During an interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast published this Friday, multibillionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk told the host that a SpaceX flight would pick up two NASA astronauts who have been stranded in space in around a month.
“Um, yeah, probably about four weeks or so,” said Musk – founder of SpaceX, Tesla CEO and recent close ally to President Donald Trump – when Rogan asked when the rescue mission will launch. “It’s depending on weather and other considerations. It’s about a month away.”
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived at the International Space Station laboratory on June 6. They were the first people to go up in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. They were supposed to stay at the station for a week.
However, issues with the spacecraft resulted in the astronauts delaying their return home and they have now been there for nearly nine months. In August, Wilmore’s family said they did not expect him and Williams to be home until February or March.
In November, Audacy reported that people were concerned for the astronauts’ health after seeing photos of them on the space station. In January, Williams said that she was “trying to remember what it’s like to walk,” since the amount of gravity on the ISIS only allows for floating.
“If… you stay up there, you get sort of in zero gravity, you get increased bone loss,” Musk told Rogan.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and the company has so far completed more than 450 missions, according to its website. These have included missions with NASA.
According to Musk, the astronauts can only get home on a SpaceX Dragon craft, and the company offered to bring Wilmore and Williams home early. He claimed the offer was declined by former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Additionally, Musk mentioned a lawsuit brought against SpaceX by the Department of Justice during Biden’s term regarding alleged hiring discrimination. Axios reported last month that the DOJ under Trump planned to drop the case. Musk has been leading efforts to cut government spending under Trump with the controversial new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Trump has also criticized Biden for “abandoning” the astronauts told Musk in a social media post to “go get” them in late January. In an interview this week, the astronauts said they don’t feel abandoned
“As Butch put it before, it’s not about Butch and I,” said Williams. “It’s about our obligation to our international partners and fulfilling the world-class science that we're doing up here on the International Space Station.”