Stranded? Rescued? How about grateful and truthful?

Butch and Suni got 2 rides for one ticket, but politics got in the way.

The International Space Station has been continuously crewed for 9,131 days, since November 2, 2000. Starliner pilot Suni Williams, who just left that platform—her third visit as a crew member—became an astronaut two years prior to that date. Butch Wilmore, the Starliner commander, became an astronaut the same year the ISS was crewed. Before this stint, he had been to the ISS twice, but only once as part of its crew. Between them, Williams and Wilmore have 1,053 days aboard the space station.

The International Space Station is featured in this image photographed by an STS-134 crew member on the space shuttle Endeavour after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking relative separation. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 11:55 p.m. (EDT) on May 29, 2011. Endeavour spent 11 days, 17 hours and 41 minutes attached to the orbiting laboratory. Image source: NASA

SpaceX has sent 9 crewed missions to the ISS, aboard its Crew Dragon capsule. Boeing’s Starliner was given the green light for a crewed flight test after the OFT-2 uncrewed test mission in May, 2022. The spacecraft exhibited some minor thruster issues on that flight, but Boeing felt it could address the problems, and NASA went forward with the CFT mission on June 5, 2024. That mission did not go well; the same thruster issues were present, and Boeing could not successfully persuade NASA that the capsule was safe for a crewed return.

That’s the facts. Now, there might be politics involved, since Boeing has become a government appendage instead of an aerospace engineering company over the past decade. For 85 years, since 1916, Boeing had its headquarters in Seattle, where it designed and built aircraft. In 2001, the company moved its headquarters to Chicago, because they wanted some distance from the pocket-protector crew. It remained there for 21 years, while its quality programs and reputation suffered. In 2022, Boeing moved to be next door to its biggest customer—the federal government—nestled in Arlington, Virginia.

It’s certainly embarrassing for a company that’s been through the wringer with the 737-MAX and other aircraft failures, to have its bloated, over-budget, behind-schedule Starliner fail in its first crewed mission. A successful launch and docking with the ISS is only a partial success if the astronauts don’t get to come home. And they didn’t get to come home.

Is that stranded?

Arguably, yes. The two astronauts’ ride home was Starliner. If that was not available—and it was not—then their options to come home in an emergency were limited and uncertain. They did not have a reliable way to get home, unless a reliable ride was docked. And the Crew Dragon and Soyuz are the only reliable craft. I am certain that NASA engineers would come up with some way to get the astronauts home. But would that be safe? Compared to NASA’s standards for risk, no, not really.

So NASA went with the safest route, this not being deemed an emergency. In an emergency, the risk of staying aboard the ISS would have to be weighed against the risk of returning aboard Starliner, with its issues, or returning some other way (tucked in a rigged Crew Dragon, perhaps). (There’s no real way to add crew to a Soyuz.) Or maybe an emergency rescue mission would be necessary. Asking the Russians to launch an emergency mission with a Soyuz was off the table, as the Biden administration was not talking to Russia in friendly terms.

Is that abandoned?

No. Not in any sense that can be argued. The ISS was completely capable of supporting Williams and Wilmore for as long as they were able to stay aboard. And both of them had extensive experience living on the ISS. Both of them were crew members of the Space Shuttle; Williams was a mission specialist on STS-116 aboard Discovery, and Wilmore was pilot on STS-129 aboard Atlantis. The shuttle was factually more risky than either Crew Dragon, Soyuz, or even Starliner. My point is that both these experienced astronauts were familiar with risk. They were not so comfortable with national politics, however.

So when President Donald Trump and Elon Musk claimed that the astronauts were stranded or abandoned, that was political grandstanding. The stranded part could have been solved by sending a reliable craft to retrieve them. But that was not an emergency, so NASA was not in any hurry to do it. They just shuffled the crew around and let these two stay aboard the ISS.

When NASA hurries, it creates risk. We know this from two shuttle missions that ended in tragedy. We know it from Apollo 1. But let’s consider: Could NASA have used SpaceX to get the astronauts home faster?

Yes. They could have. And in fact, they did. They did that for political reasons. SpaceX had wanted to launch a new version of the Crew Dragon in this latest launch, but the capsule encountered some battery problems. SpaceX wanted to solve those, but it would have pushed the launch into April. NASA would have been fine with that, from what I understand. But the president’s statements pressured NASA and SpaceX to abandon plans to use the new capsule, and to swap out one that had flown before.

So politics was involved, at least during Trump’s administration. Was politics involved during the Biden administration? It’s unclear. Certainly, Boeing exerted maximum pressure to salvage its Starliner program. That didn’t work, because NASA was not buying Boeing’s engineering excuses. There was no emergency, and NASA accepted some risk that if there were, they’d be able to figure out a way to protect the astronauts and get them home, rather than expose them to potential risks on the Starliner.

And the Starliner did have some thruster issues and software glitches on its empty return to earth, NASA found. It landed safely, but that was hardly guaranteed on the first crewed test, after the uncrewed test also had similar problems. Since August, the astronauts safest place was aboard the ISS, as part of the crew. Astronaut safety is the primary mission of NASA in this situation. If the ISS wasn’t the safest place, then perhaps SpaceX could have gotten a ship up there faster, and that would have had a cost associated with it.

If there was any politics involved in the Biden administration’s handling of this situation, it’s likely on Boeing’s side. Boeing didn’t want to look worse that it already did, and therefore NASA put off announcing its plan to bring the astronauts home on the return ride for SpaceX Crew-9. It put off that announcement way beyond the nominal 45 day lifespan of the Starliner capsule used for the Crewed Flight Test (CFT) mission. NASA and Boeing extended the duration to 90 days, deciding that battery life could be stretched. Starliner stayed docked to the ISS for 92 days, which was the absolute limit of its endurance, before returning empty.

It’s possible that the decision to stretch Starliner’s stay and allow Boeing to collect data and try some things to get the thruster issues solved had some politics involved. NASA could easily have announced its crew shuffle plan before August. They kept the space press on a string for two months while Musk had already said he could bring the astronauts home. And yes, SpaceX could have, if NASA decided to go that route. But why would NASA do it unless there was an emergency?

The “emergency” was a political invention of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, because Trump was then running for president. Once Trump won, there was no real rush and no real emergency. SpaceX itself created delays in getting the astronauts home, but NASA wasn’t concerned about that, at least until Trump and Musk started pushing things.

Now, Wilmore and Williams are safely on their way home, scheduled to splash down in the SpaceX Crew Dragon this afternoon. Instead of complaining about how there might have been politics involved in the Biden administration, perhaps we should, including Trump and Musk, be grateful that NASA did its best to put astronaut safety first.

We should be grateful that the U.S. and Russia have been able to keep the ISS running and continuously crewed for nearly 25 years. We should be grateful that there is a human presence in space, and that includes American astronauts. De-orbiting the ISS will be a sad day because that will end our permanent space mission, and leave only Chinese astronauts continually in orbit.

We should be grateful that there have been no fatalities aboard the ISS. Its operational history, from a safety perspective, is as perfect as any risky venture operating outside our atmosphere could ever be.

We should be grateful that NASA tries very hard to avoid politics (except when asking Congress for money). We should do our best to avoid administrative or commercial capture of NASA by any company, whether it be Boeing, or, more concerning, SpaceX.

And when astronauts Williams and Wilmore touch grass for the first time since June, 2024, we should be grateful that they are home safe (this is written beforehand, and I want to assume this will all go well). We should remember the 14 astronauts and crew members who did not return safely: Scobee, Smith, McNair, Onizuka, Resnik, Jarvis, McAuliffe, Husband, McCool, Anderson, Ramon (Israeli), Chawla, Brown, and Clark.

No American has ever been stranded or abandoned in space. It’s disgusting to suggest we ever would.

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