‘Spaceflight is hard’: Once-stranded astronauts defend Boeing after 9-month ISS stint
Mar 31, 2025, 9:19 AM
NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore (left), Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov (second from left), and NASA astronauts Nick Hague (second from right) and Suni Williams (right) are seen inside a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft onboard the SpaceX recovery ship MEGAN shortly after having landed in the water off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (Photo: Keegan Barber, NASA via Getty Images)
(Photo: Keegan Barber, NASA via Getty Images)
The two astronauts who had to stay suspended in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for nine months are not blaming Boeing for their delayed return.
Astronauts and national heroes Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams had their initially planned eight-day mission to the ISS extended to 286 days before returning to Earth March 18.
“Did Boeing screw this up?” Bill Hemmer, co-host of “America’s Newsroom,” asked the two astronauts during an exclusive interview with FOX News.
“Screw it up? Space Flight is hard. It’s really hard, and we’re using new technology to try to further and better ourselves,” Whitmore answered. “I can tell you the Starliner, as far as automation, manual control, and when all this fails, a system that you can still survive and get home. This is the most robust spacecraft we have in the inventory.”
Wilmore and Williams did a lot more than twiddle their thumbs during their extended stay in space. According to BBC, the pair completed 150 experiments and logged more than 900 hours of research while aboard the ISS.
RELATED STORIES
“This is new technology that we’re dealing with, so when you put all that together, it’s tough,” Whitmore said. “‘They failed you.’ Who? Who’s they? There are many questions that, as the commander of Crew Flight Test (CFT), I didn’t ask, so I’m culpable…I’ll admit that to the nation. There’s things that I did not ask that I should have asked. I didn’t know at the time that I needed to ask them, but, in hindsight…some of the signals were there.
“Is Boeing to blame? Are they culpable? Sure,” Whilmore continued. “Is NASA to blame? Are they culpable? Sure. Everybody has a piece in this…There were some shortcomings in tests and shortcomings in preparations that we did not foresee.”
Williams added that she wouldn’t characterize it as Boeing “failing” them.
In February, President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the space company that ultimately brought the two astronauts home, claimed they were left in space for political reasons. Musk also claimed on X that SpaceX could have brought Butch and Suni back sooner, but the Biden Administration turned down his offer. In response, NASA officials claimed their decisions were based on flight scheduling and the space station’s needs.
“I don’t want to point fingers. I hope nobody wants to point fingers,” Whilmroe said. “We don’t want to look back and say, ‘shame, shame, shame.’ We want to look forward and say, ‘let’s rectify what we’ve learned, and let’s make the future even more productive and better.
The two astronauts are expected to talk at a postflight news conference at 11:30 a.m. Monday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston alongside the rest of the SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts.
Follow Frank Sumrall on X. Send news tips here.
