[pavon]

That interview doesn't really say much. It is mostly an carefully worded, polite but empty statement made after earlier extemporaneous comments by Suni and Butch seemingly contradicted Musk. The headline claim is basically just Butch saying he has no insight into the decision process but he trusts Musk is telling the truth.

In contrast other articles Eric wrote talking to people who where involved in the decision of how and when to return Butch and Suni, those officials clearly state that the decision was made for technical and programmatic reasons, not political pressure.

[somenameforme]

I 100% agree he's phrasing things 'politically', but think about how you might also be reading what you want to read. For instance the section where you [reasonably] claim he's contradicting Musk (by claiming the decision was not political) was also not only phrased politically, but even came with a sort of disclaimer starting with "From my standpoint." There were no such disclaimers when stating that Musk made some sort of an offer to return the astronauts.

And again something you can't discount here is that Eric himself has written extensively about NASA frequently carrying out/endorsing poor decisions (SLS/Artemis being the low hanging fruit there) owing much more to political pressure than pragmatic decisions about the best direction for progress. Here [1] is one example, including an interview with a former high level NASA insider (30 years experience, up to deputy administrator) openly and casually talking about such.

It's not a secret whatsoever that NASA is under constant and significant political pressure. It's just a part of the game. And in this case you had a situation where the guy, who had basically become public enemy #2 (from the previous administration's POV), was going to be spearheading a high visibility rescue of a launch that should never have been approved in the first place - undoubtedly while blasting it all to his tens of millions of followers. To imagine this would not have provoked some behind the scenes 'management' just seems unthinkable to me.

[1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/former-nasa-official...

[pavon]

> And again something you can't discount here is that Eric himself has written extensively about NASA frequently carrying out/endorsing poor decisions (SLS/Artemis being the low hanging fruit there) owing much more to political pressure than pragmatic decisions about the best direction for progress.

The reason he was able to write about this was that he had sources within NASA that would tell him the inside story behind the decisions, and how much politics influenced them. Now his sources are telling him that this decision was not political. I don't have any reason to trust his previous sources but not his current ones (especially when many are the same).

[somenameforme]

No it wasn't. It's based on visible logic, as everybody knows this, well at least everybody within the 'space domain.' People outside of the 'space domain' don't realize how absurdly dysfunctional things like the SLS or Artemis are, and generally have a completely erroneous impression of NASA.

If you want to see this in action search for pretty much any article on SLS or Artemis by him. The one I offered with the former NASA administrator was to clarify to people who might want to claim he was just speculating or whatever. NASA is the posterboy for making bad decisions under political pressure, and not just in contemporary times...

[majormajor]

How are you possibly parsing "We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went" as "I can confirm that Musk made that offer and it was declined"?

That is a HUGE disclaimer. "no information on that, though, whatsoever" - it doesn't get any bigger than that.