SpaceX founder Elon Musk says his Starship rocket will make “multiplanetary” life possible hours after it was announced that NASA would rely on SpaceX to rescue Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the crew of Boeing’s Starliner-1.
After one X user shared a tweet about the Starship rocket and called it “humanity’s only hope for interplanetary life,” Musk wrote: “I hope others succeed too, but at least there’s a rocket where success in making life multiplanetary is one of the possible outcomes.”
Musk’s tweet comes after it was announced that astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station since early June will return to Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule sometime in February 2025, NASA revealed.
The astronauts’ mission was supposed to last only eight days, but according to this schedule, they will end up being in space for almost eight months.
Top NASA officials, including Administrator Bill Nelson, met in Houston on Sunday and decided to use SpaceX’s upcoming Crew-9 launch to be the vehicle through which stranded astronauts are freed. NBC reported.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, pictured July 2 aboard the International Space Station, will return home in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule sometime in February 2025.
Elon Musk wrote: “I hope others succeed too, but at least there is a rocket where success in making life multiplanetary is one of the possible outcomes.”
“Spaceflight is risky, even in its safest and most routine forms,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
‘A test flight, by its nature, is neither safe nor routine.
“The decision to keep Butch and Suni on board the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is a result of our commitment to safety,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
NASA had previously said the most likely way to bring Wilmore and Williams home would be to attach them to a different mission.
During a press conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, officials revealed they have freed up two seats on the Crew-9 spacecraft for Wilmore and Williams.
Pictured: The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule approaches the International Space Station for docking on April 24, 2021
Pictured: Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which encountered serious problems during its launch into orbit, is seen docked outside the space station on July 3, 2024.
The Crew-9 flight is currently scheduled to launch on September 24 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Meanwhile, the malfunctioning Starliner will be ejected from the space station and re-enter Earth in early September.
This is a major blow to Boeing in its space race with Elon Musk’s company. Even before its two astronauts entered orbit on June 6, the Starliner program was already more than $1.5 billion over budget and years behind schedule.
This is just the latest in a series of failures for Boeing, which last month agreed to a $243.6 million plea deal that would allow the company to avoid criminal prosecution over two fatal 737 Max crashes.
All of this comes on top of numerous Boeing commercial jetliners that suffered terrible mid-flight failures, whistleblowers who mysteriously died and testimony from former CEO Dave Calhoun that was poorly received on Capitol Hill.
This Alaska Airlines flight, a Boeing 737 Max, took off on January 5 and one of the door plugs, pictured, exploded mid-flight.
Pictured: The crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. The plane was a Boeing 737 MAX 8 and crashed six minutes after takeoff on March 10, 2019. All 149 passengers and eight crew members were killed on impact.
John Barnett, left, was a Boeing whistleblower who committed suicide earlier this year. Joshua Dean, right, died in late April due to a sudden illness.
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun takes his seat to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Investigations Subcommittee with protesters in the hearing.
Wilmore and Williams flew into space aboard Starliner on June 5, but NASA and Boeing engineers quickly realized that a problem with the craft’s propulsion system meant it would not be safe to undock and bring them home.
NASA officials said one of their biggest concerns is that Starliner would burn up in Earth’s atmosphere while attempting reentry, which would incinerate anyone on board.
The helium leak from the propulsion system was a problem that mission managers knew about before launch, but it appeared to worsen during flight.
NASA and Boeing engineers spent weeks analyzing these problems using a test engine built for future flights.
Two “hot fire tests” were conducted in space, which involved firing the Starliner’s thrusters while it was docked to the space station.
This flight was supposed to be the final hurdle Boeing had to clear before NASA felt comfortable certifying the Starliner to transport astronauts to and from the space station on a regular basis.
SpaceX, for example, has been flying NASA astronauts to the space station since 2020.
It’s unclear how NASA will move forward with the Starliner certification process.
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