After a Fox News interview in which he claimed American astronauts were deliberately stranded on the ISS for political reasons, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk lashed out at Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen—calling him “completely retarded” and “idiot” and accusing him of lying.
Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX and close adviser to the American president, copiously insulted an astronaut on Thursday after the latter accused him of lying in a recent interview. In a joint interview with Donald Trump this week on Fox News, Elon Musk had assured that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two American astronauts stuck in space for more than eight months, had been “left up there for political reasons.” A “lie” denounced Andreas Mogensen, Danish astronaut of the European Space Agency (ESA) in a publication on X, the platform bought by the multi-billionaire.
The latter was quick to respond with a scathing comment: “you are completely backward (…) their return was postponed for political reasons. Idiot.” The entrepreneur assured in his comment that his company SpaceX “could have brought them back several months ago”, adding that he would have “proposed it directly to the Biden administration” and would have been refused. To which Andreas Mogensen, who has already been to space with Elon Musk’s company, replied: “you know as well as I do that Butch and Suni will return with the Crew 9 mission, as planned since last September.”
Boeing Failure
Initially sent into space for an eight-day mission, these two space veterans have been on the International Space Station (ISS) since last June. Their extended stay is linked to failures on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that had transported them. After long weeks of testing, NASA decided as a precautionary measure in the summer to return the spacecraft empty and to entrust SpaceX with the task of bringing them back.
In September, the company’s mission, named Crew-9, took off for the ISS with two passengers on board, instead of the four initially planned, to leave two seats free. Their return now depends on the arrival of the Crew-10 mission, which is to relieve them, and whose departure was delayed in December by NASA and SpaceX before being brought forward a week ago.
Although the two astronauts have repeatedly assured that they are coping well with the situation and have not been abandoned by the authorities, their mishap has recently taken a political turn, with the new president Donald Trump accusing his predecessor of having “abandoned” them.
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