like a NASA fart festival.
Think of the space station as a womb the dems would yank those folks out and let them die
Let’s hope and pray not.
If they weren’t before, they might be now.
Unknown.
IS THAT WHY BILL NELSON RESIGNED???
Hmm. 🤔🧐
You should post that on X.
GOOD CATCH
Collapse of civilization is characterized by failure to pass institutional knowledge down to younger generations. It is most often caused by purges or lapses of progress.
This is very unexceptable. Sean Jeffrey Christopher should have flown by Saturm 6 years ago.
There is only one reason they haven’t come back.
So the news can paint this as a Trump failure every single day they are up there.
Blue origin doesn’t have the capability as far as I know
How can Boeing be having the same problem as they had 60 years earlier? I’m going to assume that somehow they fix that problem and it didn’t get handed down to Boeing. That almost begs the question do they have any real engine engineers left that know what the hell they’re doing? And those engineers 60 years ago, we’re doing it always slide rules. No computers or calculators.
Except Elon had already ‘rescued’ the astronauts months ago.
For some reason, they elected NOT to bring back the astronauts on that trip.
Rescue trip was launched September 28, 2024 ! BBC reported the docking on Sept 30.
Love the Galaxy Quest quote. My fav: “And it exploded!”
Hi Bob. This happened on For All Mankind and the astronauts had only one tape of old Bob Newhart episodes and they entertained themselves by repeating the episode they had memorized and greeted one another with Hi Bob. I’d think being out there so long would wear on your psyche. I can hardly imagine.
Can you imagine how advanced our space program would be in 2025 if they had not thrown it all away? They are trying to recreate ‘68, apparently without much success. I figure tourist flights, at least around the Moon would have been routine a long time ago.
Back in 1968 when I saw 2001 I actually thought we would be there by then, of course I was about 12 or 13 when I saw that movie.
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