Butch and Suni from space
“We came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short.”
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, pilot and commander of Starliner’s Crew Flight Test, pose with the spacecraft they will ride into orbit Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut are due to return home on a Crew Dragon spacecraft in a couple of weeks. For two of the crew members, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, it has been a long, strange trip.
To recap:
- Wilmore and Williams launch on the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, 2024
- During Starliner’s flight to the International Space Station, the vehicle has thruster issues and helium leaks
- In August, NASA announces Starliner will return to Earth uncrewed due to unresolved technical issues
- Crew 9 mission launches with just two astronauts, NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Aleksandr Gorbunov, in late September
- Wilmore and Williams join Crew 9, extending their flight from eight days to more than eight months
- After SpaceX experiences a development issue with a Crew Dragon, Crew 9’s return is delayed a month more, to March
- In February 2025, Elon Musk and Donald Trump politicize Wilmore and Williams’ long-duration stay
- When a European astronaut calls Musk out for his “lie” about this, Musk replies, “You are fully retarded.”
- Musk recommends space station be deorbited as soon as 2027, three years ahead of schedule.
On Tuesday Wilmore, Williams, and Hague participated from orbit in a news conference with reporters. What is notable about the news conference is that it marks the first time any NASA official—a handful of previously scheduled media availabilities have been canceled—has been on the record with media since the politicization of Crew 9’s return and Musk’s call to deorbit the space station early.
What follows are responses to some key questions during the press conference. The answers have been lightly edited for clarity. Unfortunately, the answers themselves did not provide too much clarity. On one hand, Wilmore says “politics is not playing into this at all” in reference to his extended stay in space. On the other hand, he says he believes Musk, after the founder of SpaceX said he offered to bring NASA astronauts back in 2024, but that this option was rebuffed by the White House for political reasons.
For what it is worth, all of the reporting done by Ars over the last nine months suggests the decision to return Wilmore and Williams this spring was driven by technical reasons and NASA’s needs on board the International Space Station, rather than because of politics.
Q. How do you feel about waking up and finding yourself in a political storm?
Wilmore: I can tell you at the outset, all of us have the utmost respect for Mr. Musk, and obviously, respect and admiration for our president of the United States, Donald Trump. We appreciate them. We appreciate all that they do for us, for human space flight, for our nation. The words they said, politics, I mean, that’s part of life. We understand that. And there’s an important reason why we have a political system, a political system that we do have, and we’re behind it 100 percent. We know what we’ve lived up here, the ins and outs, and the specifics that they may not be privy to. And I’m sure that they have some issues that they are dealing with, information that they have, that we are not privy to. So when I think about your question, that’s part of life, we are on board with it.
Q. Did politics influence NASA’s decision for you to stay longer in space?
Wilmore: From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. From our standpoint, I think that they would agree, we came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short. That’s what we do in human spaceflight. That’s what your nation’s human space flight program is all about, planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that, and that’s why we flowed right into Crew 9, into Expedition 72 as we did. And it was somewhat of a seamless transition, because we had planned ahead for it, and we were prepared.
Q. Elon Musk suggested that it might be time to deorbit the International Space Station. Do you agree with that, or is there valuable work still to be done in space?
Williams: You know, we’ve been up here since sort of the beginning. Like I mentioned before, Butch and I had been part of the construction of the space station with the shuttle flights. So, yeah, we’ve, we’ve seen it grow from just a couple of modules to this amazing laboratory that it is right now. And you know, I actually was extremely impressed coming up here and seeing how much science is going on, particularly when we have the resupply missions that bring up a lot of science. I mean, this place is ticking. It’s just really amazing. So I would say we’re actually in our prime right now. We’ve got all the power, all of the facilities up and operating. So I would think that right now is probably not the right time to say, quit, to call it quits. You know, we have probably till 2030 in our agreements. And I think that’s probably really accurate, because we should make the most of this space station for our taxpayers and for all of our international partners, and hold our obligations and do that world-class science that this laboratory is capable of.
Q. Elon Musk said he made an offer to bring Butch and Suni home last year, but it was denied by the White House. Is this true?
Wilmore: I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That’s information that we simply don’t have. So I believe him. I don’t know all those details, and I don’t think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.
Q. Would you be happy to fly on Starliner in the future?
Wilmore: First, had our teams back home that were in meetings for three months, looking at systems, doing tests, had they said to return on Starliner, then we would have been happy to return on Starliner. That was not the case. Our roles are different in these spacecraft. Obviously, Suni and my roles are different on Dragon than what it was on Starliner. We just feel fortunate and thankful though that we have seats, and we’ll be coming home riding the plasma splashing down in the ocean. So that’s what we’re looking forward to.
Q. There have been some pretty big geopolitical shifts since you went up there. What does it look like from your point of view?
Hague: Most of the time when I go over to the window, that’s when I start thinking about the Earth below me. And I can tell you, in the time that I’ve been here, the time that I was here before six years ago, the view hasn’t changed, and the thoughts that I eventually get to really haven’t changed. I see Earth as a small, small orb that’s in a pretty big black vastness of space. And there’s a lot out there. There are more stars than you can count, but the world looks pretty small when it’s in that perspective. And as you fly from continent to continent, you don’t necessarily see all of those borders. And the lesson, or the realization that I always come away with is we have far more in common than we have in different, and those common things that we have bring us together. And if, if we’re smart, those differences that we have are differences that we bring to teams like the International Space Station, and those differences make the team stronger.
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.
