US astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are finally heading home after an unexpected nine-month detour in space—thanks to a failed Boeing Starliner and, according to Elon Musk, political gamesmanship by the Biden administration. Their return aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Capsule, appropriately named Freedom, is expected to end with a splashdown off the Florida coast at 5:57 p.m. on Tuesday.
Wilmore, 62, and Williams, 59, had initially been scheduled for a brief 10-day trip to the International Space Station last June. But thanks to multiple leaks and mechanical failures on Boeing’s Starliner, they were left orbiting in limbo as the spacecraft was deemed too unsafe for their return. The astronauts have been waiting ever since for an available ride home, ultimately hitching a lift with fellow American Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov as they conclude their Crew 9 mission.
The embarrassing episode marks another massive blow for Boeing’s floundering spaceflight ambitions. With Starliner now a multi-billion-dollar disaster, Boeing has struggled to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has increasingly become NASA’s go-to option for reliable space transportation. And if Musk is to be believed, this situation could have been resolved much sooner if not for Biden’s political meddling.
Musk has claimed that earlier plans to bring Wilmore and Williams home were derailed by the Biden administration, which allegedly blocked his involvement for political reasons. While White House officials deny the accusations, it’s clear that SpaceX was the only company capable of solving a problem that NASA and Boeing simply couldn’t. Had Trump been in office, it’s hard to imagine this situation dragging on for nearly a year while astronauts were left stranded.
With this forced delay, Wilmore and Williams will have spent an exhausting 285 days in space—placing them sixth among NASA’s longest single spaceflight record holders. They now sit just behind Peggy Whitson’s 289-day mark, while Frank Rubio holds the all-time NASA record at 371 days after his own unexpected extension due to a Russian Soyuz leak in 2022.
For Boeing, this ordeal is a fresh reminder of its continued decline, as failures in both its aerospace and commercial aviation sectors stack up. Once a titan of American industry, Boeing has become a cautionary tale of what happens when woke corporate mismanagement meets government inefficiency. Meanwhile, SpaceX continues to prove why it’s the future of space travel, delivering results while NASA and its bureaucratic contractors flounder.
This is yet another case of Trump being right all along. The private sector—when led by real innovators, not government-subsidized incompetents—always outperforms bloated, failing corporations that live off taxpayer dollars. If this ordeal proves anything, it’s that America needs to leave bureaucracy behind and fully embrace a future driven by real leadership, real competition, and real results.
