Elon Musk suggested the two U.S. astronauts who have been on the International Space Station since June last year—due to safety issues with their return vessel, the Boeing Starliner—were left stranded there for “political reasons,” reiterating a claim originally made by President Donald Trump that the astronauts themselves recently denied.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reiterated unproven claims that the two astronauts were left stranded ... [+]
Musk appeared alongside Trump in a Fox News interview hosted by Sean Hannity on Tuesday and asked about the planned “rescue” of the two astronauts, who the Fox News anchor claimed were “abandoned” by the previous administration.
The billionaire SpaceX CEO said his company was “accelerating the return of the astronauts” as per Trump’s instructions.
Musk then appeared to take a shot at the Biden administration, saying the move was “postponed kind of to a ridiculous degree,” before the president chimed in saying “they got left in space.”
When Hannity pointed out the astronauts have been on the ISS for almost 300 days instead of the planned 8 days, Trump simply said “Biden,” before Musk claimed they were “left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”
Musk added he doesn’t want to be complacent, but his company has “brought astronauts back from the space station many times before, and always with success.”
Musk said the astronauts would return in about four weeks and he now had the “go-ahead” to bring them back because of Trump.
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After Musk’s comments, Trump claimed without evidence that “They didn’t have the go-ahead with Biden. He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space…He didn’t want the publicity. Can you believe it?” In a post on Truth Social late last month, Trump wrote he had asked Musk and SpaceX “to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.”
The two astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper last week. When asked about Trump’s comments, Wilmore said, “We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed.” In an earlier interview with CBS, Williams was also asked about Trump’s claims and said: “I don’t think those words are quite accurate…We are part of something bigger than ourselves, we are part of the International Space Station. So no, we don’t feel abandoned, we feel like we are part of the team and that’s a huge honor.”