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Trump’s Plan for Elon Musk to Deliver the ‘Stranded’ Astronauts House ASAP Is a Headache for NASA

For causes that weren’t in an instant transparent, SpaceX founder Elon Musk took to his social media website online X on Tuesday night to make a perplexing space-based pronouncement.

“The @POTUS has requested @SpaceX to carry house the two astronauts stranded at the @Space_Station once conceivable. We can accomplish that,” Musk wrote. “Horrible that the Biden management left them there goodbye.”

Now usually, at Ars Technica, it isn’t our coverage to put in writing tales strictly in line with issues Elon Musk says on X. Then again, this observation used to be so declarative, and so consternation-inducing for NASA, it bears a little bit of explication.

To begin with, probably the most believable reason behind that is that Elon is being Elon. “He’s trolling,” mentioned certainly one of my perfect area coverage resources in a while after Musk’s tweet. Finally, the tweet used to be despatched at 4:20 pm within the central time zone, the place SpaceX now has its headquarters.

Despite the fact that it’s trolling, it’ll nonetheless reason complications inside NASA.

Principal, NASA has long past to nice lengths to worry that the 2 astronauts referenced right here—Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—aren’t stranded at the World Area Station. There may be some debate about whether or not there used to be a duration closing summer season when the pair, who flew to the gap station on a Boeing Starliner car in early June, have been in brief stranded. That challenge used to be hobbled by way of technical problems, together with issues of Starliner’s propulsion machine. (In the long run, Starliner flew house with out its group.) Then again, for the reason that arrival of SpaceX’s Team-9 challenge with two empty seats in past due September, Wilmore and Williams have had a secure journey house. The Dragon car is at this time docked to the gap station.

Then alongside comes Musk, with one of the crucial global’s loudest microphones, shouting that NASA’s astronauts are stranded and that President Trump needs them stored. It’s a bombshell factor for the founding father of SpaceX, who has develop into a detailed adviser to Trump, to mention publicly.

It is usually conceivable that Musk used to be no longer trolling and that Trump requested SpaceX to go back Wilmore and Williams previous for political causes—particularly to, of their view, disgrace the Biden management.

Neither NASA nor SpaceX answered in an instant to a request for touch upon Tuesday night.

May just They Come Again?

If Trump demanded that NASA carry the astronauts again now, the Team-9 challenge may go back to Earth previous. It’s at this time scheduled to splash down within the Pacific Ocean in early April. In step with NASA, and the astronauts themselves, Wilmore and Williams are doing high-quality in area. They’ve quite a few meals and garments, and quite a few paintings to do. Privately, resources have advised Ars the similar. Even if Wilmore and Williams weren’t first of all anticipating to spend 10 months in area, they are taking no severe dangers in doing so. Actually, it’s a part of their jobs to take on these types of contingencies.

The present go back date is being pushed by way of the release of the Team-10 challenge, additionally on a SpaceX car. This challenge is flying a brand new Dragon spacecraft, and SpaceX in the past requested for a bit of extra time to procedure and get ready the spacecraft for its debut release. This moved the objective for flying this challenge from February to March 25. To fulfill this date, resources indicated that it’s conceivable SpaceX might wish to suitable a unique, in the past flown Dragon—most likely the Dragon supposed to be used by way of the Axiom-4 challenge—to finish Team-10.

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