The Boeing Starliner fiasco came to a belated end last night with the successful transfer of its two stranded astronauts. Nine months ago, the first manned Boeing Starliner mission to the International Space Station failed, leaving Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to turn an eight-day test mission into an indeterminate replay of Gilligan's Island In Space.

Happily, Donald Trump asked Elon Musk and SpaceX to intervene, and the rescue mission succeeded. I watched the re-entry and recovery as it happened, but this brief news report will suffice:

"Propulsion issues and gas leaks" forced the delay, CBS News reports. It skips over the fact that Boeing knew of those issues before the launch but proceeded anyway. No one knows the precise reason, but it appears to be an attempt to maintain a competitive posture with SpaceX and to maintain its position as NASA's partner in space flight. SpaceX also contracts with NASA but operates commercially on its own as well. 

That also appears to be why Williams and Wilmore got forced to spend nine months in space. Two weeks ago, it came out through remarks from family members that Elon Musk had offered a retrieval mission a few weeks into this fiasco, but that Joe Biden and the White House turned him down. Wilmore's daughter had been telling friends how much her father and the family had been suffering from his unexpected absence, the Daily Mail reported at the time, angry over the "politics" and "negligence" that put Wimore and Williams at risk:

'It's been hard if we're completely honest', she said. Daryn said her frustration about her father's stay was 'less the fact that he's up there' and 'more the fact of why.'

'There's a lot of politics, there's a lot of things that I'm not at liberty to say, and that I don't know fully about,' she said.

'But there's been issues. There's been negligence. And that's the reason why this has just kept getting delayed. There's just been issue after issue after issue.'

Musk himself told Joe Rogan two weeks ago that Joe Biden rejected his offer to prevent any positive coverage of SpaceX and Musk, who by that time had endorsed Donald Trump. Musk also reminded Rogan that the administration had already targeted him for lawfare over SpaceX's hiring practices:

The tech CEO explained to Rogan that the Biden administration did not want to jeopardize Kamala Harris' presidential campaign and intentionally 'pushed the return date past the inauguration date.'

'There's no way that they're gonna make anyone who's supporting Trump look good,' he said.

Musk's remarks shocked Rogan. 'That's so crazy... It's just disgusting that they would use that as a political tool,' he said. 

Musk also noted that the Biden administration was suing SpaceX at the time.

'So people say, like, 'Oh, Elon's making it up. The Biden administration wasn't against SpaceX,' he said.

'I'm like, bro, the Department of Justice had a massive lawsuit against SpaceX for not hiring asylum seekers, even though it is illegal for us to hire anyone who is not a permanent resident.'

Last night, Musk called the political motive behind the refusal "a fact" while discussing the issue with Sean Hannity. Hannity wanted to focus the interview solely on the mission, but did say he wanted to ask the one political question surrounding it:

.@elonmusk reveals the Biden administration turned down his offer to get the stranded astronauts home sooner: 🚨“It was rejected for political reasons." 🚨 pic.twitter.com/hN4pPk3YN1

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) March 19, 2025

Donald Trump made the same accusation earlier in the evening. In an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham discussing the domestic terrorist campaign against Tesla, Trump accused Biden of "abandoning" Williams and Wilmore, and called Musk a 'patriot' for arranging their rescue: 

If true, this is nothing short of despicable -- and clearly at least some of the family members believe it to be true as well. Wilmore himself was interviewed shortly before his return trip home and hinted at the same frustrations, although he preferred not to comment on it directly until fully briefed after his return. Both Wilmore and Williams made sure to thank both Musk and Trump for the rescue, and pointedly no one else. 

Congress and the Inspector General that covers NASA need to look into this. If an American president left two Americans confined in space for political advantage in an election, that requires consequences. Arguably, it would qualify as false imprisonment, but it would be -- at the very least -- an abuse of power, if true. We're lucky to get Wilmore and Williams back, and we need accountability that ensures that our astronauts never have their lives risked for personal political gain ever again.