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 retarded” and claimed SpaceX could’ve rescued the astronauts months ago, without evidence.
NASA refuted Musk’s abandonment claim, calling it baseless.
Jesus, Mogensen has balls the size of moons. (that’s no moon)
The stranded people are still on the ISS, waiting for SpaceX to get around to it. Pissing in Mush’s fragile Wheaties is a dangerous proposition. He could say ehhh, canceling this attempt and wait for an apology.
Come to think of it, with them dismantling the government; I think the last place I’d want to be is on the ISS, relying on the government to get me back down.
Danish astronaut responds to Musk
claimlie that Biden abandoned ISS pair on purposeWhy do we have to keep doing the media’s work for them?
On top of everything else, the fact that he called someone, anyone, “fully retarded” publicly and in writing blows me away. It’s literally a grade school level insult, and cringey as fuck coming from an adult.
Who reads a tweet like that and comes away thinking anything other than “holy shit, what a sad manchild”?
“Nigh is the time of Madness and Distain” - The Witcher 3
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.
Btw there have been massive cuts to many NASA programs across the board (especially in outreach/education lol). Artemis/Moon to Mars will probably die or be significantly changed because it’s “DEI.”
Bridenstone was Trump’s first appointment to the office, and was focused on giving private companies access to space - this is why this Starliner debacle happened in the first place.
NASA is dying because the oligarchs see space as a resource to be exploited and do not understand the purpose of scientific exploration, beyond what they can funnel into their own wallets.
Looks like Elon really does want to bring them home quickly:
Im trying to figure out the angle on that one. I suppose he thinks if its deorbited during Trumps term, he can corrupt his way to extremely lucritive contracts building a new one that he can charge rent for. At the very least lucritive contracts to send all the parts for a new one to space.
By 2030 he’ll be in exile somewhere evading prison, so it has to happen ASAP.
The ISS is also a symbol I think. The “International” Space Station. Think about how Soviet and American’s worked together on Skylab, and how that inspired the creation of what is truly a marvel and testament to humanity. Space has a been a place for the future and hope - it doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from, what matters is the spirit of exploration and desire to better understand the universe.
Elon wants his name on a Mars mission above everything else. He wants history to talk about how he got us there, and imagines a future where planetary exploration allows his progeny to be lords of entire planets. Safety doesn’t matter, and we’ll probably end up with the first Americans to die in space in the next few years. (Will the US space program become as secret as the Soviet era one?)
Probably wants to shift the funds to a moon mission and then award himself contracts from that budget to fund Starship. ISS is less useful for him now since he’s already used contracts for supplying to develop F9, and contracts for crew missions to develop crew Dragon.
He’s pretty transparent in his conflict of interest. He wants a SpaceX contract for a Mars mission. In the same tweet he said the ISS needs to be deorbited, he also said “let’s go to Mars instead!” This is him trying to make that happen. In a better world, this kind of blatant cronyism would be immediately punished.
Wasn’t this technically Boeing’s fault for those astronauts being up there for so long in the first place?
Musk called Mogensen “fully retarded” and claimed SpaceX could’ve rescued the astronauts months ago, without evidence.
Ohh just like how he rescued the boys stuck in cave before the actual rescuer did.
You know, I kinda can’t wait for shit to start going wrong on their watch.
Unfortunately, the more bad, the more quickly, the better.
Unfortunately we’re currently looking at their way of handling stuff that gone wrong, melon husk just have to say stupid stuff and start some stupid fight and people from both side will just focus on that.
We need it to be far enough out they can’t just blame the prior administration.
like a bunch of plane crashes?
A) there hasn’t really been much of an uptick there overall B) it’d have to be wayyy more wrong than that to have an impact on the direction of things.
Is this why the dems are standing aside?
Yeah, the Dems should just be impeaching him with their minority in the House and their Minority in the Senate.
They could be organising huge nationwide protests or storming the capitol like he did. They could be telling the truth like AOC and Bernie
So… They can do nothing of consequence.
Don’t forget they were already accused of being the boy that cried wolf before the election.
Lets be honest, thats not nothing of consequence. Thats rounding the wagons up and energizing the base.
There are three special elections coming up that could take away the GOP majority. They need to do things with high optics that show strength; things that energize the base. Saying “we cant do anything” regsrdless of the truth in it LOOKS WEAK. Thats not a way to show leadership.
Thats rounding the wagons up and energizing the base.
Soooo… Nothing of consequence. Quite literally nothing of consequence. Like what did all those BLM protests do? Did it rally the voters? NOPE.
And as much as a hate this phrase, they have to pick their battles. No one cares about USAID (oh wait this is lemmy who misreads. It is important, but at a voting level population that wins elections, far far far too few people care). At this point, pretty much the only people that care about the layoffs are the people laid off (again, talking about voting level population). They won’t care until their social security stops coming, or their special needs kid gets defunded. That’s how people operate. Dems have to pick a few items and really highlight them. If they pick everything, then nothing comes across.
Actually there was a response Andy wrote, but it is not in the summary, shows how blatant lie that is:
“Elon, I have long admired you and what you have accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla,” Mogensen replied to Musk’s missive.
“You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”
I kind of assume that this sort of thing is to soak up media bandwidth while the mass federal layoffs are happening.
Yup. Must have talked to Boris Johnson. Seems to have imported some of BJ’s wardrobe, as well.
Why would Biden try to make old space look space bad?
That’s the most mental gymnastic idea I’ve seen in months.
I don’t even see the mental gymnastics. It’s just a stupid lie a stupid liar told.
Another rescue operation that he can’t take credit for, so he gets mad and starts throwing accusations around.
Elon is a massive piece of shit.
Concerning…
Looking into my own lie…
Worst case Ontario: ISS has a problem and everyone needs to come home. Who, besides the united states or russia can feasibly get them home?
Edit: why am I getting downvoted? Is it my Rickyism joke?
The ISS has enough spacecraft docked to take everyone home at a moments notice, always. Nobody needs to launch anything.
They broke that rule briefly when the Boeing capsule was deemed unfit for use, but they quickly fixed that.
Even without the Boeing capsule they could have all gotten home in an emergency. It wouldn’t have been pleasant (I think the plan was to basically strap the people without seats to a padded bulkhead), but it’d be better than the alternative.
Worst case Ontario would be Doug Ford getting another term next week.
You’re getting downvoted for your hubris. You really think that, before you, nobody had thought about an emergency escape plan for the fucking space station?
It was a legit question. Excuse me!
Just keep this experience in mind next time you doubt, for example, generally accepted practices in public health policy.
