You don’t need a degree in rocket science to know that Elon Musk’s ego is as fragile as a Tesla in sub-zero temperatures. On Thursday, the billionaire’s temper was on full display after he blew up at an astronaut and former SpaceX pilot who called him out on an obvious lie.
Danish engineer and astronaut Andreas Mogensen sparred with Musk on Friday after the SpaceX founder claimed during an interview with Fox News that two astronauts who have been in low orbit at the International Space Station (ISS) for over six months had been abandoned in space for “political reasons.”
Mogensen, who in 2023 piloted SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission to the ISS, responded on social media to Musk’s claim that the astronauts were abandoned: “What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.”
Musk couldn’t cope, immediately resorting to slurs against a man who had piloted one of his spacecrafts to the ISS and back. “You are fully retarded,” he wrote to Mogensen. “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons. Idiot.”
The astronaut replied: “You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”
NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are scheduled to return to Earth with astronauts leaving the ISS as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 in March. Crew-9 launched in September for a planned six-month stay at the ISS, departing from Cape Canaveral with two fewer crew members than originally planned in order to accommodate for Williams and Wilmore’s return.
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the ISS over six months ago as part of a two-man test mission for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Technical issues with Starliner rendered their planned 10-day return unsafe, leaving Williams and Wilmore as residents of the space station until they could be safely returned to Earth on an alternate mission. Extended stays at the ISS are not unheard of. Astronaut Frank Rubio spent over a year at the station between 2022 and 2023 after damage to the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft delayed his return from orbit by over six months.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper earlier this month, Williams and Wilmore pushed back on the notion that they were stranded, stuck, or abandoned by the American government.
“We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck, we don’t feel stranded,” Wilmore said.
“We knew that we would probably find some things (wrong with Starliner) and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise,” Williams added.
Nevertheless, their stint on the ISS has become a political flashpoint for the Trump administration. Last month, Musk wrote on X: “The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so. Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”
NASA has pushed back on the accusation that the Biden administration abandoned two astronauts in space. Former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in August that “unequivocally,” politics “has not played any part in [the] decision” to delay Williams and Wilmore’s departure from the ISS. In a report released in February, NASA wrote that had the agency attempted to return the astronauts on Starliner, the risks to their safety would have been exponentially higher. The delay “ensured that the crew would return safely while minimizing the risk associated with the Starliner’s technical issues,” NASA wrote.
Musk’s posturing has also raised concerns about his own conflicts of interest, especially considering his apparent control over government spending.
In July, NASA awarded SpaceX a nearly $1 billion contract to manage the decommissioning and return to earth of the ISS in 2030. Musk, who is currently wreaking havoc on the federal budget — including reviews of NASA’s spending — despite actively managing corporations benefiting from federal contracts, wrote Thursday amid his spat with Morgensen that the ISS’s decommissioning should be pushed forward to 2027.
“It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the @Space_Station,” he wrote on X. It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let’s go to Mars.”
Musk added that the decision would be “up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible.”