In a joint interview, President Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk discussed rescuing two Americans stranded on the International Space Station.
“At the president’s request or instruction, we are accelerating the return of the astronauts, which was postponed, kind of, to a ridiculous degree,” Musk told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview that aired Tuesday night.
The president contended that the delays had been a result of the Biden administration seeking to avoid the bad press of the disastrously failed mission. Then-President Joe Biden “was going to leave them in space,” Trump asserted.
“He didn’t want the publicity. Can you believe it?” he added.
The remarks come as two American astronauts, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, have been stuck on the International Space Station since last June. The astronauts had reached the space station on Boeing’s Starliner capsule, whose propulsion system was deemed too unsafe to facilitate a return trip to earth.
Meanwhile, Boeing has prepared to lay off about 200 of its employees working on the rocket system for NASA’s Artemis program. The program’s goal is to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in preparation for a longer journey to Mars. The development of the rocket system for the program has cost American taxpayers a whopping $23.8 billion from 2011 to 2022. NASA’s entire Artemis program has been estimated to cost $93 billion from fiscal year 2012 through the end of fiscal 2025.
The rocket costs an astounding $4.1 billion per launch, but unlike Musk’s Starship vehicle, it’s not reusable. Developing the rocket is an effective government jobs program through providing employment for 22,000 people in Alabama alone, according to an October 2024 report.
“Regarding space, the Artemis architecture is extremely inefficient, as it is a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program,” Musk posted on X in December.
In the Fox interview, Musk said he hoped to launch a SpaceX ship to bring the astronauts home in about four weeks. Their return to earth is tentatively set for March 19. The astronauts, who had originally embarked on what was supposed to be an eight-day visit to the space station, have now spent more than 200 days on the space station.
“Well, we don’t want to be complacent, but we have brought astronauts back from the space station many times before, and always with success,” Musk, the CEO of Texas-based SpaceX, told Hannity. In October 2024, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule brought back safely four astronauts from the space station.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
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